Race, Faith and Community in Contemporary Britain Essays on Black, African, and African Caribbean Muslims in the UK PROUDLY MUSLIM & BLACK REPORT 2022

i. Introduction
Save Our Boys is an organisation based in London that was set up to help support Black boys
who are close to permanent exclusion from school or a life in crime. Save Our Boys is working
to change that one boy at a time.
There are many issues that are affecting Black boys negatively. First, racism in broader society.
Stop and search, for example, is disproportionately used on Black people. As research shows,
racism in education particularly in classrooms is another factor. Second, exclusion from school.
A number of studies have shown how exclusion disproportionately affects Black and minority
youth. Third, a generational divide between parents and youth. A fourth factor that shapes the
life chances of Black boys is a lack of positive role models.
At a time when knife crime is at record levels (Benthem, 2020), Save our Boys’ goal is to save
their lives. The work is urgent, and responsive to the challenges young Black boys face today.
Save Our Boys:
A youth work intervention
By Rakin fetuga
ii. A Teacher’s Perspective
My perspective comes from being a youth worker, a Learning Mentor, a teacher, and experience
as a rapper. I grew up in Ladbroke Grove in the 1980s where crime was rife and gangs were
active. I witnessed first-hand what the streets can do. The streets are more dangerous than they
used to be. We used to settle problems with our fists but now they’re settled with weapons.
Knives were at one point about making marks on your face; now they are for stabbing.
My saving grace was music. It kept me busy, writing, gathering lyrics. I was a rapper with Cash
Crew, and later with Mecca 2 Medina. Thereafter I became a teacher, and started Save our
Boys in 2015.
iii. What the research shows
Black boys are permanently excluded in high numbers from schools and put into Pupil Referral
Units (PRUs). The revelation comes as the Department for Education published new national
data on exclusions, which shows Black pupils from a Caribbean background had almost twice
the England average rate of short term exclusions at 10.37% in 2018-19 (DfE, 2020).
Exclusion in education is a serious issue; once a child goes to a PRU their education is damaged
for life. The child will never be able to access the same level of education they received in a
mainstream school. Also there are many other issues as Haroon Siddique explains. “Young
Black Caribbean boys are nearly four times more likely to receive a permanent school exclusion
and twice as likely to receive a fixed-period exclusion than the school population as a whole,
making them the most excluded group apart from Gypsy and Traveller children (Siddique,
2020).”
There is evidence that exclusions lead to incarceration in the form of a “PRU-to-prison” pipeline.
The IRR report (Perera 2020) notes that 89% of children in detention in 2017-18 reported to have
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