Black children do not do badly at school because of racism, says expert

Tony Sewell, a former teacher and consultant at Reading University, said young people fail their exams because they do not do their homework and are disrespectful to teachers.

He said black children in the 1950s and 1960s may have been "burned out in a racist schooling system" but that was no longer the case.

Sewell is director of the charity Generating Genius, which selected 60 African-Caribbean children from poor backgrounds over four years, and worked with them to get them in to university.

Writing in Prospect magazine, he said: "What we now see in schools is children undermined by poor parenting, peer-group pressure and an inability to be responsible for their own behaviour.

"They are not subjects of institutional racism.

"Instead of challenging our children, we have given them the discourse of the victim – a sense that the world is against them and they cannot succeed."

Although he accepted black youngsters still underachieve he said the reasons behind it "have changed", adding that one problem is that school leaders see such children as victims because they do not want to be perceived as being racist.

That has filtered through to the children themselves and led to inappropriate methods to combat it such as utilising black role models.

"This is desperate and patronising," he said. "Why can’t black boys be inspired by anyone around them who is positive, including white teachers?"

He added: "Young black boys are constantly on edge, feeling that the world is against them but unable to find the real source of their trouble.

"We have a generation who have all the language and discourse of the race relations industry but no devil to fight".

Another writer in Prospect magazine said schools were being made to spy on nursery-aged children by the Race Relations Act 2000.

Munira Mirza, a senior adviser to London Mayor Boris Johnson, said more than 250,000 children have been accused of racism since it become law and teachers are being forced to report children as young as three to the authorities for using alleged racist language.

She added that a "heightened awareness of racism" creates "a climate of suspicion and anxiety" contrary to the belief that it helps to stamp it out.