Education became an important issue in the debate about migration during the mid-60s, when the bulk of settlers arrived from the Caribbean. In 1964, the children of migrants made up only about 2% of the entire school population, although two-thirds of these were of Caribbean origin. Even at this stage, various stresses were beginning to emerge.

Children in the Caribbean had attended schools that were modelled on the British school system. In most cases the syllabus was very similar. Most children of Caribbean origin in Britain, however, found themselves attending inner city schools that already faced difficulties. From the outset, there was misunderstanding on both sides - on that of the schools and on that of the pupils and their families - and this is how many problems arose.

Parents from the Caribbean generally came from relatively small, manageable communities where the importance of education was accepted without question. Teachers had the implicit trust of most parents, and the goals of the school were widely accepted and supported. In comparison, English schools, especially after the introduction of the comprehensive system, were larger and more impersonal; Caribbean parents had enormous difficulty in establishing and managing relations with their children's teachers. Read the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigrants Report on this issue.

For their part, British teachers struggled to understand the unfamiliar accents and idioms of Caribbean speech, and schools habitually underestimated the abilities of migrant children from the Caribbean. The prejudices of the class system also played their part. As many Caribbean migrants were employed as manual workers, it became commonplace in the education system to label the ambitions of these parents for their children as 'unrealistic'.

By the mid-60s, the presence of migrant children in the school system had become a matter of public controversy and debate, and various authorities adopted different strategies to cope with local concern and resentment. In areas such as Southall and Bradford, for instance, local councils, encouraged by a circular to Local Education Authorities in 1964 from the new Labour government, adopted a strategy of dispersal. This led to Asian pupils, for the most part, being bussed to various locations in order to avoid high concentrations in any one district. Except in a few areas like West Bromwich, this policy was not widely applied to pupils of Caribbean origin. By the end of the 1960s, however, it was apparent that Black British children, especially boys, were entering an unfriendly labour market without the appropriate qualifications, thus increasing their prospects of long term unemployment.

Towards the end of the 1960s a new controversy ignited discontent about the education system. This was the issue of special schools. It had become clear that children of Caribbean parents were not only being downgraded in schools, they were also disproportionately classified as Educationally Subnormal (ESN) and sent away to special schools for pupils categorised in this way. For most Caribbean parents this was a crushing blow to their hopes, and seemed to reflect the discrimination they faced. Download and listen to Sam Kings' thoughts on his childrens' education.

From the end of the 1960s and throughout the following decade, a campaign developed round the issue of education. It threw up demands which became part of the political wish list of the Caribbean community in England. These included: changes in the school curriculum; a closer scrutiny of standards and values; the upgrading of facilities; and a new relationship with local communities. All these grew out of or were reinforced by this period of campaigning and protest about the education of migrant children.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the education system got better at serving migrants, but a gap in the educational attainments of Black British boys and girls became obvious and still apply today. Statistically Black British girls perform at more or less the same level as white British girls. In comparison Black British boys continue to perform badly in the secondary system. They are also most likely to be excluded from school, and continue to emerge with the second lowest range of qualifications of any identifiable group. In further education, however, strategies have been developed to deal with these problems. For instance, while Black British boys tend to achieve few qualifications by the age of 16, they are more likely than any other group to enter the network of further education or access courses, now widespread throughout the country, and the evidence shows that within three years after leaving school the gap in educational achievement has begun to close.

School life has had other and more positive effects. At the beginning of the 1960s, children of migrants entered the system as aliens, within their schools and the society at large. Two decades later their presence had created dramatic alterations: in the responsiveness of schools to the migrant community; with the appointment of Black British governors; and with new concern about ethnic minority recruitment to the teaching staff. Although there is still much room for improvement, the old attitudes that saw ambitions for higher education or professional status as unrealistic have more or less disappeared.