‘I Was Low-Key Disruptive, but Teachers Always Saw Me as trouble’: Addressing Discipline Disparities of Black Girls in English Secondary Schools

This chapter explores the persistently dismissed and trivialised racialised encounters with discipline of Black girls during their educational careers within English state secondary schools. In the context of England, Black children’s struggles within education have been widely documented (Bradbury, A. (2011). Learner identities, assessment and equality in early years education. Doctoral dissertation, Institute of Education, University of London.; Crozier, 2006; Gillborn & Youdell, 2000; Gillborn, Racism and education: Coincidence or conspiracy?, Routledge, 2008; Rollock, 2007), while Black girls’ specific experiences with school discipline remain critically understudied. Drawing on the theorisation of anti-Blackness in education (Dumas, Theory into Practice 55:11–19, 2016) and Black feminism as an approach to counter anti-Blackness, this chapter centres the voices of Black female students, and exposes the discipline disparities between Black and white girls in English state secondary schools. Ultimately, the chapter uncovers how discriminatory discipline ensures the perpetuation of dissimulating and prejudicial narratives, as well as increasing Black girls’ vulnerability in the classroom and their risk of permanent or temporary exclusion from educational spaces.