The head of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips, has announced a surely "Racist" plan that the best way to address the gap between the poor performance of black boys compared to white pupils, and oddly, black girls too, is to teach black boys separately. It strikes me that had a white person suggested this "good idea", then they would have been condemned for being racist from all sides of the political spectrum and the idea would have been lost altogether.
When Diane Abbott acknowledged the poor performance when taking the "agonising" decision to go private, the London schools Czar said it was based primarily on a myth.
Update Having watched the programme last night, it wasn't as controversial as the pre-publicity suggested. The main arguments that Trevor Philips put forward was that parents (particularly black fathers) should put more effort into promoting education as being of benefit to their children. Naturally this is contrary to Ruth Kelly's assumption the other day that all parents put their children first, but that's another story!! It strikes me that all children would benefit from this so I don't believe this is controversial. He also suggested, shock, horror, that studying and learning isn't cool, it never has been and again isn't unique to one section of society!! Separating black boys into separate classes seems to have been almost an after thought and ties in quite neatly with the wider debate on single sex education, again nothing new there either.
Postscript:
Unfortunately, having been a prospective parent of the White Hart school, Trevor didn't disclose which school he finally sent his child to, shame on him!! He must surely have upset the entire liberal left educational establishment by comparing discipline in the school to the "gold standard" (my words) of the private sector at one point!!
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