“Tightening the Shackles”: The Continued Invisibility of Liverpool’s British African Caribbean Teachers

Abstract

This article reports on the researchers’ findings 20 years after Lord Gifford’s inquiry into race relations in the city after the 1980s Toxteth riots. Gifford reported on the prevalence of racial attitudes, racial abuse, and racial violence directed against the Black citizens of Liverpool. The authors’ research focused on education and specifically the low percentage of Black teachers compared to the whole teaching workforce and the percentage Black population in the city. Accessing complete Black teaching data proved difficult and unearthed issues within policy and priority in the city authorities and led the researchers to begin to gather data to explore teacher training, entries and completions, and the lack of status of the Black teachers as measured through representation in senior leadership positions in schools.