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The scandal of black children sent to special schools
In 1960s and 70s Britain, hundreds of black children were labelled as educationally subnormal , and wrongly sent to schools for pupils who were deemed to have low intelligence. For the first time, some former pupils have spoken about their experiences for a new BBC documentary.
In the 1970s, at the age of six, Noel Gordon was sent to what was known at the time as an educationally subnormal (ESN) boarding school, 15 miles (24km) from his home. That school was hell, says Noel. I spent 10 years there, and when I left at 16, I couldn t even get a job because I couldn t spell or fill out a job application.
BBC News
By Ashley John-Baptiste
image captionNoel Gordon, former ESN student
In 1960s and 70s Britain, hundreds of black children were labelled as educationally subnormal , and wrongly sent to schools for pupils who were deemed to have low intelligence. For the first time, some former pupils have spoken about their experiences for a new BBC documentary.
In the 1970s, at the age of six, Noel Gordon was sent to what was known at the time as an educationally subnormal (ESN) boarding school, 15 miles (24km) from his home. That school was hell, says Noel. I spent 10 years there, and when I left at 16, I couldn t even get a job because I couldn t spell or fill out a job application.
A new BBC documentary has revealed how hundreds of black children were wrongly sent to schools for the emotionally subnormal in the 1960s and 70s because of rampant racism .
Subnormal: A British Scandal, which airs tonight on BBC2 at 9pm, explores how students who were incorrectly deemed to have a limited intellectual ability where sent to ESN schools, which categorised them as having moderate to severe learning disabilities or being un-teachable .
Black children were labelled thick and unintelligent because they couldn t speak the Queen s English , and were prevented from pursuing any further education after leaving the ESN schools.
Many report that there was no real effort to educate them and that they were allowed to play non-educational games, not taught basic literacy and numeracy, and left school with no prospects.
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Last modified on Wed 19 May 2021 10.05 EDT
Last year, documentary maker Lyttanya Shannon began looking for contributors for a new film on a disturbing period in British history. Her focus was the Black British children who found themselves unfairly removed from mainstream education in the 1960s and 70s. They were sent to what were known as âdustbin schoolsâ â places for those deemed âsubnormalâ. And black children were four times as likely to be sent to them as white children.
So raw was their pain, Shannon tells me, that it was hard to find anyone willing to discuss their time in such institutions on camera. â40 years on, the trauma was still very present,â she says. âOne lady had a terrible experience. She had come over from Jamaica, started at a mainstream school, but was then sent to an ESN [educationally subnormal] school. We met in a pub, and when we asked her to share her experiences, she just burst into tears. She said she hadnâ