Why are Black Caribbean girls underachieving? When I was mentoring in secondary schools there were plentiful government initiatives focused on raising attainment for Black Caribbean boys in light of the Macpherson Report (1999). It wasn’t until much later in my teaching career that I realised that Black Caribbean girls are invisible. Evidently, government data by gender and ethnicity reveals a 45.2 per cent attainment gap between the percentage of Black Caribbean girls achieving grade 5 or above in English and Mathematics GCSE, compared with the highest achievers – Chinese girls (GOV.UK, 2022).
The impetus for my doctoral study was a cohort of Black girls who I was asked to mentor in a secondary school in the West Midlands in 2018. The headteacher claimed the girls were ‘raising their heads’. Consequently, the school’s focus on the girls’ intersectional disadvantages of gender, race and class was inadvertently forfeiting their academic attainment.
My study explored the lived experiences of Black Caribbean girls in secondary schools in England and the strategies they employ to navigate their school experience. In 2021, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 16 Black Caribbean girls aged 13–16 years, who attended schools in the West Midlands, Greater London, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. Participants varied in academic ability and attended various school types, including single sex, grammar, academies and faith schools. Findings from the participants’ narratives revealed experiences of institutional racism, teacher stereotyping, microaggressions, a national curriculum that fails to acknowledge their identity, harsher punishments than their White peers, sexual harassment and misogyny. I have highlighted some quotes below.
