Black supplementary school leaders: Community leadership strategies for successful schools

Abstract

Long established in the United Kingdom, Black supplementary schools are valued by Black parents for their ability to nurture the academic potential of Black students and achieve positive educational outcomes where mainstream schools sometimes fail. Through exploratory qualitative interviews conducted with a small group of African-Caribbean supplementary school leaders, this article seeks to understand Black supplementary school leaders’ perceptions of educational leadership and supplementary school success. Utilising Yosso’s perspective on ‘community cultural wealth’, in particular the ways in which Black communities provide and are rich in cultural/educational resources, the article examines the extent to which the leadership perceptions of Black supplementary school leaders are rooted in notions of community and serving, along with the leadership strategies they employ in creating successful schools. Such insights are especially important at a time when mainstream education continues to deliver poor educational outcomes for Black students.

Keywords

Black caring community critical race theory school leadership

Introduction

The National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education (NRCSE, 2019) has a database which suggests that there are between 3000 and 5000 supplementary schools in the United Kingdom serving diverse minority ethnic communities. Supplementary schools are community-led grassroots voluntarily-run organisations that operate outside of mainstream school hours at weekends and in some cases in the early evening. Their mode of teaching tends to be one-to-one and in small groups. Some of these schools refer to themselves as ‘supplementary’ (i.e. the education they provide in, for example, English and mathematics supplements existing mainstream school provision), while others denote their existence as ‘complementary’ (i.e. their teaching provision concentrates on maintaining cultural/heritage in language, music, dance or faith, e.g. Islamic) which tends not to be taught in mainstream schools, therefore the work covered complements mainstream school provision (e.g. see Francis et al., 2009). This article is concerned with supplementary schools which fall within the former categorisation, primarily Black¹ supplementary schools which are staffed by leaders and teachers from African-Caribbean backgrounds and attended by African-Caribbean students.

Developed within the Black radical tradition of self-help/addressing one’s own community concerns (Gerrard, 2013), Black supplementary schools catering for African-Caribbean students (aged 5–18) were set up in the 1960s by African-Caribbean educators and parents who were concerned about the educational inequality and inequitable outcomes Black children in mainstream English schools experienced when compared with white² British students (Andrews, 2013; Mirza and Reay, 2000; Ramalingam and Griffith, 2015). The lower achievement of Black students was attributed to institutional racism (Macpherson, 1999) experienced in the form of low teacher expectations for Black students, which contrasted with parents’ own high expectations, and a national curriculum advocating Black assimilation and exclusion of Black students’ experiences (Andrews, 2013; Bryan et al., 2018; Coard, 1971; Dove, 1993; Gillborn et al., 2017; Issa and Williams, 2009; Mirza and Reay, 2000; Swann, 1985; Tomlinson, 1984). Macpherson’s (1999) conclusion of institutional racism in mainstream education led to the British government requiring English schools to prevent and address racism, and to the school’s inspectorate (Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED)) monitoring how this expectation was achieved. However, the likelihood that this would be effectively accomplished was questioned by Osler and Morrison (2000) whose research on the ability of OFSTED to report on race equality found that school inspectors often ‘failed to recognise race equality as an essential component of quality in education’, and that ‘even when there is compelling evidence of a school’s problems with racial inequality, issues concerning ethnic differences in attainment and exclusion rates [and] racial harassment…are rarely reported’ (p. 7). Two decades later, in addition to the findings by Osler and Morrison (2000, 2002), the persistence of inequitable educational outcomes for Black students (DfE, 2019) accounts for Black supplementary schools remaining a key educational strategy for African-Caribbean parents/students today (Wright et al., forthcoming).

A key priority in Black supplementary schools is for teachers to have high aspirations and achievement expectations for Black students, something which is deemed to be still absent in mainstream schools (Maylor et al., 2013; Nwulu, 2015; Strand, 2007, 2015). Black supplementary schools strive to nurture the high achievement potential of Black students which is often missed in mainstream education (Issa and Williams, 2009; Maylor et al., 2013). This role coincides with findings by Hall et al. (2002: 400) who state that supplementary schools:

Seek to develop capacities and values that children already have but which mainstream schools appear to underrate or ignore. It is arguable that the mainstream system is geared to assume deficits in students while the supplementary school locates and teaches to strengths.

Recognition of a Black student’s academic potential can result in some students sitting national examinations (e.g. general certificate in secondary education and A levels) earlier than they would in their mainstream school and passing at the highest grades (Maylor et al., 2013). Findings by Strand (2007) and Evans and Gillian-Thomas (2015) also support contentions of supplementary schools making a positive contribution to the academic attainment of students attending supplementary schools.

Black supplementary schools, however, ‘are much more than a response to mainstream failure. They are spaces of hope and transcendence’ where Black children are given access to ‘other ways of knowing’ (Mirza, 2009: 141–142), which is not dissimilar to Freire’s (1972) and Hooks’ (1994) pedagogy of hope. These ‘other ways of knowing’ include developing a positive sense of being Black (Mirza, 2009; Portelli and Campbell-Stephens, 2009) through knowledge imparted to them pertaining to their ethnic background, culture, Black history and Black role models (Mirza, 2009; Reay and Mirza, 1997; Simon, 2007); aspects which Black parents consider not only to be absent in mainstream schooling but are essential to fostering Black children’s ability to challenge educational racism so as to improve their children’s life chances and those of the wider Black community (Andrews, 2013; Hall et al., 2002; Issa and Williams, 2009; Maylor et al., 2013; Mirza, 2009; Mirza and Reay, 2000). Furthermore, being free of the ‘white bias’ (Mirza and Reay, 2000: 532) and deficit assumptions about Black student ability prevalent in mainstream education, Black supplementary schools bolster Black children’s self-esteem through the engendering of racial consciousness and cultural pride (Andrews, 2013; Ramalingam and Griffith, 2015).

African-American supplementary schools also established in the 1960s have a similar heritage and purpose to Black African-Caribbean supplementary schools in the United Kingdom. Founders were concerned to provide academic support through the development of ‘primary and higher-order thinking skills of critical, analytical, and creative thought [and a] positive and proactive concept of the self, society, and the world’, challenge the ‘dominant Eurocentric ideology and…offer an alternative value system that is responsive and responding to the cultural and spiritual ethos of people of African ancestry’ (Kifano, 1996: 206–212). Kifano (1996: 211) argued that African-American parents who sent their children to these schools regarded the study programmes as providing the ‘vital missing link to their children’s education’. Similar perceptions are held about Black supplementary schools in Canada (Wilson and Johnson, 2015).

Black community resources

Black supplementary schools build on Black community-based resources, that of Black educators who have a ‘community-conscious commitment to Black students’ (Howard, 2014: 512). Black supplementary schools in the United Kingdom (Reay and Mirza, 1997), Canada and the United States (Howard, 2014; Wilson and Johnson, 2015) are underpinned by Black community educational activism which seeks to enact distinct types of social capital to yield community versus individual uplift (Howard, 2014; Wilson and Johnson, 2015). In other words, Black supplementary school educators are expected to have a wider impact than just on individual students as they are crucial to Black social mobility (Maylor et al., 2013). Wilson and Johnson (2015: 103) define activism ‘as work done by public citizens to resist the discriminatory and marginalizing effects of dominant power structures and institutions like schools in order to work towards institutional, social and societal improvement’. Further, they maintain that educational activism is ‘a pivotal activity for Black community members to resist structural racism and other forms of oppression in public educational systems and strive for systemic change’ (Wilson and Johnson, 2015: 103), while at the same time advocating for Black students in their communities (see also Howard, 2014). Thus, Black supplementary schools/educators are a rich resource for the communities they serve (Andrews, 2013; Maylor et al., 2013; Mirza, 2009). The extent of the resource is articulated in greater detail through critical race theorist Yosso’s (2005) concept of ‘community cultural wealth’ which is discussed next.

Theoretical framing

This article utilises Yosso’s (2005) concept of ‘community cultural wealth’ to ascertain Black supplementary school leaders’ perspectives on their leadership of Black supplementary schools and how they create successful schools. To understand the underpinnings of ‘community cultural wealth’, which is derived from critical race theory (CRT), it is necessary to provide a brief overview of CRT. CRT is an American-based theory, which ‘starts from the premise that race and racism are endemic, permanent’ in society (Solórzano, 1997: 6). In interrogating racism, CRT aims to illuminate and explain how racist ideologies and racism become entrenched in society (Solórzano and Yosso, 2002). It has four other key tenets: (i) CRT is committed to social justice and eliminating racism, (ii) it seeks to challenge dominant ideologies of race neutrality, colour blindness and claims of educational meritocracy, and equal opportunity, (iii) CRT draws attention to the experiential knowledge of people of colour which is salient in providing a counter-narrative to disrupt white-dominant ideologies (Solórzano, 1997), and (iv) ‘white supremacy’ which is construed as:

a political, economic, and cultural system in which whites overwhelmingly control power and material resources, conscious and unconscious ideas of white superiority and entitlement are widespread, and relations of white dominance and non-white subordination are daily re-enacted across a broad array of institutions and social settings. (Ansley, 1997: 592)

Contentions of ‘white supremacy’ provide a means for understanding the ways in which European 18th- to 19th-century ideologies constructed Black people as incapable of being leaders or holding leadership positions (Arday and Mirza, 2018). A key aspect of this article is challenging such racist discourses.

Yosso’s (2005) concept of ‘community cultural wealth’ is informed by Bourdieu’s perspective on the hierarchy of knowledge and CRT’s perspective on the permanency and endemic nature of racism in white-dominated societies. It is also premised on the need to understand how ‘race and racism impacts on education structures, practices and discourses’ (Yosso, 2005: 74) and the salience of challenging white privilege in the reproduction of knowledge. According to Bourdieu and Passeron (1977), white middle-class people possess cultural, social and economic capital which enables them to acquire knowledge and gain educational qualifications to occupy highly skilled employment, all of which helps to reinforce educational inequalities between children from middle- and working-class families. Such capitals are valued by society, and the assumption from Bourdieu’s thesis is that working-class (including Black) people with presumed lower levels of academic ability cannot acquire the necessary capitals (knowledge and skills) to be educationally successful. When applied to Black people, such deficit thinking results in Black students being viewed as ‘enter[ing] school without the normative cultural knowledge and skills’ and parents being viewed as not ‘valuing or supporting their child’s education’ (Yosso, 2005: 75). Yosso was also of the view that Bourdieu’s thesis led to white middle-class communities being considered as ‘culturally wealthy’ and Black families as ‘culturally poor’. This led Yosso to challenge Bourdieu’s thesis and her advancement of the need to value knowledge held by Black people and understanding how such knowledge can be used to resist and transform Black educational experiences into positive educational outcomes.

‘Community cultural wealth’ is comprised of six capitals:

Aspirational – ‘the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future, even in the face of real and perceived barriers’.

Navigational – ‘skills of manoeuvring through social institutions [e.g. universities]…not created with communities of colour in mind’.

Social – ‘networks of people and community resources…[which] can provide both instrumental and emotional support to navigate through society’s institutions’.

Linguistic – ‘includes the intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style. Linguistic capital reflects the idea that students of colour arrive at school with multiple language and communication skills’.

Familial – ‘refers to those cultural knowledges nurtured among family that carry a sense of community history, memory and cultural intuition.…This form of cultural wealth engages a commitment to community well-being and expands the concept of family to include a broader understanding of kinship’.

Resistant – ‘knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional behaviour that challenges inequality.…This form of cultural wealth is grounded in the legacy of resistance to subordination exhibited by communities of colour [and] maintaining and passing on the multiple dimensions of community cultural wealth is also part of the knowledge base of resistant capital. [Whilst] transformative resistant capital includes cultural knowledge of the structures of racism and motivation to transform such oppressive structures’ (Yosso, 2005: 77–81).

Yosso (2005: 81) cites Franklin (2002: 177) who describes [Black] cultural capital as ‘the sense of group consciousness and collective identity aimed at the advancement of an entire group’, and such capital is ‘a major resource for African American schools’. Further, Yosso argues that ‘the main goals of identifying and documenting community cultural wealth are to transform education and empower people of colour to utilise assets already abundant in their communities’ (Yosso, 2005: 82). This article is an attempt to illuminate the applicability of ‘community cultural wealth’ to Black supplementary school leadership perspectives as it has hitherto largely been applied to Black educational attainment (Wright et al., forthcoming).

The study

This article draws on interview data conducted with a purposive sample of eight African-Caribbean staff with responsibility for managing Black supplementary schools located in four ethnically diverse urban areas in England. The schools held sessions on a Saturday and were funded through parental contributions and donations. Three heads were approached through education meetings attended by the researcher, three were recommended by parents of children who attended their schools and two were mentioned by former students. The heads, all male, had worked in community settings for over 20 years as youth/social workers and mentors and within the business sector. They had initially become involved in supplementary schools (e.g. volunteering with fundraising, teaching mathematics, mentoring and supporting other community activities) through their own children attending supplementary schools. The impetus for undertaking leadership roles in supplementary schools came from their interactions with such schools over several years.

Pilot interviews with the heads were conducted face to face and lasted between 2 hours and 3 hours. As discussed in the literature review, earlier previous research has highlighted the value placed on Black supplementary schools by Black parents, however, the ability to make a difference to student attainment was questioned by mainstream head teachers in (Maylor et al., 2013) owing to the lack of UK teaching qualifications held by many teachers who teach in supplementary schools. Consequently, in this study, alongside the heads’ perspectives about their leadership role, a key aspect of the exploratory interviews conducted was to understand the perceived impact their leadership strategies had on fostering positive outcomes for the students who attend their schools. Additional questions covered when and why the supplementary schools were established, the type of school activities conducted, how the schools were organised and funded, examples of school achievement and relationships with parents and the wider community.

Following BERA’s (2018) ethical guidelines, the interviews were digitally recorded, anonymised and transcribed verbatim. The data were analysed using the NVivo version 10 qualitative data software package which helped to identify recurrent themes and patterns as well as similarities and differences within and across schools/leaders. For this article, the perspectives of the school leaders were further reviewed against Yosso’s (2005) concept of ‘community cultural wealth’ (see ‘Theoretical framing’ section). This analysis revealed that six of the eight interviewees were particularly forthright about their leadership perspectives, and it is these views which are shared in this article.

Black supplementary school leadership

Before exploring Black supplementary school leadership, it is useful to define school leadership in its broadest terms. School leadership is generally envisaged as school leaders ‘providing direction [articulating a vision, modelling their leadership expectations] and exercising influence [and] mobilising and working with others to achieve shared goals’ (Leithwood and Riehl, 2003: 2). Further, leadership is

centred on student learning…the development of academic knowledge and skills and the learning of important values and dispositions. [School leaders] create high performance expectations, monitor student performance whilst helping to establish the conditions that enable others to be effective. (Leithwood and Riehl, 2003: 2)

Communicating the combination of leadership elements that are going to make the biggest difference to student outcomes is reliant on school leaders ‘developing school cultures that embody shared norms, values, beliefs and attitudes’ and facilitate teacher empowerment (Leithwood and Riehl, 2003: 5).

Positive educational outcomes achieved by Black students are dependent on strong and effective school leadership (Demie, 2013). To understand how such leadership is conveyed in Black supplementary schools, the article turns next to reviewing the influence of Yosso’s (2005) concept of ‘community cultural wealth’ on Black supplementary school leadership. Drawing on Yosso (2005) it is possible to see ‘resistant capital’ and ‘aspirational capital’ as salient elements of Black leadership of supplementary schools and their desire to create successful schools, as exemplified by these two school leaders:

Any teacher who comes to work here needs to understand why regardless of a child’s ability they need to ensure that the children see they have high aspirations for them, especially when they may not encounter high aspirations when they are in school. (School leader 1)

I don’t want any teacher to work here if they give up too easily on the students who attend this supplementary school. How can students develop resilience if their teachers give up without trying? We know that Black children will face many challenges to do with their identity and perceptions of racism. Teachers must teach students to be strong so they can overcome educational challenges they encounter in their schools daily. (School leader 5)

School leaders 2 and 8 reported cultivating ‘resistant capital’ among teachers in their schools who in turn, they argued, encouraged aspirational capital and built up resistant behaviours in Black students so they can challenge race, gender and class inequality, and ultimately maximise Black children’s educational chances:

Any teacher that works here I need them to be ambitious and committed to as Bob Marley says Black people elevating their minds and emancipating themselves from mental slavery. The one commitment that I ask them for is to have high expectations and to be ambitious for all students. I need them to recognise children’s potential and teach to their strengths. (School leader 2)

Society wants Black children to fail. Every day, the media highlight the latest crime committed by Black youth. Some students are beaten down by racism before they come to this school. They are always being told that they are not good enough, that they are going to fail, so there is no point studying. When Black children come here, they need to experience positivity, but they also need to know that to achieve academic success they have to work hard, it does not come easy. If they get knocked down, you know fail their exams or they struggle to do the work set, they need to know that they have to get up and start again. That’s what I want my teachers to convey to their students. As a community, Black people experience pain, but we dig deep to come out at the other side. (School leader 8)

School leader 8’s comments can be situated within the early development of Black supplementary schools whereby the philosophy of educational leaders was underpinned by a ‘refusal to surrender’ mentality and a ‘determination not to be destroyed’ (Jones, 1986: 10). The ability for Black supplementary schools and their leaders to continue is fostered by a ‘warrior spirit’ as argued by school leader 6 who referred to ‘warriors’ such as Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey who strove for ‘recognition of Black people’s educational ability and racial uplift’. Black supplementary school leadership is emboldened with the knowledge that Black communities are rich in community resources as articulated by school leaders 3 and 4:

We have a heritage of Black kings and queens in Africa, politicians in Africa and the Caribbean. This school is full of educators from within the local community. (School leader 4)

Some of my teachers are former students of this school. Some volunteered as undergraduates and some came back when they qualified. They give back to this school because they understand what it is to be Black and the economic realities of living in [name of location]. They are committed to sharing what they have learnt to make a difference. (School leader 3)

The comments by school leader 4 have strong parallels with Yosso’s (2005) concept of ‘community cultural wealth’. School leader 3’s comments echo those shared by school leaders in Maylor et al. (2013) and epitomise Singh and Kwhali’s (2015: 24) contention that underpinning ‘Black leadership’ is a commitment to lead towards a vision of greater racial justice, which is necessary if racial inequality identified by the Race Disparity Unit (2019) is to be dismantled. Similarly, to findings in Maylor (2016), the Black supplementary school leaders in this study reported establishing school climates of community caring and learning. Their ability to do this and demonstrate caring leadership appears to be largely dependent on their connections to the Black communities they live in and serve and the ‘strong community buy-in’ (Ramalingam and Griffith, 2015: 9) they reported receiving from students’ parents.

Often like the teachers in their schools, these Black supplementary school leaders were a product of supplementary schools and live in the local community. Their experiences and development of racial consciousness (Johnson and Campbell-Stephens, 2010; Pham, 2018) within such communities enable them to appreciate racialised educational inequality and how this can be challenged by teachers through the curriculum delivered, and their commitment to social justice and achieving equitable outcomes for Black students.

School leader 6 was adamant that while he was ‘proud’ to lead his supplementary school he said: ‘It’s not enough to be head, it’s how you lead’. The ‘how’ of his leadership he defined as ‘leading from the front’, being ‘an activist’, ‘going out on a limb’ and being ‘resilient in the face of limited finances’ to ensure that his staff had the necessary resources to meet students’ needs. Such leadership he deemed as salient if the educational status quo for Black students is to change. The pervasive educational realities for Black students mean that, in this school leader’s words, ‘leading from the front is not a choice’ but ‘a priority’. As such, it is possible to view the Black supplementary school leaders discussed here as ‘potentially the architects and builders of a new social order wherein traditionally disadvantaged peoples have the same educational opportunities, and by extension social opportunities, as traditionally advantaged people’ (Jean-Marie et al., 2009: 4). In order to facilitate this, writing about Black urban schools Milligan and Howley (2015: 43) point to the need for ‘colour-conscious leadership’ in Black school contexts ‘with respect to [school leaders] awareness and engagement of race-based situations in their schools’ (Milligan and Howley, 2015: 49; see also Pham, 2018). This is essential given the under-representation of Black school head teachers³ in mainstream schools in England (Belgutay, 2016; DfE, 2019; Miller, 2016; NASUWT, 2017).

As well as ‘race conscious leadership’, Portelli and Campbell-Stephens (2009) identify the need for ‘servant leadership’ which they define as ‘building [community] capacity’ and ‘seeing [one’s self] as a leader within the community as opposed to a leader in one unit of that community’ (p. 49). In this respect, two of the heads of Black supplementary schools discussed how they lead the educators that teach at their schools by working alongside them, rather than leading from the front. To benefit the community (i.e. children who attend supplementary schools), heads of supplementary schools work collegiately with their staff (i.e. other educators).

I never ask my teachers to do anything I am not prepared to do. I work with them in the classroom. If we are short a teacher, I am in there. The success of this school depends on all our teachers, including me. As D’Artagnan⁴ said ‘one for all, all for one’ or Bob Marley, ‘out of many, one people⁵‘, these are my leadership beliefs. We are a community school. Leadership must lead to the betterment of the whole community. (School leader 3)

I am always in the class doing whatever I can to support the teachers even sharpening pencils, mopping floors. Together we achieve school success. (School leader 7)

According to Klein et al. (2018: 92), ‘leadership is not an individual action’, it is dependent on the leader(s) developing ‘relationships with members of their schools to influence curricular and pedagogical change’. The relationship these Black supplementary school leaders developed with their staff enabled them to lead by ‘serving’ their staff and inspiring them to get the best results for children who attend their schools and in turn the educators serve the students who in turn demonstrate the value invested in their education through their achievements. Arguably, ‘servant leadership’ is born of the Black community’s need to challenge negative educational narratives about Black students (Gerrard, 2013) and educationally uplift the wider Black community, which remains a long-term goal.

Limitations

As a qualitative study, the findings presented here are limited by the subjective nature of the leadership perspectives shared. The findings are further limited by the sample size which does not allow for firm conclusions to be derived from the findings. Interestingly, among the interview data there were no dissenting leadership voices. On the one hand, this is unsurprising given the nature of the schools these leaders were in charge of and the educational realities/racial inequalities underpinning their leadership perspectives. Paradoxically, the lack of divergence may be viewed as a weakness as it does not allow for any comparative analyses. That said, the findings presented provide a basis for exploring the perspectives of Black supplementary school leaders in a larger study.

Conclusion

This article has sought to understand the leadership perspectives of a small group of Black supplementary school leaders through Yosso’s (2005) concept of ‘community cultural wealth’. Utilisation of the concept suggests that the leadership beliefs of these leaders are underpinned by an understanding that while some in the African-Caribbean community may underachieve in national examinations (e.g. DfE, 2019), the potential for Black supplementary school leaders to create successful schools appears to be dependent on their ability to draw on a wealth of community resources (e.g. educators, politicians, musicians, etc.) and knowledge of Black academic/cultural success. Working alongside teachers in their school provides opportunities for some Black supplementary school leaders to lead by encouraging and demanding those who teach at their schools to foster high aspirations and resistant capital among the students who inhabit their classrooms, with the expectation that such leadership will lead to students passing mainstream examinations at the highest grades and/or the lives of Black students will be transformed. Such expectations were notably evident in Maylor et al. (2013) and Maylor (2016). The model of leadership articulated by the Black supplementary school leaders reported in this article also supports contentions by Morrison (2009) of the salience of the relationship between school leaders and teaching staff if student achievement is to be enhanced.

Albeit a small-scale study, the findings presented here have some insights to offer mainstream education, especially as the underachievement of Black students is long-standing (Gillborn et al., 2017) and Black students continue to underachieve in mainstream schools (DfE, 2019). That said, a key challenge encountered by Black supplementary school educators in having their leadership strategies valued in mainstream educational contexts is because some staff do not hold UK teaching qualifications (as many are overseas trained), and as discussed in Maylor et al. (2013), this results in such staff being perceived as ‘not proper’ teachers. Therefore, the leadership and teaching strategies employed are often dismissed by mainstream school educators as ‘poor teaching’ and they are deemed to be ineffective educators (see Maylor et al., 2013). Yet, ironically, private schools in the United Kingdom manage to foster high attainment among students without all teaching staff having UK qualified teaching status (Martin, 2019). Moreover, it is not a formal requirement, in the same way that academy⁶ schools in England through the Academies Act (2010) can employ teachers without any formal UK teaching qualifications (see Hutchings et al., 2014). Further, academy schools do not necessarily have a positive impact on student attainment (Gorard, 2014). This supports CRT’s contention of the endemic nature of racism and white privilege/supremacy which denotes white teaching/leadership approaches as superior to those adopted by Black supplementary school leaders. Acknowledging the strength of a Black leadership educational ideology as suggested here, especially one that questions the national educational provision (see examples in Gerrard, 2013) would, however, require recognition of the ways in which many Black students have been failed by the British education system, and the extent to which supplementary schools have been found to contribute to the successful mainstream achievement of Black students (Evans and Gillian-Thomas, 2015; Ives and Wyvill, 2008; Maylor et al., 2013; Musoke, 2016; Strand, 2007). Furthermore, although the views of Black parents with children attending Black supplementary schools were not examined in this article, other research has shown that Black supplementary school leaders are able to establish positive relationships with Black parents which encourages their greater involvement in the support and progression of Black students in supplementary schools, which contrasts with Black parental involvement in mainstream schools (Wilson and Johnson, 2015). Such experiences point to the need for the leadership strategies of Black supplementary school leaders and how they create successful schools to become better known within mainstream education.

Footnotes

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for comments which helped to improve this article.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Uvanney Maylor

Notes

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