The Social Impacts of Exclusion - April Newsletter
Welcome to NME’s April Newsletter! This edition features all of the organising efforts and events that NME has organised and participated in over the past month, alongside an essay written by an NME member about the exclusionary practice of language education permeating school curriculums across the UK.
Being excluded from school is more than the singular solitary act of being permanently barred from no longer attending a particular institution. Although this may be the main image that comes to mind, permanent exclusions are one part of a wider system of harmful exclusion that exists within the British school system. As you read through the “This Month in NME” section of this newsletter, you will see that NME attended the National Housing Coalition’s Demonstration recently. While the housing crisis in the UK is an abhorrent issue that has negatively impacted millions across the country, this issue has a direct pipeline of impact on children and young people.
Young people that are impacted by social inequality, like in this case houselessness, are found to be far more likely to be excluded from schools. This is an issue that works both ways, with the likelihood of those already at risk of exclusions being exacerbated by poor living conditions. The social impacts on school exclusions are a revelation of a wider failure of systems that should support people.
As you read through this edition try to think of other areas in a child’s life that could exacerbate the likelihood of them being excluded? What do you think you could do to make a positive impact on these social issues?
In solidarity,
No More Exclusions
Contents
This Month in NME
In the News
Language Education: A Radical Reclamation
NME Supports
Recommended Reading
Coming Up Next Month
This Month in NME
Thank you to everyone that came out for our March stall! Our monthly stalls are a great way for us to reach out, meet the community and spread the word that the abolition of school exclusions is a possible reality. The next stall will be on the 25th of April from 12pm to 2pm in Haringey outside Wood Green Library with Tottenham Anti-Raids. We would love to see you there!
We joined the National Housing Coalition’s Demonstration on the 18th of April to support the protest for Housing Rights. It was a great day and the turnout was fantastic!
On the 12th we joined the Reimagining Education and Community Spaces in Islington with Amu Gib for Liberation, Sisters Uncut, Holloway Women’s Centre Action Group and Tottenham Family Fightback. This was a space for conversation, community building and imagining tangible abolitionist alternatives for exclusions in Islington
NME Leeds released an updated version of the Parents and Carer’s guide in honour of NME member and ancestor, Gloria-Lyn Cruise Bahm.
We spoke at the Green Manifesto launch in Hackney and were credited for our influence on the manifesto! One of our members, Jay Yambuya, also spoke to The Canary about our mission against the school to prison pipeline.
In the News
The horrors of Mossbourne Academy’s shameful culture of harm continue: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz67pv0djezo
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Isolation for wearing a school branded jumper: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2r1zr4drno
Language Education: A Radical Reclamation
“In school, I hated history – I cannot describe how much. As an adult, I discovered that I did not hate history. The problem was what I was taught” – Rudy Loewe
“Emotions are what make education sustainable” - Jacob V Joyce.
These quotes resonate because they articulate and mirror the current state of education and how artivists, looking back at their education, refuse and reject the given, insisting on something beyond reform. These quotes name the inadequacy of half-measures, the violence of preservation dressed as progress. They do not ask for permission; they demand transformation.
In their practices, artists Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Lowe amplify histories of resistance, nourishing new queer, anti-colonial and neurodivergent narratives. This is not passive work. It requires intention, disruption and reclamation. We must do the same in the MFL classroom–dismantling what confines and making space for true liberation.
Hierarchies are systems where power pools at the top and empathy trickles down, usually in crumbs. It sorts people into levels of worth built on dominance, control and scarcity. MFL education in the UK is a colonial project. It does not exist outside of the empire. It prioritises a hierarchy of European languages, French, Spanish, German, while relegating the languages of the Global Majority to the margins. This is not about economic utility, nor is it about ‘global relevance’. It is about power. It is about shaping students into subjects fluent in the languages of capital while severing them from their own. The structure is intentional. It teaches Black and Brown students that their languages are relics of a past best forgotten.
We are told that European languages hold value and must be taught because they are practical and fluency opens doors. But whose value? Whose economy? If this were about relevance, the curriculum would reflect the languages spoken in London, Birmingham, and Manchester. Yoruba, Urdu, Mandarin. If this were about utility, students would be learning Swahili, Hindi, and Arabic. Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, yet it remains an afterthought. The logic does not hold.
Linguistic justice refuses erasure. It is not about the superficial inclusion of ‘diverse’ words. It is about dismantling the conditions determining which languages are centered and erased. It refuses to position European languages as the default. It refuses linguistic surveillance. It rejects the notion of ‘proper’ speech. It knows that an error is not a failure. That fluency was never the point that speaking itself is the site of possibility.
Linguistic justice is not a thought experiment. It is happening. It involves Yoruba, Urdu, and Wolof taught outside the state’s grasp in community spaces. It involves students writing in their home languages without translation. It involves texts beyond the Western canon. It consists of refusing shame. It does not ask for permission to exist.
Schools will host a ‘multicultural’ week while policing the languages spoken in the corridor. They will add Black authors to reading lists while upholding structures that center Whiteness. Representation does not disrupt power. Inclusion is not redistribution.
If we are not interested in reform, then what? The answer has always been here. It is in the refusal to speak a mother tongue, even when it is framed as a barrier. It is in children slipping between languages with ease, unburdened by correctness. It is in the poet’s writing in Creole, in Patois, in dialects the state refuses to recognise.
Language is never neutral, and we teach it as if it were a lie. Teaching ‘proper’ accents, enforcing rigid grammar, and grading students on their ability to conform is linguistic control. The imposition of French in West Africa was caused by colonial violence. The criminalisation of Indigenous languages was an act of erasure. To teach a language without teaching its history is to perpetuate this violence.
Teaching differently is not an abstraction. It means ending assessment models penalising accents, refusing to frame English as the ultimate linguistic achievement, and making space for multilingualism without coercion or hierarchy. Try healing in a system obsessed with performance metrics.
We are done asking how to diversify colonial frameworks. We are done seeking permission to exist within them.
Language learning must be a radical reclamation. A refusal to be silenced. It must be a site of disorder, disruption, and remembering. Knowledge cannot be contained by the structures that seek to control it.
The classroom must be a site of refusal, a space where every voice unsettles the empire’s grasp.
Thus, what is inherently rooted in colonisation cannot be decolonised; it must be dismantled entirely, undone at its foundations. Decolonisation is not the softening of colonial violence, nor is it the rebranding of oppressive systems to make them more palatable, acceptable or marketable (@myowasworld)
This system must be undone.
NME Supports
Please support and sign this petition to bring national attention to the disproportionate placement of Black British children in ESN (Educationally Sub-Normal) schools:
One of our young people, Josiah, will be taking part in a mini-marathon to raise money and awareness for our Fight For Education campaign on the 25th of April! To support please donate through our Just Giving link here.
Recommended Reading
References from our Long Article:
To Exist is to Resist: Black Feminism in Europe by Akwugo Emejulu, Francesca Sobande: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/To_Exist_is_to_Resist/vEVnEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom by bell hooks: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=hooks%2C+b.+%281994%29.+Teaching+to+transgress%3A+Education+as+the+practice+of+freedom.+Routledge&btnG=
A world without racism: Building antiracist futures by Joshua Virasami: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/A_World_Without_Racism/KD9nEQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
Coming up Next Month
Rich Mix will be launching their Harm to Healing Blueprint which outlines pathways for how communities can move from systems of racialised criminalisation toward systems rooted in care, repair, accountability and collective wellbeing on the 30th of April.
Metroland Cultures is launching their Justice and Change research programme on the 1st of May in collaboration with NME, Redthread and artists, researchers and community members to explore and respond to Brent’s history of community justice.
Our neighbours at Metroland, K2K Radio will be hosting a two day community event in the heart of Kilburn on the 1st and 2nd of May called Roots 2 Love. If you love Kilburn, we’d love to see you there!
