Should Brent data on Afro-Caribbean Boys' attainment gap be made public?

50 years ago I was involved in a grassroots group called the Westminster Group for  Multiracial Education. The group arose from community concerns about education in North Paddington and involved parents, teachers, school students, social workers, workers from the local Commission for Racial Equality and a young lawyer from the nearby Law Centre who went on to become the MP for Brent East.

Concerns included racism in schools, racist remarks by teachers, low expectations of Black pupils and discrimination in their access to examination streams,  the lack of books and other resources relevant to Black people and their history, and the disproportionate number of Black pupils labelled ESN* (Educationally Sub-normal in the language of the times.) More widely the impact of the SUS law (Stop and Search on Suspicion) and immigration laws on young people was a big issue locally.

In nearby Brent Council adopted a Policy Statement on Multicultural Education on October 21st 1981. the statement recognised and welcomed the community as multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-religious and multi-lingual and stated:

The Council is committed to a fundamental and significant change to a multi-cultural education based on a concept of cultural pluralism. The recongition that all people and cultures are inherently equal must be a constant from which all educational practices will be developed. 

The education system must be one which affords equality of opportunity to all children. we shall develop a plan and strategy to make the means of achievement consistent with the aims.

Reflecting community concerns Brent Council asked the Black educationalist Jocelyn Barrow to head an inquiry into the pattern of secondary school examination results that showed schools in the south of the borough 'performing markedly less well than the north'.  They were to:

1. Assess the standards achieved in secondary schools

2. Assess parental concerns

3. Assess whether these concerns were justified

4. To advise on remedial action

There was opposition from some teachers to the inquiry and schools were often reluctant to release data. The inquiry was accused of usurping the role of the school inspectorate. 

The report was published as 'Two Kingdoms: Standards and Concerns, Parents and Schools. An Independent Investigation into Secondary Schools in Brent 1981-1984'

Following the report Brent Council set up the Development Programme for Education, Attainment and Racial Equality (DPEARE) that sent advisory techers into schools to address achievement issues. A Daily Mail article denounced the teachers as 'Race spies' causing considerable conflict.  Brent Community Relations Council reacted with a statement:

The allegation that DPEARE teachers are merely 'race spies' is beneath contempt. They are quality and experienced professionals seeking to bring about a process of educational change that will help to raise the attainment of all children. 

The HMI reporting in Spring 1988 concluded:

The programme is developing satisfactorily and most work is of sound quality and adddresses the needs of Ethnic Minority pupils within the normal curriculum.

The importance of statistics (data) was underlined by the Home Office DPEARE Monitoring Panel:

 A Queen's Park Community School Staff Newsletter reports a positive visit by the Monitoring team.

 

In 2005 the issues were revisited in a collection of essays in 'Tell it like it is: How our schools fail black children' was published with a launch discussion at Harlesden Library.

An Institute of Race Relations (IRR) review includes the following:

According to Brian Richardson, the editor of Tell it Like it is, ‘Black kids may not be labelled as “educationally subnormal” these days, but they are disproportionately excluded from school, dumped in pupil referral units and sent into the world with fewer qualifications than their peers.’

In 2004, Black boys were three times as likely to be excluded from school as White boys and the percentage of Black Caribbean pupils getting five or more grades A* to C at GCSE and equivalent was 36 per cent compared to 52.3 per cent of White children.

And, in 2005, the cocktail of excuses served up to wash down such unpalatable facts is still of the 1970s flavour. Both major parties and the mainstream media still focus on the supposed shortcomings within the Black community: the lack of ‘academic focus’; the supposed dearth of strong and positive role models created by living in fragmented families and now the influence of ‘ghetto fabulous’ culture. Despite the evidence accumulated over the last three decades which highlights the institutional racism at the heart of ‘underachievement’, there are still plenty of schemes addressing cultural confusion, negative self-esteem, alienation and bad behaviour among Caribbean youth and their parents.

 

Fast forward to yesterday evening's Scrutiny Committee (Video) where I made the following presentation:

The problem of under-achievement, particularly of boys of Black Caribbean heritage has persisted. In 2018 the Community and Wellbeing Scrutiny Committee expressed concern at the gap between Black Caribbean boys and other groups.

The 2018 standards report had shown that at the end of Key Stage 2 the attainment of boys of Black Caribbean heritage had increased by four percentage points but the gap with the national average for all pupils had widened to 23 points below the national average.

A Specialist Centre for Black Caribbean Boys’Achievement  headed by Chalkhill Primary School was set up with  Black Caribbean Boys Achievement champions in each school.

Detailed analysis of ethnic achievement data was provided to the Schools Forum and some schools’ reluctance to provide details on Black Caribbean Boys was noted. That data is still on the Council website LINK but hasn’t been updated.

Now we come to this evening’s report:

3.12.6 notes:

 The previous focus to improve the attainment of Boys of Black Caribbean Heritage continues to be monitored. However, this data is not in the public domain and is therefore provided as a confidential attachment.

I ask Why not in the public domain?

3.12.8  notes:

The Brent Schools Race Equality Programme was launched on December 6th, 2024. It is a free offer available to all Brent schools. Only 29 out of 63 primary schools have taken it up)

One of its aims is to:

 To significantly increase the attainment of underperforming ethnic groups

7.4 notes that disappointing outcomes for Black Caribbean Boys persist and says:. Brent  continue to implement plans to mitigate these outcomes the data indicates that there it more collaborative work required to improve outcomes and ensure this cohort does not continue to be left behind.

So Brent Council is stating that the data shows that there is a problem but the public, the community concerned, parents and others interested people are not allowed to see the data and assess the extent of the problem and success of the initiatives. This is not accountability and transparency and could give rise to the lack of trust in the system found by Jocelyn Barrow back in the 1980s.  There is of course a need to assess value for money.

 

I ask that the Committee recommend that the data referred to in 3.12.6 be made public.

 

A further concern is that not all Brent school age children are in school and thus not included in the data.  So there is missing context.

I ask that the Committee make request for ethnic information on the following  issues.

Absence Rates

Exclusions

Number of pupils being home-schooled

The extent (if any) of off-rolling **

Impact of Covid

The number of NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) in the borough

 

Responding, Shirley Parks,  Director of Education Partnerships and Strategy said;

With regards to Martin's point about the data being publicly available.  The DfE does not publish the data to this level of granularity so we have access to that to use internally, but we can't publish the national comparators. We would obviously also want to talk to schools [to see] if they are happy for us to publish our data alone. That would not make so much sense unless we could publish national comparators, which is why we are treating it as confidential data.

The fundamental trend which is what Martin actually covered was that we've known for years this cohort of children has not performed as well as we would want them to, which is why we've had a number of initiatives including the previous project that included champions in each school and also the current work that we are doing with the Race Equality programme. We've done three different initiatives to support this cohort of children....This year we are taking that  one step further and we are funding an anti-racist programme working with the Leeds Becket University around an anti-racist kite mark award for schools to again make sure were are doing all we possibly can. 

Ms Parks said the trend had gone up and down with different age cohorts but 'we're still not achieving what we want to achieve.' She pointed out that the LA was not doing as well as they would hope but 'we are making achievements as children go through the system.'

Cllr Kathleen Fraser (Chalkhill ward) said:

I'm listening to everybody thinking, nothing has really changed siince I was young and particularly when I was on the Council 1986-90 when we introduced anti-racist strategies and all sorts. I  myself was the product of one intervention with regards to setting up courses for black people to get into higher education. It was successful but a pity that we had to do it...

I follow what Cllr Clinton was saying: with everything you say is happening, it just seems nothing is improving as regards to Afro-Caribbean young people... I'm not saying that there isn't some good stuff going on but we sat here last year and we didn't have certain figures. This year we've got them and we are glad, but how does SEND and Pupil Premium factor in? We talk about disadvantage, the pandemic, we can go on and on, but still we're failing certain children. Certain children are failing because we haven't grasped what exactly is going on.

Cllr Fraser in a further intervention at the end of the agenda item said: 

We need to do more of a deep dive into this so we are not sitting in this situation next year with regard to standards. With the gap widening rather than reducing with regard to the Attainment of young people from Black Adrican Caribbean and Somali communities. I think with the resources that are being pumped in, we owe it to our residents to take a deep dive into this. Perhaps we can set up a Task Group to look at it.

The Committee did not adopt either of my requests. 

 * ‘How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Subnormal in the British School System’ was first published in 1971. Written by Bernard Coard, a Grenadian, who worked in southeast and east London as teacher and youth worker during the 1960s, the book aimed to expose the endemic levels of racism in Britain’s education system and to rally communities to resist.

 ** Off-rolling is the practice of removing a pupil from the school roll without using a permanent exclusion, when the removal is primarily in the best interests of the school, rather than the the best interests of the pupil. This includes pressuring a parent to remove their child from the school roll (Ofsted):

 

 

Brent Patient Voice call on NWLondonCCG to ask NHSDigital to pause 'concerning' GP data sharing process

 

The Tories have worked out how to pull off an NHS data grab: do it during a pandemic by Marina Hyde (The Guardian)

Brent Patient Voice has written to the Brent Representative on the Governing Board of the North West London Clinical Commissioning Group calling for a pause in the current process that would see the NHS accessing GP’s confidential individual patient data. This is the letter:

 

There is great concern among patient groups about NHS Digital’s new scheme for taking confidential patient data from GP records, with patients having only until 23 June to notify any wish to opt out and the vast majority having no inkling that this is the case. We understand that concerns on these lines were voiced at yesterday’s NWL Info Governance meeting, when members heard that doctors in NE London were refusing to co-operate with NHS Digital in view of the lack of information so far shared with patients about the effects of GPDPR and their options. There also seem to be practical issues for already overloaded GPs who are supposed to process confusing opt-out applications to be made on paper within a time window of 7 days between the closing date for patients to apply and the start date for extracting data of 1 July.

 

In our view 99% of patients would be unable to comprehend the information about this scheme and the opt outs currently displayed on the NHS Digital website. The interaction of a Type-1 opt-out with a National Data opt-out is obscure and, despite the alleged three years during which this scheme has been prepared in secret, does not appear to have been thought through. It leaves many questions in the air, including the relevance of any opt outs from personal data sharing which patients have made previously under the “Extraction” scheme or care.data. Nor is it clear how the paperwork is to be signed if it can be sent electronically. The ‘explanation’ looks as if it has been written by a committee, not all of whose members agree with each other.

 

What it does say is that personal data is to be “pseudonymised” which means that the person to whom it relates can be re-identified. This is inherently risky and no good reason is given for it. If the data is wanted for planning there can be no need to re-identify individuals. Furthermore we are told that the data collected and passed to NHS Digital will not be used “solely for commercial purposes”, which means that it can be used partly for commercial purposes.

 

We cannot see how such a distinction can be monitored. In any case this rushed secretive exercise risks not just the hugely trusted confidential GP/patient relationship, free to all, that is the jewel in the crown of the NHS and its success as a valued healthcare system, but it undermines trust in any properly legitimated data collection. Surely it is madness to put this at risk by arranging for the mass irretrievable transfer of sensitive personal data out of the control of GPs to commercial interests, particularly without the direct consent of the patient?

 

Can we therefore please ask you, the CCG, its PCCC and Brent GPs to send an urgent message to NHS Digital, NHSE and local MPs demanding a significant pause in the current process:

   a. to allow for a complete rethink on the scope and design of the scheme, noting that there is a fundamental difference between census-type data which is anonymised for 100 years and continually updated data relating to individuals;

b.   to require NHS Digital to prepare a proper information campaign about the benefits and safeguards involved, which can then be the subject of Parliamentary and public debate;

c.    to clarify and simplify the opt-out process;

d.   to give GPs the necessary support for informing all their patients directly and for handling the administration aspects of the process?

 

EDITOR'S ADDITION The current form to send to your GP to opt out of sharing your data can be found HERE

Information Commissioner's Office calls on Brent Council to take measures to avoid future data protection breaches

Following the data breach by Brent Council when e-mail addresses of residents were sent to recipients of a message about a meeting acomplaint was made to the Information Commissioner's Office.

This is their response:

-->

You have contacted us to complain that Brent Council appears to have inappropriately disclosed your personal data.

Summary of case

In this case, your email address was cc’d into an email and disclosed to other individuals.

It would therefore appear that Brent Council has breached the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA).

Role of the ICO

Our role is to ensure that organisations follow the Data Protection Act 1998 properly. If things go wrong we will provide advice and ask the organisation to try to put things right. Our overall aim is to improve the way organisations handle personal information.

Next steps

Although it appears that Brent Council has breached the DPA, it would seem that this is down to human error, and the ICO does not consider it necessary to take any further regulatory action at this stage.

However, we have contacted the council to advise them of our view. We have also asked that they take the following measures to ensure that similar breaches do not occur in the future:

• To remind all staff to take extra due care and attention when sending emails by double checking addresses and only sending out relevant and appropriate information in future.
• To use the bcc feature when sending emails to numerous individuals with external email domains, to ensure that email addresses are not disclosed to other parties.
• To check that all staff have undertaken data protection training within the last 12 months.
• Inform any other parties whose data may have been inappropriately disclosed in this case.

Although we do not intend to take any further regulatory action on this case, this will remain on our systems to help us build a picture of Brent Council’s information rights handling.

We will continue to monitor the council’s data protection practices, and should any regulatory action be taken against them in the future, your case may form a part of our intelligence against them. You can view any regulatory action we do take on our website, using the following link: https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/

Putting ‘Pokémon Go’ into perspective

Article by Jackie Marsh, from School of Education, University of Sheffield, web page LINK

Already, tales of mythic proportions surround the ‘Pokémon Go’ app. Reports abound of stabbings, robbings, shootings, people falling off cliffsand even finding corpses as they play the game. There are concerns aboutsex offenders targeting children, and children accessing dangerous spaces to get their next Pokémon monster. A New Zealand resident recently quit his job to play the game full-time, and people joined crowds to get to a rare monster in Central Park, fostering anxieties about addiction. Now even the police are using the app to catch fugitives.

The moral panic surrounding the launch of new media titles is not new, as I have discussed previously when comparing the audience response of Disney’s film ‘Frozen’ to that of the Disney ‘Davy Crockett’ film launched in the 1950s, but what is of interest is the speed of this response, given that ‘Pokémon Go’ was only launched a few weeks ago, on July 6th. The rapid take-up of the app has occurred with little direct marketing.

For the uninitiated, the free-to-play app draws on augmented reality technology to enable players to capture and train virtual Pokémon creatures, whose images pop up, overlaid on the ‘real’ world, on a mobile device. Augmented Reality (AR) consists of a blend of the physical world and the virtual world. In this blended reality, three-dimensional images or environments are projected onto a physical object or terrain, but users are not immersed in the same way as they are with virtual reality experiences.

This is not the first app to use augmented reality to entice its users. We undertook a research study on under 5’s use of tablet apps in the UK, in which children’s engagement with augmented reality apps was examined. The research team watched as children, enthralled, made the popular charity figure Pudsey bear appear in 3D and dance to disco music using the Quiver app, or played with augmented reality animals that appeared in the ‘AR Flascards’ app. As we stated in a subsequent paper from the study which reflected on play in the digital age, “Contemporary play draws on both the digital and non-digital properties of things and in doing so moves fluidly across boundaries of space and time in ways that were not possible in the pre-digital era” (Marsh et al., 2016). Augmented reality technology is still at an early stage of development, but the hype surrounding it indicates that it has the potential to excite and is a feature that is bound to become more prevalent in the toy and game industry in the future.

The ‘Pokémon Go’ app is notable for its popularity across generations. It appeals to those who collected the plastic Pokémon monsters in the brand’s earlier incarnations, taking them back to a fondly remembered childhood pastime. It could even remind them of previous GPS location-based tagging games they may have played, such as ‘Foursquare’ (whose creator, Dennis Crowley, has said he is not at all bitter about the success of ‘Pokémon Go’).

Such nostalgic media practices are nothing new, as numerous scholars have noted, but what makes this one particularly exciting for its adult fans is the transformation of their childhood monsters into virtual characters that live in their smartphone. The app is also drawing in a new Pokémon audience, one that knows little about the original television animation, video games or toys, launched initially in 1995. It offers opportunities, therefore, for family play, as noted by commentators who are keen to identify the game’s positive elements in the face of all of the media panic. And, as some have asked, shouldn’t we be pleased that the game has got people off sofas and into their local environments?

Of course, this calculated appeal to an intergenerational audience is one that is already paying off, with the app becoming more successful on launch than Candy Crush, and Nintendo, the original creators of Pokémon, estimated to be worth an additional $12 billion because of it. For both Nintendo and Niantic, the company that created the app, the real value of the game may not be in the microtransactions it embeds, with the possibility to purchase in-game features, but in the potential commercial use of the data it collects from the people who play it. This, as scholars of children’s media practices have pointed out in relation to other digital games, raises key questions about data privacy and children’s rights.

It would seem, therefore, that the launch of ‘Pokémon Go’ has resulted in the familiar tropes of panic and hype that surround many launches of new games and toys. The longevity of the app is difficult to ascertain at this point in time. When the excitement dies down, it remains to be seen what the impact of the app will be on future markets for this kind of game.

‘Pokémon Go’ has succeeded because of its combination of GPS and augmented reality technologies, linked to a very popular media brand that already involved collecting items — thus, players enjoy the familiarity of playing with the old alongside experiencing the excitement of engaging with the new. It will be difficult for other game studios to copy that specific dynamic, but no doubt there will be many attempts to do so, and we could see location-based AR games becoming further intertwined with popular culture as people search local communities for virtual representations of toys, musicians, TV and film characters, media icons and more.

In time, apps may be made available that enable user-generated content, so that the general public can leave their virtual wares in physical spaces for others to gather. Given children’s appetite for media content created by other children, that would undoubtedly be a popular type of app, albeit one potentially fraught with all kinds of safety issues. It will be incumbent upon researchers of children’s media use to trace the risks embedded in such developments, but also to identify the opportunities they present for engaging children and young people in digital content creation.

Now, forgive me, but I really have to leave it at that and get ready to go to my local ‘Pokémon Picnic’ — who knows, I might catch an Articuno…

– Jackie MarshProfessor of Education, Chair of the DigiLitEY project.

Nick Gibb 'wrong' to attribute increase in children in 'good or outstanding schools' to academisation

By Henry Stuart republished from original article on Local Schools Network
This is another really useful article by Nick which shows how the government misleads on the basics.

 Government ministers have repeatedly claimed that one million more children are in "good" or "outstanding" schools, and that this is a direct result of their academies policy. For example Nick Gibb, speaking at the consideration of the Education and Adoption Bill on Friday 11th September, said "there are 1,100 sponsored academies that started life as under-performing schools, which is a colossal achievement that has led directly to over 1 million [more] children being taught in “good” or “outstanding” schools." (col 208)

Analysis of Ofsted Data View does indicate that it is true that one million more pupils are in schools rated "good" or "outstanding" and it is clearly the case that many schools have been converted to academies. But a basic analysis of the data suggests it was not academisation that caused any improvement.

Vast majority of improved primaries are not academies
78% of the increase has been in primary schools, where only a small minority of schools have become academies. Indeed the latest Ofsted dataset indicates that there are 167 sponsored academy primary schools that are currently rated "good" or "outstanding". Assuming these have the same average size as primaries overall (411 pupils), this gives a total of 68,537 children.

Extra pupils in "good" or "outstanding" primaries           996,604
Pupils in "good" or "outstanding" sponsored primaries    68,637
% in sponsored academies                                                  7%

So for every 100 extra pupils in "good" or "outstanding" primaries, 93 were in schools that were not sponsored academies. The percentage of primary schools that are "good" or "outstanding" has gone from 67% in 2010 to 82% in 2015 but the vast majority of this improvement has been due to improvements in maintained schools, not in sponsored academies. Nick Gibb is entirely wrong to say the improvement results "directly" from the performance of sponsored academies.

Ratings for primaries are improving but more secondaries are being rated "inadequate"
The Ofsted annual report of 2014 made note of the fact that primary schools were continuing to improve but that this was not the case for secondaries (where the majority of schools are not academies). Indeed there is a worrying increase in the number rated "inadequate":

“Children in primary schools have a better chance than ever of attending an effective school. Eighty-two per cent of primary schools are now good or outstanding, which means that 190,000 more pupils are attending good or outstanding primary schools than last year. However, the picture is not as positive for secondary schools: only 71% are good or outstanding, a figure that is no better than last year. Some 170,000 pupils are now in inadequate secondary schools compared with 100,000 two years ago.” (Ofsted annual report 2014 p8)

I have noted here that sponsored secondaries are far more likely to remain or become "inadequate" than similar maintained schools, and here that sponsored academies lead to slower school improvement. The concern is that the direct effect of sponsored academies has actually been this substantial increase in secondaries rated "inadequate".

The data indicates that the Education Bill, in forcing all "inadequate" or "coasting" schools to become sponsored academies, is likely to substantially increase the number of pupils in "inadequate" schools.

Data Notes

Data on pupil numbers come from DfE for 2010 and 2015.

Data on schools overall Ofsted ratings come from Ofsted Data View.

The Ofsted dataset on ratings for all schools (June 2015), from which the numbers of Sponsored academies that are "good" or "outstanding" were calculated can be found here.

My calculations indicate that there are 997,000 more children in "good" or "outstanding" primaries in 2015 than in 2010 and 274,000 in secondaries, giving a total of 1.27 million. However 275,000 of the extra primary pupils are due to the increase in pupil numbers. If we take these out, the total is 999,000 extra pupils in "good" or "outstanding" schools, effectively the one milliion that the government claims.

How to opt out of the NHS care data scheme

At a meeting last night I couldn't find anyone who had received their letter about the sharing of individual's medical data so it is good news that implementation has been delayed for six months.

There are concerns about the security of the system and its possible misuse. This was discussed in the Guardian 18 months ago: LINK

If you decide you want to opt out of the system, which is your right, Fax Your GP Com LINK have set uo an easy facility. This is what they say:

We’re a very small group of volunteers who think it should be very easy for people to opt out of the new NHS care.data centralised database of medical records.

Unless you opt out now, care.data will soon store the medical records of everyone in England, yours included, in one giant database.

Our confidential health information will then be shared with companies and other public bodies.

Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a good thing.
Some people we respect think care.data is, on balance, a bad thing.

What we know for certain is that the NHS hasn’t made it easy for you to exercise your right to opt out. We think this really isn’t wise.

The NHS leaflet explaining care.data says you should ‘let your GP know’ if you want to opt out.
But GP surgeries are busy. If you ring up wanting to opt out they’ll ask you to write to them instead. That’s fair enough – their priority is treating the sick.

It’s 2014. The NHS really should have made it easy to opt out via the web.
So we thought we’d help out.

First, we found the fax numbers for every GP practice (sadly, very few let you email them). After you’ve entered your details, our clever computers automatically fax your letter asking to opt-out of the care.data database straight to your GP practice.

It’s free. It’s secure. And we don’t store any of your personal data once your opt-out fax has been received by your GP. So we won’t email trying to sign you up for other campaigns.

Sadly we can’t make any 100% watertight promises that this site will always work. Your GP’s fax number might be listed incorrectly on the NHS website, for example.

So if you want total reassurance, it might be best to print out an opt out letter and pop it round to your GP yourself.

However, we have done this sort of thing before, and so know it works well. Back in 1999/2000 some of us built FaxYourMP.com, to make it easy for people to contact their MP, since in those days most MPs didn’t publish their email addresses. A bit like GPs, today, in fact.

We didn’t expect to have to resurrect a similar service nearly 15 years later. Frankly, we shouldn’t have had to, but needs must.

— Stef Magdalinski and friends.

The Keep Our NHS Public leaflet downloadable below contains an opt-out letter you can take to your GP: