Slay In Your Lane: The Black Girl Bible

Black Britons of Caribbean heritage make up 1.1 per cent of all 15- to 29-year-olds in England and Wales and made up 1.5 per cent of all British students attending UK universities in 2012–13.

Yet just 0.5 per cent of UK students at Russell Group universities are from Black Caribbean backgrounds,

and there is little understanding of why this is the case.

One given reason is grades: black students are less likely to achieve the required results for entry to highly selective universities, which could help account for their lower rates of application.

The stumbling blocks that affect black students in school are outlined in the previous chapter, and help contextualise why this often happens. But the more pressing issue that many gloss over is that even when they do achieve the same results,

black applicants are less likely to be offered places than their white peers. In 2016, despite record numbers of applications and better predicted A-level grades (and the fact that UCAS predicted 73 per cent of black applications should have been successful),

only 70 per cent of black applicants received offers of places, compared to 78 per cent of white applicants.

In the same year, Oxford University’s offer rate for black students fell to its lowest level since 2013, with just one in six being offered places, compared to one in four white students. In 2016 again, just 95 black students were offered Oxbridge places – 45 by Oxford and 50 by Cambridge. The 50 black students offered a place at Cambridge were chosen from just 220 applications, but the rate of offers to black students was far lower than that of white students: 22.2 per cent of black students who applied to Cambridge were offered a place, compared with 34.5 per cent of white students. Similarly, at Oxford University the offer rate for black students was just 16.7 per cent, while 26.3 per cent of white students were offered a place. The lack of black students at these institutions often leads to confusion, shock and at times outright disbelief from those both in and outside the uni on the rare occasions when they encounter them. Afua was on the receiving end of this many times during her student years:

‘When I would go to the shops in Oxford and local people worked there, they would often try to be friendly, asking, “Are you a student?” and I’d be like, yes, and they’d say, “Brookes?” and I’d be like, no, Oxford, and they’d be like, yeah, “Oxford Brookes.” It was just, why do you care anyway? It was local people. Sometimes when I went to Oxford student things, people would assume that I was from Brookes and not Oxford. I never really felt comfortable going to the Oxford Union and I think that this was part of the reason why. I was conscious that there was this other university that had many black people nearby. It was just a very common, frequent, casual interaction with local people and students, clubs and bars where that would happen. Sometimes I would show my student card for a discount or something and they would be like, “Oxford University?” in surprise. It was just the classic microaggression, often not meant to be offensive, and it makes you feel you have to explain yourself, where a white student would never have to explain themselves.’

Outside of Oxbridge, the success rate of black students applying to other highly selective universities – such as Russell Group institutions – also remains an issue, despite a sharp rise in applications from qualified students and the apparent ‘commitment to diversity’ we continue to hear about from just about every institution. In 2016, 61 per cent of black applicants were awarded places in these selective universities – an improvement on the year before. But according to UCAS’s predictions, 64 per cent could have done so. Professor Vikki Boliver, a lecturer in sociology at Durham University who has carried out research on applications and acceptances of different ethnic groups at Russell Group universities, said this may also occur because BAME students’ grades are more likely to be under-predicted. If this were true, she said, it would give backing to the argument for a post-qualifications application system for universities, with ‘judgements based on fact, rather than predictions’.

She also suggested that name-blind applications could be the remedy for the current prevalent unconscious bias:

‘Leaving people’s names off UCAS forms would be an experiment to see if people are being influenced by names … If we don’t have very clear procedures when selecting people for jobs or places on courses that mitigate against those stereotypes, there may be the danger that we unconsciously fall back on them … We may feel that certain people will “fit in” better.’

The Universities of Exeter, Huddersfield, Liverpool and Winchester are currently piloting a system in which the names of applicants are hidden during admissions, in order to stop potential discrimination based on assumptions about students’ names. But this is a mere drop in a tsunami of prejudice, bias and stereotyping in higher education.

The Russell Group responded to these findings with the argument that minority applicants have lower offer rates than their white peers with the same A-level results because they are less likely to have studied the specific A-level subjects required for entry to their chosen courses.

They also cited research

that suggests offer rates are lower because ethnic minorities are more likely to apply to heavily oversubscribed degree subjects such as medicine or law, perhaps as a result of the parental steering we discussed earlier. An in-house analysis of the data by UCAS also corroborated this, stating that a significant part of the reason for ethnic disparities in offer rates at Russell Group universities was down to subject choice.

Neither UCAS nor the Russell Group, however, have published detailed statistics to support their arguments.

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Education, education, education

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We may be under-represented in the Russell Group and other selective institutions but, interestingly, black students are over-represented and white and Asian students under-represented in other higher-education establishments. In these other institutions, there is a 14.3 per cent under-representation of Asian students and a 3.1 per cent under-representation of white students, compared to a 56.4 per cent over-representation of black students across the student body, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

This over-representation of black students is especially apparent at newer, post-1992 universities, and institutions with highly diverse student bodies. While some universities are almost completely white (in 2014, Ulster only had a 3 per cent non-white student body),

at others minority students make up almost three-quarters of the student body with a corresponding under-representation of Asian and white students. Anecdotally, some think this imbalance may be due to a lack of information regarding university choices within the black community. Alexis Oladipo, founder of healthy food range Gym Bites, explains that for her, going to university was more about getting a degree, and not where it was from:

‘I wanted to go to Kingston and Hertfordshire; Kingston because all of my friends were going there, and then Hertfordshire because there was a course that was interesting. Hertfordshire was my first choice, Kingston my second. I didn’t get into Kingston and then for Hertfordshire, my grades weren’t good enough so they transferred me to a foundation course, so that’s why I had to go to clearing to get into Roehampton.

‘Initially before choosing, my school helped with basic stuff – personal statements and the rest of it – but nothing substantial. Then [with] my mum, it was just a case of going to uni so, “sort yourself out” and all that kind of stuff. I just kind of got on with it really. I didn’t have a great desire to go to university, I just knew that it was something [that] I had to do and something that was required of me and it’s just furthering your education – you go to school, then you go to college and now you have to go to university.

‘Me and education, we didn’t really get along from young. I’ve always kind of struggled so I wasn’t really excited to go. When I didn’t get the grades, I was really upset and then I remember calling my mum and telling her that I didn’t get into the uni that I wanted to get into and she was just like, “You need to find a uni, you not going to uni is not an option.” I had to repeat a college year, so I had already done three years instead of two at college, there was no room for a gap year or anything like that, so I just went through clearing. My college helped me go through clearing – there was a list of unis that were taking people and I literally just went “ip dip doo” and picked a course at Roehampton because it was the closest university to Kingston. I thought about my friends again – we’d be like 20 minutes away from each other.

‘I picked Media and Culture studies; I didn’t really know what it was. I didn’t enjoy it, I didn’t understand it too well. I got a 2:2. But what I can say is that when my mum saw me in my graduation gown, she started crying straight away. So, I mean, it was not for me, it was for her, if that makes sense. It made her happy, she was proud … She was really, really proud and she was telling everyone, you know, “She’s graduated now.”

‘So I did it more for her. I think if I took my time and really figured out what I wanted to do, maybe my journey would’ve been a lot more straightforward.’

A major reason why black students are less likely to be admitted to Russell Group universities is because they’re less likely to apply to these universities, and there can be a number of factors at play here. Fear of alienation is often one, but also wanting to remain close to family, friends (shops that actually sell plantain …) can be another. Some students choose to apply to polytechnics simply because ‘many prestigious universities … do not reflect the diversity of the cities in which they are located’.

There is also the fear of simply not being good enough. White and black students applied to Oxbridge with the same grades I had been predicted, but the niggling feeling that even if I did get in (which I was sure I wouldn’t), I would still be the runt of a very smart and even posher litter kept me well away. I felt that although I might have been eligible for something ‘on paper’, between the lines of that paper it read: ‘not for you.’ And while I don’t regret my choice at all, I do wish my motivation for not applying had been more about my wanting to go to my chosen uni and less about my hang-ups about other institutions.

A second reason, as Alexis’s experience shows, is a lack of awareness from parents, who were often educated outside the UK and so are unfamiliar with the differences between certain educational establishments and courses. But having a parent in the know doesn’t always mean they will be best placed to help you choose a university that is right for you: parents often simply assume that the higher up the league tables it is, the better it will be for you. Afua had a mother who knew all about the prestige of the university she was applying to, but this meant that Afua’s reasons for choosing Oxford were based on her mother’s preferences and not on how well suited she might be to it:

‘Why did I decide to apply to Oxford? It’s simple: African mum. It was “You are going to try to get into that university” and I have to say, I didn’t fully get it. I just didn’t get what the big deal was. I wanted to go to LSE. As far as I was concerned it was in the top five. I didn’t really understand. I didn’t really grow up in a proper establishment-type home so I just didn’t get the extra advantage that came with Oxbridge. I kind of applied to humour my mum because she found it so important, and I got in. I just didn’t see myself as an Oxford person, it didn’t really occur to me that I would get in and that all links back to the stereotypes. When I thought of Oxford, when I pictured Oxford, I did not see myself; I saw posh white people so I didn’t think I’d get in. I didn’t take it seriously and then when I got in, I had a complete crisis because I went to a private school and it was very white and I’d been literally counting down the days until I could get away from it.

‘I didn’t get the academic advantages of it but I definitely got the social implications, which was that I’d be cut off from the community, that’s what I felt. I’d be cut off from my whole scene, I was really into music journalism and I was in the new scene in London. I’d really worked hard to get away from the straightjacket of growing up in a very white area, so it was a big setback for me, that was my main concern. I just didn’t have any positive things to counter it at the time.’

Perhaps the most important reason, as we’ve looked at in the previous chapter, is a lack of incentive to apply to these universities in the schools these students are coming from. Without this, very few pupils can believe that a Russell Group uni or Oxbridge is something within their reach – for many, the idea is nothing more than a pipe dream. While there are, of course, black children who attend private schools, the majority are state-educated. This becomes particularly meaningful when you consider that between 2007 and 2009 just five schools in England sent more pupils to Oxford and Cambridge (946 in all) than nearly 2,000 other schools combined. Four of those five schools were private.

The 2,000 lower-performing schools sent a total of 927 students between them to the two elite universities. Many of these schools sent no pupils at all, or on average fewer than one per year.

Afua, who mentored school children while she was at uni, describes the black pupils she met at state schools telling her that her university was a place they could never even dream of aspiring to:

‘We all did mentoring talks in the summer. We would go to inner-city state schools and talk to kids and we were trying to say that whatever perspective you have of Oxford, it is like that but you can find yourself there. We would get them kind of motivated and interested and then at the end they’d ask, “What grades did you need to get in?” and I’d be like, “3 As” and they just looked completely deflated because no one at their school had ever got 3As, ever. It was unheard of. So then you just think, what’s the point of going round to all these places when they’re dealing with such a bigger structural unfairness? Oxford is very slow in recognising that a student at a really tough state school who gets Bs is possibly a better student and more talented than a student at a private school who gets 3 As, and I think other universities have been quicker to recognise that.’

Heidi Mirza also talks about the importance of these initiatives in raising the aspirations of young, black, largely working-class children:

‘The universities in the States, like Cornell and Princeton, are going into primary schools in black communities and telling kids about universities from a very young age so that universities aren’t seen as some kind of out-of-reach places; they’re actually part of a mindset. And they’ve actually invested money in these programmes.’

Andrew Pilkington, Professor of Sociology at the University of Northampton, makes the important point that for the last few years ‘the primary concern of widening participation strategies was social class’. Because of this, the important intersection of class and race has been ignored, and overlooked by policymakers. Therefore issues specifically affecting black members of the student body have been largely neglected.

The fact that there are more black students at university than any other ethnic group is largely as a result of how we view education. For many of us, as Elizabeth pointed out earlier, education is often posited as the antidote to racism. We believe we can educate ourselves out of inequality with the right qualifications and grades. But while education, especially higher education, can indeed do wonders for social mobility, it is unfortunately the case that inequality is still present on the way up. In order to get into university in the first place, black students must do better than their white peers, and they are still less likely to get into the more prestigious institutions, regardless of their A-level results.

As Dr Omar Khan, the Director of the Runnymede Trust, says: ‘What message does that send to young people who have heard for decades now that “education, education, education” will ensure their equal opportunities in the labour market?’

Even more alarmingly, after they have jumped through the hoops to reach university, black students will, on average, leave with lower university grades than their white peers. These are students who have proved by their A-levels that they have the ability to thrive in the world’s most elite institutions, but they fall short once they arrive. There has been little research into why this happens, but several of the issues discussed above – a lack of understanding surrounding the inevitable culture shock, multiple microaggressions at the hands of peers and staff – are likely to play a part. In 2010, 67.9 per cent of white students gained a first-class or upper-second-class degree at university compared to only 49.3 per cent of BAME students who entered with the same grades. Black students underperform compared to all other groups,

and this occurs regardless of the type of university they attend, while 72 per cent of white students who started university with A-levels of BBB in 2014 got a first or 2:1, compared with 53 per cent of black students.

Furthermore, despite an overall increase of BAME students in higher education,

they are still less likely to find jobs that match their education level once they leave, or to progress to professorships.

British ethnic minority graduates are between 5 and 15 per cent less likely to be employed than their white peers – and as if that wasn’t enough of a blow, for ethnic minority female graduates in particular, there are large disparities between their wages and those of their white counterparts. The same study shows that three and a half years after they have left university, the difference in earnings between ethnic minorities – especially women – and their white peers actually increases.

Even if they are from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, grow up with similar opportunities and have similar qualifications, ethnic minority graduates are less likely to be employed than white British graduates. So at present, black female students are paying £9,000 – and rising – for a much poorer university experience than their peers. And then, post-uni, they are also being short-changed in their earnings, making it even more difficult for them to pay off those rising fees.

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‘I have written eleven books, but each time I think, “Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.”’