Lyttanya Shannon’s film is a devastating look at the kids unfairly deemed ‘educationally subnormal’ in the 60s and 70s – and their lasting trauma
Those who saw Small Axe, Steve McQueen’s masterful series of standalone dramas, will no doubt remember the powerful final episode. Education told the story of a 12-year-old boy, Kingsley, who has trouble reading and is sent to a “special school”. It wass part of an unofficial segregation policy in the 1960s, which saw hundreds of black children labelled “educationally subnormal” and moved out of mainstream schools by the state. Subnormal: A British Scandal (BBC One) is a crystal-clear documentary by Lyttanya Shannon (McQueen is executive producer), which shares the true story. Its subtitle is damning. It was indeed a scandal.
Early in the film, Shannon explains that getting people who were put into “ESN” schools to talk on camera is proving difficult, even now. She records one phone conversation (with consent), and plays it back, the voice distorted, in which an ex-pupil explains the lasting stigma of being labelled “slow” and “backwards”, and who says their family doesn’t even know they went to an ESN school. But she does find people who feel able to talk, and carefully draws out the many aspects of their stories.
