EDUCATION

★★★★

OUT NOW (BBC IPLAYER) / CERT N/A / 65 MINS

DIRECTOR Steve Mcqueen

CAST Kenyah Sandy, Sharlene Whyte, Daniel Francis

Set in ’70s London, the final part of Steve Mcqueen’s Small Axe anthology sees 12-year-old Kingsley (Kenyah Sandy, mesmerising) lit up by big dreams of being an astronaut. But his starry-eyed ambition must overcome claims that “you can’t have a Black man in space”, and difficulty in reading shunts him to an ‘educationally subnormal’ school — basically a dumping ground for Black kids with educational needs. Mcqueen’s own experience of being dyslexic yet gifted looms in this fictional story festering in home truths. Education schools us to where racism lies within the history of teaching and duly nods to Grenadian writer and politician Bernard Coard’s 1971 pamphlet enlightening Black parents on how schools were failing their kids.