Community Life

Croydon aims to ensure high quality learning for all, throughout life and meeting the needs of Croydon's diverse community, that’s the pledge.  However, the borough’s figures shows Croydon to be the 10th highest borough to permanently exclude young people in the country and amongst the worst in London.

Although the figures for permanent exclusion in the borough has fallen since last year, the levels has still raised concerns at the Commission for Racial Equality.  The equalities body has written to Croydon seeking some action on the LEA’s part.

Solutions

Croydon’s Supplementary Education Project (CSEP) is just one of the dozens of voluntary groups across the borough working to deal with this problem.  The organization was established 25 years ago to tackle the level of under-achievement amongst African-Caribbean pupils.  A quarter of a century later however, they are now struggling with the increasing number of young people being excluded from mainstream education.

16 year old Jamie is one of those young people benefiting from the support of CSEP.  Whilst his primary education is now being provided through the pupil referral unit, the assistance which is having the greatest impact on his life is the support he is given by his mentor John Uddoh.

"The real impact is that what we are doing is failing the children.  We're not giving them any sort of a future at all and it's no surprise when they end up doing things against the law.   By excluding we are telling they will have a problem in the future." says John

In a statement to the BBC, Croydon Council says it's working with schools, governing bodies and the CRE to ensure that schools do analyse the pattern of exclusions in the light of their Race Equality Statements so that we can reverse this over representation.

Watch the video for more on the work of the CSEP