The London Borough of Waltham Forest’s West Indian Supplementary Service was an intervention to support children from families of Caribbean origin in the borough’s primary and secondary schools. Bernard Coard’s critique “How the West Indian Child is made Educationally Sub-Normal in the British School System” (1971) made a significant contribution to debates around the apparent relative failure of black children to thrive in mainstream education. Though not simply a response to Coard’s publication, the Supplementary Service aimed to enable black children to negotiate the demands of the school curriculum more successfully — by explicitly encouraging an understanding of language variation (dialects in relation to ‘standard’ English) and by teaching about Caribbean culture and black history. Most supplementary teachers worked with very small groups of children withdrawn from mainstream classes for short periods each day. With older students, provision was more flexible and could become more innovative, especially when mainstream classes were reduced following exams.

The photographs here were selected from two series. Some were taken at Downsell Junior School through November 1974 – February 1975. The building, a Victorian elementary school, no longer exists. Others were taken at Leyton Senior High School for Boys, mostly in a ‘temporary’ classroom outside the school’s main building, and at the headquarters of the Supplementary Service when a small group worked on a black magazine — “Uptight” — in the Summer of 1975. The series runs from March to December.

Originally the Supplementary Service addressed the needs of children brought over from the Caribbean at school age but, by the mid 1970s, they were a tiny minority. With very few exceptions the children in these photographs were born in England.

Dedication: In memory of Joyce Little (1938–2018) who was the ‘teacher-in-charge’ of the West Indian Supplementary Service when these photographs were taken.

And thanks to Easton Martin for the letter and Wayne Skeete for the extract from “Uptight”. Thanks also to Winston James, my co-teacher at Leyton Senior High.