Attainment - black and minority ethnic groups (UK)

Interventions

The Black Children's Programme was a New Labour government funded national initiative driven through the National Strategies programme. Originally an African-Caribbean pilot project comprising 22 schools across 5 local authorities (LAs) set up in 2005 to support and improve the attainment of African-Caribbean children in primary schools across England who (based on national Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 and 2 attainment data for African-Caribbean children) were deemed to nationally underachieve vis-a-vis White British pupils. In 2006 the programme widened to include all Black children (i.e. Black African, Black Caribbean, Mixed White and Black Caribbean, Mixed White and Black African, and Black Other) in a further 15 LAs (covering over 100 schools) and consequently was renamed as the Black Children's Achievement Programme (BCAP).

BCAP, a two-year programme (ending in 2009) provided participating LAs and primary schools with funding and specialist LA CPD for staff as well as materials that were developed to assist the implementation of a range of intervention strategies and raising achievement plans (based on school audit of their practice and teaching and learning policies) which were evaluated and new ones developed. BCAP schools worked with between 10 and 20 children (identified on the basis of school analysis of their attainment data). Further details can be found in Maylor et al. (2009).