Antiracist-eighties

On these pages you can access some 'legacy' anti-racist history and humanities curriculum projects and teaching resources, articles and papers produced or used in local authority schools in England; these were developed by local authority equalities teams, voluntary organisations, LA funded black and anti-racist education grassroots organisations and teachers, advisory teaching teams, part of the anti-racist teaching movement which developed in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990's. The GLC (ILEA) and other LA's published some quality resources, for example on black history. Books and teaching materials, published by black, radical publishers and community bookshops, were available to us. With the introduction of a statutory national curriculum and other factors this movement had ground to a halt by the end of the 90's.  Some resources may not have made it to accessible archives, and whilst those listed here are in no way comprehensive, they are relevant  and important for teachers de-colonising the curriculum today, history educators and history education research.

The anti-racist teaching movement included organisations such as NAME, ALTARF, ACER, BASA, and ACD. A network of independent black supplementary schools set up by black parents groups and campaigns against racism in schools provided  community based education. The movement was able to draw on the resources and funding streams of local authorities such as ILEA and the extensive LA infrastructure and provision of teachers centres, centres for multicultural education and curriculum advisers. Outside London there were similar developments in major cities and urban areas like Leicester, Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol, and northern cities. There were also initiatives to develop anti-racist and multicultural education in all white areas. Integrated humanities was largely the focus for anti-racist curriculum development, not  mainstream history teaching in schools with separate departments, whilst history teaching focus on pedagogy (pupil enquiry, disciplinary concepts) developed by SHP and leading members of the Historical Association from this time happened in parallel.  Left wing local authorities, pro-active in developing anti-racist policies came under prolonged attack from central government and the tabloid press of the day; the GLC and its education authority, ILEA, was abolished by the Thatcher government in 1986, and Brent's ambitious DPEARE (Development Programme for Education Attainment & Race Equality 1988-1991, was closed down prematurely. It, like other outer London Boroughs had lagged behind ILEA on the issue of racism in education.