This blog post looks forward to the forthcoming symposium at BERA Conference 2023, which will present the findings from two studies that were developed to examine the problem of institutional racism in a London-based, post-92 higher education institution (HEI).
The researchers aimed to (1) examine the extent to which prejudice, discrimination and racism were present across all levels of the HEI, and (2) understand the impact on both Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and non-BAME staff and students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND); thereby bringing to the fore diverse perspectives about the systems that serve to reproduce and maintain inequalities in HE (see Bhopal et al., 2016; Miller, 2021).
Questions about the overrepresentation of BAME groups with SEND have been raised for more than six decades. The widely-held belief that Black children were somehow ‘educationally sub-normal’ (Demie & McClean, 2017, p. 1) was formally articulated by Coard in 1971. In his paper, ‘How the West Indian child is made educationally sub-normal in the British school system’, Coard expressed real concern over the large numbers of children from African and Caribbean backgrounds that were being labelled as ‘educationally sub-normal’ (ESN), and how this label invariably led to stigmatisation, lowered expectations, school exclusion, and poor self-esteem and educational outcomes. It is against this background that the current pilot study (funded by BERA’s Small Grants Fund) emerged.
