Deconstructing supplementary education: From the pedagogy of the supplement to the unsettling of the mainstream

Erica Burman and Susie MilesManchester Institute of Education

University of Manchester, UK

Corresponding author: Erica Burman – Erica.Burman@manchester.ac.ukAbstract

Globally, the purpose of education is becoming increasingly narrowly defined. In this context, this article proposes that supplementary schooling offers a resource for re-thinking the epistemologies and processes of schooling. Drawing on Derrida's notion of 'the supplement', the nature and status of this under-researched and marginal sector is interrogated from a historical perspective. Our primary focus is on educational settings established by adults from black and minority ethnic communities in urban environments in England, which are typically focused on (and societally marked by their attention to) ‘language’, ‘culture’, ‘heritage’, ‘identity’ and, sometimes, ‘extra tuition’. Drawing on exploratory meetings held with key players and conferences, as well as some informal observations in schools, alongside a review of international literature, we highlight the role of theory in posing ‘better’ questions about this disparate, yet vital, sector. Specifically, we discuss how the supplementary status of these schools is produced from the outset, rather than added later, such that the designation ‘supplementary’ fails to specify its precise relationship with formal, mainstream schooling. ‘Supplementary’ emerges as fundamentally ambiguous, and – within dominant discourse – as working to suppress sociocultural features of the ‘mainstream’, thereby highlighting the normative and exclusionary character of that mainstream. Two key issues emerge from this analysis: firstly, that the few commonalities across supplementary schooling provision may arise precisely because of its binary relationship with mainstream schooling; and, secondly, this analysis not only decentres the ‘settled’ status of mainstream schooling, but also opens up for inquiry the diverse forms and functions of the mainstream.

Keywords: schooling, Derrida, Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities, cultural heritage, racism, resistance

Erica Burman is Professor of Education, Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK

Susie Miles is Senior Lecturer at Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK

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Introduction Our thesis is that supplementary schools are as old as schooling. The subset on

which we focus in this paper include community-organised and culture-focused

forms of ‘out of hours’ educational provision, many of which - although informal in

origin - are now assuming various levels of formalisation. We are taking ‘culture’ here

in its broadest sense to include political as well as religious, linguistic and national

heritages. Sustaining this thesis involves both conceptual and historical inquiry, and

questioning the perceived and named (‘supplementary’ vs ‘mainstream’) relationship

between these two schooling sectors.

As an analytical framework, we draw on Derrida’s (1976) method of deconstruction,

specifically his notion of ‘the supplement’, to inform this analysis, and to critically

interrogate the language used to position the supplementary nature of these ‘other’

marginal educational spaces. We use this to consider their relationship with the

formal sector in a way that avoids homogenising them, and instead appreciates their

distinctive differences. This theory is used as a way to enrich and reconceptualise

definitions and understandings that come to inform debates on educational provision

and practice (taking education here as the broader project of enabling learning, and

schooling as one of various designated institutional arenas in which education of

children is supposed to take place). We propose that this conceptual intervention

may enable reconsideration, not only of the cultural-politics of mainstream schooling

(that is, the daytime schools in which children spend more than 15,000 hours, as

Rutter et al (1979) evocatively noted), but that this also ushers in exciting new

research agendas and possibilities for fruitful alliances and mutual learning between

these two sectors.

Taking the UK as our primary focus, this article aims to explore in what ways

supplementary schooling – i.e. volunteer-run, community-based schools -

supplement the mainstream. In answering this question, we interrogate the practice

of informal education, as offered to school-age children and young people by the

subset of supplementary schools defined above. We also examine its positioning in

relation to formal educational settings. Williams (1985) and Gerrard (2011; 2014)

have taken historical examples to explore the complexity and contested character of

the relationships between formal and informal, and non-formal and formal education.

Here, however, we draw on such analyses to argue that, to define the informal sector

solely in relation to the formal sector (i.e. as supplementary) is to miss some key

points. Our account moves between analytical exploration and connection with

available literature to indicate research applications. We also draw on perspectives

emerging from our own local engagements, as indicative of issues demanding

further investigation. From this philosophically-informed approach, we suggest that

this longstanding but marginalised set of educational practices and provisions can

teach us about the scope and limits of understandings of education and, in particular,

of ‘mainstream’ formal education.

In interrogating the complex (and often invisible) history, context, practice and status

of supplementary schools, alongside reviewing the literature, we draw upon our

experiences over the past four years of attending and organising meetings and

workshops with and for supplementary school teachers and their networks, both

locally and nationally, including observing and discussing lessons with staff. Our

involvement began with a direct request from a Black community leader for support

and expertise in training teachers, and for the promotion of recognition of this sector.

This has led to the introduction of supplementary education into the curriculum of

undergraduate and postgraduate courses at the university, and engagement with the

City Council over the dilemmas staff face in their quality assurance role of formally

registering and monitoring safeguarding processes in supplementary schools.

It should be noted that the National Resource Centre on Supplementary Education

(NRCSE), a small charitable organisation based in London, is the only organisation

which provides information, support and advice nationally and administers an award

system of bronze, silver and gold awards. Schools are encouraged to work towards

these awards in order to increase their credibility, raise standards of teaching and

learning, ensure the health and safety of the children, and to be able to raise funds.

Yet the cost of applying for these awards is considerable. Both the schools and Local

Authorities (LAs) are caught in a dilemma – increased pressure from central

government to improve safeguarding alongside heightened political surveillance,

both of council practice and of these ‘unregistered schools (DfE, 2016). This is on

top of pressures to manage in ‘borrowed spaces’ with minimal resources on a

voluntary basis. Furthermore, levels of support and monitoring provided by LAs

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should be noted as varying considerably around the country – a matter which is

under-researched in itself. Manchester seems to have more support than many

northern cities.

Contested histories of the relationships between, and positioning of, the formal

sector in relation to informal community-based supplementary schools and the

formal sector are discussed. To clarify, our interest here is not to evaluate specific

schools or forms of schooling, but to identify the multiple agendas and dynamics at

issue. With this increased analytical clarity, and our suggestions for a new research

agenda, these educational practices can be investigated outside the dominant frame

of pathologisation and regulation.

We argue that attending to supplementary educational provision promotes critical

reflection on implicit hidden norms inscribed within mainstream educational practices

that can destabilise the normalizing claims of formal education. It can also offer

resources to resist or undo the dynamic of homogenization that threatens to regulate

the diversity and vitality of this creative, community-organised and (sometimes)

entrepreneurial educational sector. It does this through the chain of deferral or

differance - Derrida’s term that puts into play, and so links, notions of socio-spatial

difference and temporal delay - indicated by supplementarity. As we will discuss,

terminology in this field is contested. We have chosen here to refer primarily to

‘supplementary’ schooling and education (taking schooling and education as related,

though not identical, projects).

The complexity of the supplementary education sectorSupplementary schooling can be seen as connecting three areas of locally relevant

and internationally significant research: out-of-hours learning (Dyson et al, 2011),

cultural affirmation (Andrews, 2014) and community capacity-building (Kerr & Dyson,

2017). Gordon (2005) defines supplementary educational provision ‘as the formal

and informal learning and developmental enrichment opportunities provided for

students outside of school and beyond the regular school day or year’ (p.329). In

international educational debates the field of supplementary education is generally

understood to be about ‘private tutoring’, or other forms of ‘out of hours’ learning

designed to support and promote children’s academic achievement, often purchased

by middle class or affluent parents. Yet, even within this restricted understanding,

important differences remain in both form (state, market or non-profit) and in

organizational logic according to whether they are seen as competing with,

supporting or transforming mainstream education (Aurini and Scott, 2013). In terms

of educational focus, they cover a range of explicit interventions, such as ‘academic

tutoring’, ‘study skills’ and ‘guidance services’, and implicitly promote ‘parental

modeling’ and ‘indigenous and hegemonic acculturalization’ (Bridglall, Green and

Meija, 2005:153).

Even within the subset of minority community-organised, informal educational

provision that forms our focus, ‘supplementary schooling’ encompasses a diverse

range of educational settings and approaches to learning and teaching, including

language, faith, culture, ‘self-esteem/resilience’ activities, core curriculum subjects,

and exam preparation. The language used to describe supplementary forms of

education is also diverse. Supplementary education has been said to include “…

Saturday schools, home schooling, extra tuition, homework clubs, breakfast clubs,

and other varieties of non-mainstream education” (Clennon, 2014, p.54). We also

include religious out of hours schooling, the most well known being Sunday schools

for Christians, Cheder for Jews, and Madrassas or Koranic schools for Muslims. The

literature contains descriptors such as, ‘alternative’, ‘additional’, ‘out of hours’, ‘part-

time’ and ‘extended’ – and more recently (within mainstream media and policy)

‘unregulated’ and ‘illegal’ to which we will return later. While various forms of

extended schooling emerged in the 2000s, in response to concerns to tackle poverty

and disadvantage (DfES, 2005; Dyson, 2011), in this article we focus on community,

rather than state-provided, out of hours schooling.

It is estimated that there are 3-5000 supplementary schools in England, and that up

to 18% of children and young people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME)

backgrounds attend supplementary schools (Evans and Gillan-Thomas, 2015).

Research evidence is, however, sparse. Strand (2007) asserts that this little

understood and undervalued sector has been neglected by researchers and

overlooked by policy makers, and that ‘no large-scale quantitative studies and no

previous research’ (1) had been conducted at national level. His own study, the first

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of its kind, involved 772 pupils attending 63 supplementary schools in Birmingham,

Bristol, London and Manchester. Key issues identified were that the levels of

educational disadvantage experienced by supplementary school learners were well

above the national average; 84% received help with their mainstream school work;

and that they had more positive attitudes towards their supplementary schools than

to the mainstream schools they attended (Strand, 2007).

Francis et al. (2009) use the term ‘complementary education’ to refer specifically to

schools where language teaching is the primary purpose. In this sense, language

teaching is conceptualised as ‘complementary’ to the mainstream curriculum. Issa

and Williams (2009,14) argue that, “Government support for complementary schools

started in the 1970s following an EEC declaration supporting the maintenance of

mother tongue languages of migrant children [and was considered necessary] for the

case of eventual return to the country of origin”.

By contrast, the curriculum in Black supplementary schools tends to be seen as

being ‘more directly supplementary to mainstream schooling’ (Francis et al, 2009,

536). The John Lyons Charity (2012) asserted, for example, that supplementary

schools provide: “targeted educational support from a shared cultural and/or

linguistic perspective” [and] “dedicated and hard-working role models from their own

cultural backgrounds” (3), and that they focus on cultural engagement; engaging

parents; core-curriculum teaching; peer support; partnership with mainstream;

raising aspirations; learning mother tongue; and culture of achievement. Teachers

frequently complain (as we have heard often at supplementary school networking

meetings) that their contribution to children’s achievement in the state sector is

overlooked and unappreciated.

Commenting on the various terminologies, Newman-Turner argues that the term

complementary implies a relationship to mainstream schools, whereas the term

supplementary implies “…less suggestion of compatibility with mainstream

schooling” (2015, 210). Our concern in this article is to better understand how and

why community-based organisations are formulated as either complementing or

supplementing the mainstream, a concern that takes us to enquire into the

supplement.

Supplementary schools vary considerably in size, status and resources. Kenner and

Ruby (2012, 520) argue that they are “subject to a dual discrimination, since they

teach undervalued languages in undervalued educational settings”, and the

teachers, who are mostly volunteers, “tend to work in ‘borrowed’ spaces that belong

to or are used by others, ranging from rooms in church halls or community centres to

mainstream classrooms” (ibid, 520). Both informal and formal surveys of provision

highlight how some schools pay exorbitant fees to use the buildings just on

Saturdays, while others have developed more mutually respectful relationships and

rent-free arrangements with sympathetic religious and educational institutions. In our

own experience we are aware of generous arrangements being made between

mainstream and supplementary schools which limit (or dispense with) fees to

parents for attendance. Some higher education institutions waive or reduce fees for

the hire of their buildings, but we still know of supplementary schools paying

exorbitant fees in our locality. Whatever the arrangement, most supplementary

schools occupy transient, temporary spaces (sometimes originating in people’s

homes, around kitchen tables, or with piecemeal funding for use of youth or

community spaces) with inadequate storage facilities.i

Beyond the logistical arrangements for the hire of buildings, there are some

encouraging examples of mutually beneficial partnerships existing between

supplementary and mainstream schools. For example, a network of six geographical

‘hubs’ was formed in Leicester in 2012, led by head teachers of mainstream schools,

with each hub typically meeting once per term. Each mainstream school provides

training and support for five to six complementary schools, as well as mentoring for

the managers or principals of these schools (Newman-Turner, 2015). However, the

academisation of the education system, the Prevent agenda and austerity (which we

prefer to conceptualise as poverty arising from welfare cuts) have been identified as

threats to the effectiveness and survival of supplementary schools (Tolley, 2015).

The diminished role and resources of LAs to support schools to sustain working

relationships with the ‘mainstream’ while continually improving safeguarding

processes and teacher quality, constitutes a further threat. Indeed, less than 1% of

the 200 supplementary schools in the London borough of Brent have achieved a

quality award from the National Resource Centre for Supplementary Education

(NRCSE), which oversees the award process which involves training supplementary

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school staff, safeguarding and ongoing development (Tolley, 2015). This warning

from a senior educational leader, who has supported and promoted supplementary

education over many years, highlights prevailing pressures towards academic

achievement that privilege curricular subjects over sociocultural and political

education, and which militate against the dynamic impact and influence of

supplementary schools in the least privileged urban communities. Indeed one of the

main challenges identified by supplementary school teachers is the difficulty in

collaborating with mainstream teachers on issues such as examinations, curriculum

demands, and approaches to children identified as having Special Educational

Needs (SEN) (Co-author and ANO, 2014). Meaningful partnerships and relationships

between mainstream and supplementary schools have been described by Nwulu

(2015) as “unproductive and fragile” (37) and “sporadic and difficult” (45). There is

also a danger of supplementary school teachers being seen as ‘lacking expertise

and qualifications’, and so some partnerships are more likely to be directed by the

mainstream head teachers and teachers.

Tracing the history of the supplementary education ‘sector’Supplementary education has a long and rich history in England, as internationally,

but has received scant attention from educational researchers (Strand, 2007; Francis

et al., 2009). Variously described in the literature as ‘supplementary’,

‘complementary’, and even ‘alternative’ and informal, provision tends to be focused

on particular national and religious identities (e.g. Polish school, Hebrew classes,

Madrassas), and varies enormously in scale and duration from a couple of hours a

week for a language class, to activities and lessons taking place at the weekends.

Although diverse and inconsistent accounts of the history of supplementary schools

in the UK can be found (Simon, 2013; Issa and Williams, 2009), it is generally

agreed that these informal schools largely have their origins in communities

migrating to the UK, and have been established to ensure ‘community maintenance’,

as well as sustaining ties to countries and cultures of origin. In recent years

supplementary schools have become actively involved in the building of settled,

hybrid communities, while also embracing ‘new arrivals’ from Syria and other

countries caught up in conflict. Similar forms of schooling have been established by

migrant communities in other western nations (Hall et al, 2002), but here we focus on

the UK context.

The origins of supplementary schools in the UK can be traced back to the early

1800s, when schools were established by Russian, Irish and Italian migrants. By the

late 1800s a supplementary school for children of Chinese Dockers had been

established. The chief focus of these supplementary schools has been said to be

maintenance of language and cultural values. However following the Second World

War, many more supplementary schools were formed by communities from

Commonwealth countries (especially India and the West Indies), and some

commentators identify the supplementary school movement from this time (Issa and

Williams, 2009; Maylor et al., 2010).

Some schools receive funding from non-UK governments who promote

diasporic/migrant populations to take national exams and maintain competence in

their home language and, in some cases, home exams e.g. Saudi Arabian, Arabic

and Latvian schools. Indeed, anecdotal evidence indicates that some children

struggle to cope with taking exams in a range of subjects set in their home country,

in addition to their mainstream school exams (Jan Bradburn, personal

communication, 9 December 2017).

Yet there are other cultural-political forms. While some retain official links with

countries of origin, for others this makes no sense. The very designation of Black

supplementary education highlights the emergence of hybrid identities (of Black

British, for example) (Chevannes and Reeves, 1987). Moreover it should be noted

that some of the BAME supplementary schools with which we have developed links

through university-based academic relationships and the City Council have adopted

an inclusive, community-based response to those children disadvantaged by the

school system, and whose (largely working class) parents have limited knowledge of

the fast-changing school curriculum (Clennon, 2014). One of these schools in

particular is not exclusionary in its intake, but rather provides educational and other

resources for the immediate community.

In interpreting the project and function of supplementary schooling, it is important to

attend to the diverse forms of cultural identifications at play. Gerrard’s (2011)

historical study of early twentieth century British socialist Sunday schools, catering

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for working class children, highlights other ‘minority’ forms organised around political,

rather than cultural-religious, forms of belonging. Gerrard discusses how such

examples not only extend the understanding of 'cultural' identifications to include

political orientations and movements, but also attest to community mobilisations that

connect with current forms of youth work and provision, such as the Woodcraft Folk

(Cooperative News, 2017).

Although religion, language, culture and identity are intertwined, they are not of

course equivalent, nor should they be essentialised - that is, treated as fixed and

abstracted from cultural-political contexts of practice. It is also important to recognise

that minority ethnic communities’ desire to maintain their own cultural, religious and

linguistic traditions through supplementary schooling does not mean that they do not

recognise or value the value of mainstream (secular) education.

As an early example, the local history of Jewish community mobilisation in our city,

Manchester, suggests that such provision was formulated in relation to and

alongside mainstream education (Williams, 1985), and seems likely to have

preceded the establishment of formal education for all children in the UK, in 1871. In

this sense, the provision of education by the Jewish community was not temporally

formulated as a supplement to the introduction of mainstream education. In fact,

there is evidence that pressure from local cultural-religious communities played a

part in agitating for the introduction of precisely the formal mainstream education

alongside which the Jewish schools came to coexist (Williams, 1985). Such

examples highlight how as early, as the mid-nineteenth century, minority ethnic

communities were both invested in the project of state-provided education and in

elaborating their own additional specialist provision.

The conditions giving rise to early forms of minority community-initiated education in

the UK mark them out as different from later forms - that arose precisely to combat a

sense of lack or insufficiency of provision or engagement for children from particular

backgrounds within mainstream schooling. However, what this historical attention

offers is not only a matter of comparison across different times, but also (alongside

Derridean deconstruction) a way into re-thinking the conceptualisation of the

dynamic of supplementation. In particular, far from being spatially or temporally left

out, or left over, the earliest community-organised schools had their origins in

educational initiatives that preceded the introduction of compulsory, mainstream

education. In such respects they were anterior to, and also thereby active agents in

the formation of, formal education albeit subsequently being constituted by that

relationships with formal educational provision.

These different historical moments of origination may help explicate the complexity

of tasks and functions fulfilled by supplementary schools. Their role has not only

been focused on cultural, linguistic or religious maintenance, but also concerned with

reducing alienation from education. This is especially true of Black supplementary

school movements. Indeed, their efforts to promote educational engagement have

often focused on the promotion of wellbeing and positive cultural belonging. This is

also, significantly, tied to explicit agendas of community advancement and social

empowerment, rather than segregation (Chevannes and Reeves, 1987).

Black supplementary schoolsAmid the many forms of provision comprising the supplementary sector, Black

supplementary schools stand out as having a distinct, though not uniform, identity.

Dating back to the 1950s, their focus is primarily on promoting educational

engagement and attainment within mainstream education through the provision of

additional educational and social support to resist and counteract racism (Mirza and

Reay, 2000). As early as the 1970s, analyses emerged of the ways the British school

system was failing young black pupils, especially boys (Coard, 1971; Troyna and

Carrington, 2011; Wright, 2013). Chevannes and Reeves (1987) stress the

“importance of asserting black people’s control over black children’s education”, of

“self-help”, “cultural assertiveness”, “black visibility” and “community intuitivism”,

asserting that the black community knows best, while condemning the materialism of

white society, and arguing for Black studies, anti-colonialism and African liberation.

The British rapper, Akala (2015)ii, speaks from direct experience of growing up in

London in an era when supplementary schools prioritised resisting incorporation and

appropriation (Mirza and Reay, 2000), and taught the history, politics and economics

of the British Empire:

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My passion for learning world history came from Pan-African Saturday School

… I was a lucky recipient of some of that knowledge. And it meant that I didn’t

feel inferior to what I was being taught [in mainstream school]. (Akala, 2015).

Parents and community activists typically continue to provide additional ‘voluntary’

(Chevannes & Reeves, 1987) educational support, ranging from extra tuition on

subjects such as mathematics and science, to a focus on social and emotional

issues by building confidence and relationships in the context of a black-led,

affirmative environment. Black supplementary schools are mostly “self-funding,

organic grassroots organisations [which provide] a space for historically racialised

silenced peoples to construct knowledge” (Mirza and Reay, 2000, 5). We share the

view that, in collaboration with other agencies, supplementary schools “are well

placed to play a pivotal role in supporting BME youth from low income backgrounds

as well as youth who are new to the country” (Nwulu, 2015, 45).

More recently, Andrews (2014, 57-58) has identified contrasting ideologies at play,

between those supplementary school leaders who ‘seek accommodation’ within the

education system and those who adopt a more critical stance and question the

validity of mainstream schooling. He also warns that many supplementary schools

tend to focus on fixing perceived deficits in communities and families, and in

individual Black children - rather than addressing racism in schools and celebrating

the cultural diversity of Black people in the UK.

Supplementary or central? As we have outlined, one key limitation of the supplementary designation is the

suppression of diversity that can arise through positioning this supplementary status

as if it was unitary across these different ‘supplementary’ contexts. Indeed (as with

other specialist forms of schooling, as Thomas and Loxley, 2007, highlight in relation

to special education) the ‘supplementary’ character of supplementary education is

produced through being defined in relation to the mainstream.

In a reconfigured English educational system, we argue that supplementary

education lies at the interface of several competing and contested debates around

privatisation, volunteering, social entrepreneurship and community responsibility,

alongside securitisation anxieties (connecting child protection and counterterrorism)

with the new discourse of concern over the “unregulated” and “unregistered” status

of certain types of community-led initiatives (DfE, 2016). Rather than being on the

margins, supplementary schools are, arguably, at the heart of a number of key

political debates related to citizenship, “Fundamental British Values”, cultural,

intercultural and transnational identities and belonging; urban diversity, language and

migration, voluntarism, and faith-based education. Just as Dixon-Romàn (2010),

identifies the democratic potential of supplementary education in contemporary USA,

Mirza and Reay (2000, 538) recognised their potential contribution to challenge

educational inequalities and marketization, as well as control of the curriculum:

“Embedded in the extremely complex and contradictory culture and social positioning

of Black supplementary schools lies paradoxically one of the few challenges to

individualism and free markets within the field of education.”

Ironically, the increasing fragmentation (and deregulation) of the education system

through academisation (including the proliferation of new sub-types of academy),

privatisation and the dismantling of local authorities’ structural capacity and

discursive legitimacy to support schools (Courtney, 2015), have enabled some

supplementary school leaders to take advantage of government funding by

becoming providers of full-time, “mainstream” free schools. At the same time,

Government concerns about “unregulated schools” have led to increased regulation

(DfE, 2016). Meanwhile escalating concerns about child protection/safeguarding,

discoursed through the trope of ‘grooming’, now extend beyond sexual exploitation to

new securitisation and surveillance agendas. Concerns about ‘radicalisation’ and the

Prevent agenda (Coppock and McGovern, 2014; O’Donnell, 2016) bring

disproportionate critical media and political gaze upon minoritised and black

supplementary educational provision.

In adopting a deconstructionist approach to understanding the nature of the

supplement and supplementary schools, we aim to decentre or destabilise the binary

and associated primacy implied by the terminology of ‘supplementary’ vs.

‘mainstream’. As Gordon et al. (2005) have noted in relation to the US context,

supplementary schools face certain structural and organisational dilemmas in

defining their task as well as orientation: if they supplant (or replace) features of

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mainstream schooling this could reduce the demand for public education to make

this provision, while the move towards private provision threatens to deepen the

educational inequalities many schools were set up to counter. Indeed the paradoxes

between individualism and the free market are not just unresolved, but scarcely even

addressed in the current context, as Aurini and Scott (2012) have empirically

documented. Later, we discuss the way certain forms of private, self-organised, even

“free” educational initiatives are only considered appropriate for particular (white,

middle class) groups.

Supplementary schools are outside of, and yet parallel to, the mainstream, and until

the relatively recent concern with children being perceived to be at risk from

extremist ideologies of various kinds, largely ignored (but see Marsh, 2018). The

exemplary contribution of socially responsible, community-based volunteers,

dedicated to reducing marginalisation and disaffection by supplementing their

children’s education through extra-curricular activities, is rarely recognised. Moreover

in some cases, this is seen as an undesirable form of active citizenship and

entrepreneurship.

The supplement in DerridaWhile there is a considerable literature applying Derrida's philosophical methods and

arguments of deconstruction to educational theory (e.g. Biesta, 2009; Trifonas,

2000), there is very little that connects this directly either to the conceptualisation or

the practical delivery of supplementary education. In this section we outline Derrida's

account of 'the supplement', which is central to his arguments in Of Grammatology

(Derrida, 1976), (hereafter referred to as OG), while bearing in mind the incongruities

outlined above in relation to the supplementing of mainstream education. As Spivak

(1976) explains in her Translator's Preface, a “brief description of deconstructive

procedure is to spot the point where a text covers up its grammatological structure”

(p.lxxiii). (It is therefore “[a] reading that produces rather than protects” (Spivak,

p.lxxv), disclosing otherwise hidden assumptions structured into sets of oppositions

that are “…set in a violent hierarchy... To deconstruct the opposition is first... to

overthrow [renverser] the hierarchy” (ibid., p.lxxvi-vii). As various educational

theorists have noted, ethical-political imperatives follow from deconstruction, which

we will later consider in relation to supplementary education.

In Derrida's celebrated account, the cultural privileging of speech over writing

(exemplified by Rousseau, in this instance) sets up a metaphysics of presence that

is central to modern models of natural childhood that have structured education

(Taylor, 2013). Or, as Derrida (1976) puts it: “Without childhood, no supplement

would ever appear in Nature. The supplement is here both humanity's good fortune

and the origin of its perversion” (147). Just as writing is, then, positioned as

supplementary to speech - the latter seen as the prototype or ideal of relationship -

so also are some forms of education rendered more central, and others secondary or

peripheral. That which has been rendered supplementary is thereby ambiguously

related to what it supplements. Echoing the supplementary education theorists’

efforts to classify and evaluate the role of such interventions (c.f. Gordon et al.,

2005), this analysis goes beyond questions, such as whether this provision adds to,

aims to substitute for, or sits alongside and so enables completion of, the implicit

norm - or presence - after which it is positioned.

Deconstructing the name of the supplementJust as Derrida commented on the ambiguity of the position of the supplement, as

already indicated, the language used to describe supplementary forms of education

is diverse. Indeed, the precise nature of the perceived deficits in so-called

‘mainstream’ education remain unspecified, and crucially ambiguous. For example,

what do supplementary schools aim to make up for, and what do they feel the need

to re-teach, or interpret newly? The answers to such questions carry significant

ethical-political consequences with which educational researchers have engaged

(Simon, 2013; Andrews, 2013; Clennon, 2014). These include questions of access,

and audience, community involvement and accountability, all of which carry some

tensions within the current landscape of extended education.

The temporal and logical character of this privileging of mainstream over supplement

invites critique. Firstly, its non-normalized positioning threatens to render the

supplementary contribution and content deviant (or, as in Derrida’s designation,

“subaltern”), as well as less important. Moreover, secondly, Derrida illustrates both

the elusive and violent forces at play that militate against supplementary substitution

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instituting substantive change, or enabling completion, since it has already been

designated as intrinsically lacking:

But the supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates

itself in-the-place-of, if it fills, it is as if one fills a void; If it represents and makes an

image, it is by the anterior default of a presence. Compensatory [suppléant] and

vicarious, the supplement is an adjunct, a subaltern instance which takes-(the)-

place [tient-lieu]. As substitute, it is not simply added to the positivity of a presence,

it produces no relief, its place is assigned in the structure by the mark of an

emptiness (Derrida, 1976, 145).

Applied to supplementary schools, this suggests that their marginal status prevents

transfer of methods and agendas to the mainstream. Hence the designation of

“supplementary” works precisely to confirm the normalized status of that which it is

positioned to supplement (as discretionary, additional, or perhaps compensatory).

... whether it adds or substitutes itself, the supplement is exterior, outside of the

positivity to which is it super-added, alien to that which, in order to replace it, must

be other than it. (ibid, 145).

Yet what Derrida goes on to show is how this exteriority has in fact been produced

by virtue of suppressing acknowledgement of the impossibility of the very fullness of

meaning (or what he calls ‘presence’) that the supplement then retroactively

guarantees. This analysis of how lack, or constitutive absence, in fact inhabits

presence deconstructs the supplementary in and of education.

The challenges and alternatives posed by supplementary schools have of course

long been recognised. As Mirza and Reay (2000, 5) highlighted: “black

supplementary schools are similarly grounded in definitions of difference that attempt

to resist incorporation and appropriation by providing a space for historically

racialised silenced peoples to construct knowledge”. But they also acknowledge their

necessarily marginal position - as sites of refusal and dissidence:

Thus it can be argued, in opposition to those who suggest Black struggles for

educational opportunities are too fragile, defensive, and powerless to constitute

stable forms of political action (Gilroy 1987, p.230), that Black supplementary

schools as political, social and symbolic sites of refusal and transformation of

meaning form the genesis of a new social movement. (Mirza and Reay, 2000,

538).

Deconstructing the supplement in educationDerrida's discussion of the logic of the supplement was explicitly formulated as a

critique of Western education, generated from his close analysis of the

autobiographical account, as well as philosophical claims, elaborated by Jean-

Jacques Rousseau, the originator of modern western educational philosophy

including child-centred educational approaches. As Trifonas (2000) points out,

however, this approach also instituted two other key features that are especially

relevant to the rationale for supplementary education: first, it installed a model of

universal human development that presumed both teleology and progress, at the

expense of attending to, and equally valuing, difference and diversity. Secondly, this

harked back to an earlier mythic time of social harmony and uniformity:

That is, the mythical epoch of a democratic community before originary

difference and the alterity of the supplement. The vision is truly romantic and

utopian. It details the beginnings of an archaeology of teaching and learning

that must always be looking backwards as it looks forward to (re)construct the

conditions for achieving a sentimental education, a pedagogy before

supplementarity or the fall of human beings from a state of perfectability within

nature. (Trifonas, 2000, 251)

Crucially, this process also installs a logic of (self) identity and progress. This not

only normalizes development, privileging some trajectories over others (Author,

2017), it also – crucially - elaborates a notion of community without difference.

Hence alterity, otherness and difference are excluded, in this sense rendered

supplementary, and by virtue of this only a homogeneous community is portrayed as

able to function as a guarantor of democracy. Trifonas clarifies the links with

universal educational provision and practices: “...the logic of the supplement is

without doubt the primary theme of all education and grounds the rationale of the

formal structure of pedagogical institutions and the institution of pedagogy” (Trifonas,

2000, 248). Hence what Trifonas calls “the pedagogy of the supplement” is western

education as we know it. Unknowingly premised on a repudiation of an originary and

irreconcilable difference, it wilfully overlooks or at best acknowledges by designating

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difference or otherness in a repudiated or stigmatised form, that “entrenches a

pedagogy bent on mobilizing a vision of the natural progression of human beings

along a history of the West” (Trifonas, 2000, 249). Since the logic of the supplement

is what secures the dominant educational order, with its corresponding meaning

systems, this exemplifies the need for deconstruction:

Deconstruction can help us to understand how a pedagogy of the supplement

produces through itself the (de)limitations of its own excesses that permeate

the scene of teaching and exposes the curious folly of its obsessions and

contradictions. Rousseau was blind to this fact: we must not be (Trifonas,

2000, 261).

Not only does deconstruction return ethics to the forefront of educational debate, but

this ethical dimension is intrinsically allied to questions of social justice and diversity,

to “… a vision of pedagogy that is inclusive because it has no definitive limits and is

open to the Other through a self-questioning of the ground of its knowledge, the

foundation of its authority, and the conditions of its possibility and impossibility to be

just” (Trifonas, 2000, 263). Once again, such possibilities have been identified in the

research literature: “Black supplementary schools propose new ‘cosmologies’ or

‘values’ which enter into the ethical identities of others through the women’s

reworking of the notion of community” (Mirza and Reay, 2000, 538).

Derrida and supplementary schoolingAttending to the logic of the supplement, therefore, prompts interrogation of the

conceptual underpinnings of the role and regime of schooling within modern state

apparatuses. Deconstructing this logic offers vital interpretative resources for

destabilizing the truth claims and certainties structuring dominant educational

discourse. Given both the resonance of terms, and consonance of topics, it is

perhaps surprising that Derridean discussions of the dynamics of supplementarity

have not figured explicitly within supplementary education debates. In part this may

be because of subdisciplinary divisions (between philosophy or sociology, and policy

or curricular studies, for example), or due to different methodological paradigms and

priorities of activist, social justice-informed research engagements in this area.

Certainly it is noteworthy that most literature on supplementary schools is practice-

oriented, rather than theoretically focused. Nevertheless, Trifonas' (2000) claims of

deconstruction’s potential to undo, or reveal, the marking of culture as (only?)

attached to the supplement, highlights the culturally arbitrary, but also located,

character of naturalised norms. In this way, it comes close to arguments about the

marking and unmarking of cultural differences as they are structured into the debates

about what makes this form of education supplementary.

The only paper that we could find which also connects the two domains is Dixon-

Romàn (2010), who draws on Derrida, but also on Bourdieu, Foucault and the

discourse theory of Laclau, to address the problematic nature of supplementary

education. He mobilises these frameworks to address what he calls the 'economy of

difference' or the (re)production of power and privilege. Dixon-Romàn (2010) does

not, however, address the logic of the supplement to consider the case of

supplementary education, but rather focuses on one of the analytical tropes on which

Derrida’s analysis of the supplement also relies: the play and interplay between

notions of difference and differance. Deriving from the verb to differentiate, these

terms import temporal-spatial considerations: what is deferred (positioned as later) is

rendered different, and eventually deviant. In Badiou’s (2009, 137) account

“difference ... a single term that can activate the being/existent distinction in its

vanishing point…. Derrida puts to flight what remains of a metaphysical opposition in

the being/existent difference in such a way that we grasp difference, as such, in its

act. And difference in action is obviously that which stands at the vanishing point of

any opposition between being and existent, that which cannot in in any sense be

reducted to the figure of that opposition.” Applied to the educational arena: “This

temporal differential, in part produces difference and disguises through repetition that

which is deferred. Those forces which produced difference defer total or complete

presence of or reference to the economy of difference in educational difference.

Thus the deferred presence of the economy of difference enables differences in

education to become taken for granted, legitimated traces of the symbolic structure

of power.” (Dixon-Romàn 2010, 99)

The production of educational differenceWhat underlies this process is a cultural logic that hierarchizes bodies based

on constructed difference through processes of socially constructed

categories, stigmatization, xenophobia, exclusion and marginalization. This

economy of difference is that point of convergence (différence) that produces

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other forms of difference, particularly educational difference. (Dixon-Romàn,

2010, 96)

It is worth recalling that a felt sense of differential attainment between majority and

minority schoolchildren is a key motivator for setting up supplementary schools

(Evans and Gillan-Thomas, 2015). Indeed, the global intensification of

supplementary education (Aurini, 2013), in its wider sense of private tuition after

school, stands in stark contrast to the marginal (independent, voluntary) status of

most supplementary schools in England. Clearly here the supplementary status is

one that is deemed to add to mainstream achievement rather than offer a different

educational project. “Shadow education”, the term used to describe the burgeoning

supplementary education market in east Asia, (Bray and Lykins, 2012) constitutes a

lucrative business which contributes to the project of mainstream school

achievement, while exploiting parent insecurity. It is for this reason that Gordon,

Bridglall and Meroe (2005) claim that ‘privatisation is not the answer’ to the challenge

of resourcing supplementary schools (83).

Indeed, the rapid growth of private tutoring in the UK context is indicative of this

global trend, and many well established supplementary schools are increasingly

responding to parental pressures and demands for exam-oriented education, such

as tutoring for the 11-plus exam. This stands in contrast to the original purpose of

supplementary schools which was to promote cultural affirmation and resist racism,

and is indicative of an intensely competitive context, in which some parents choose

to purchase a range of extra-curricular activities to advantage their children

(Southgate, 2013). Aurini (2013, xxi) goes so far as to describe this as an

educational “arms’ race” which “can equalise educational opportunity by providing

extra support to disadvantaged children or it can deepen educational inequality by

providing a market-based resource for advantaged children”.

Beyond the attainment gapClearly practices of cultural maintenance or support do not have a zero-sum relation

with greater “success” in mainstream school. Drawing on Laclau, Dixon-Romàn's

(2010) particular focus is what he calls the “empty signifier of the ‘achievement gap’

… [which] suppresses difference even as it reproduces it” (p.100). While Dixon-

Romàn portrays Bourdieu as too determinist in his analyses of habitus and cultural

reproduction, he is nevertheless concerned with the role of education in reproducing

inequality, in particular focusing on how “heritage” or minoritised cultural differences

are represented. He suggests that the “achievement gap” discourse works to

suppress the underlying social antagonisms at play, such that it also “symbolically

legitimates the hierarchical structure of education and system of meritocracy as well

as cloaks the produced culture of poverty and the rhetoric of social pathology”

(Dixon-Romàn, 2010, 98). He applies Derrida's notion of ‘the gift’ to offer a reading of

the way notions of heritage function in relation to supplementary education.

Reviewing how Derrida highlights the double injunction of choice, such that it is not

really a choice, he highlights how inheritance can never be fully or completely

assumed, rather it can only be imperfectly (“unfaithfully”) appropriated as “a trace of

heritage and the symbolic structure of difference”. Inheritance, then, becomes “a

marker of the deferred presence of what was, as well as deferring the presence of

what is to come” (Dixon-Romàn, 2010,105).

We find these comments useful to interpret the current role and status of

supplementary schooling. We would also claim the need for an intersectional

approach (Hill Collins, 1998; Cho et al., 2013) that attends to the complex

interweavings of racialised and gendered positionings with class, which of course

also coincide with generational histories of migration.

To summarise our argument so far, what such philosophical accounts offer are, first,

a critique of the reproduction of normalization and the hierarchization of difference

via the deconstruction of what is left over, or rendered supplementary to mainstream

education. Secondly, ‘supplementary education’? Is positioned as other, or different

from education, through imperfect notions of (cultural, linguistic) heritage - with the

populations so qualified also typically institutionalised as lacking through such

descriptions as “the attainment gap”. Dixon-Romàn’s analysis also highlights the

need to keep open the instability of notions of heritage as a strategy to resist other

incipient normalizations, and as a key challenge for “democratic community-

embedded supplementary education” (2010, 109). Such arguments are useful to

support analyses and research questions that avoid both reifying and essentializing

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cultural practices and also homogenizing the diverse forms of supplementary

schooling.

Research possibilitiesOur narrative has alternated between our conceptual analysis of the dynamics of

supplementarity and a review of current understandings of the role and diverse forms

of supplementary education. It has focused on definitions - including cultural-

linguistic and policy-related values - explicit or implicit, present or constituted – that,

in Derridean terms, indicate an as yet unspecified absence that the supplementary

status signifies. This Derridean analysis has been elaborated to help explain various

significant analytical occlusions, or areas and topics that have been overlooked by

virtue of the dominant conceptual framing. Provision and practice consequences

arising from such occlusions can now be analysed and redressed. From this, and

informed also by our current and ongoing research and practice partnerships with

supplementary school providers, in the rest of this article we identify some empirical

research agendas for, and with, supplementary schools. Our aim is to better

recognise their pedagogical and educational potential, alongside the new and

overlooked perspectives they bring to the field of schooling, and education in

general.

Learner experience

Applied practically, children and young people from minority ethnic communities

move, between their mainstream and supplementary schools, sometimes on a daily

basis, yet little is known about their experience. The women in Mirza and Reay’s

(2000) study reported being motivated by their own experience as children, and the

desire to challenge the Government’s view of their community, but they do not

comment on the experience of attending both types of schools. There is some

literature that examines children’s experiences of supplementary schools, but little

has been done to make sense of the combined experience of both formal and

informal education – from both adults’ and children’s perspectives.

Learner and teacher effects

Several studies have indicated improved self-esteem and academic achievement as

a result of attending supplementary schools, yet there have been few in-depth case

studies conducted to explore the experiences of the many stakeholders involved in

such community-based provision. The time seems right for a research agenda that

enables a greater recognition and more equal exchange between mainstream and

supplementary schools.

The diminishing role of local authorities

In current economic conditions, it seems unlikely that local authorities will prioritise

resources to build relationships with, or promote recognition between mainstream

and supplementary schools, still less likely to set up hubs, as happened in Leicester

(Newman-Turner, 2015). Yet as Newman-Turner (2015, 26) puts it: “Successive

funding cuts and the introduction of free schools and academies have reduced the

ability of local authorities to offer support services to schools. Whilst these services

are undergoing significant restructuring to operate more strategically and provide

less direct support, the local authorities remain the only bodies with overall

responsibility for the well-being of children in their area”.

Notwithstanding the de-regulation of mainstream schooling, we consider that local

authorities can and should retain a coordinating and communication role both

between mainstream and supplementary provision, and between the various

supplementary schools (beyond merely ensuring and ratifying safeguarding

documentation). The different practices adopted across LAs could form an important

research focus.

Gender

It is estimated that 40% of supplementary schools are entirely dependent upon

volunteers (John Lyons Charity, 2012), and it is evident that women play a

particularly vital role. Although the literature does not have a strong focus on gender

politics in supplementary schools, Mirza and Reay (2000, 537-8) have provided a

rich narrative of the particular role of Black women in four Saturday schools: “These

Black supplementary schools are sites of female collective action, engaged in covert

yet radical acts of social transformation which challenge the dominant codes and

expectations that hegemonic white-dominated societies have of Black people”. Yet in

our experience, the explicit involvement of Black men as positive role models within

Saturday schools is also worthy of attention

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Class

While much current supplementary provision has arisen out of a sense of critique,

contestation or insufficiency of the mainstream (in particular the Black supplementary

schools), there remains a strong commitment to educational access and success.

Historically, a strong class-consciousness, as well as community orientation

informed the supplementary schooling sector, yet with recent patterns of migration

changing the class composition of minority communities this picture is changing and

is worthy of study.

Prevent and the British Values agenda

Supplementary schools have only recently been acknowledged in the media

primarily in relation to the UK’s Prevent (counter-terrorism) agenda, as discussed.

Madrassas have received explicit government criticism and have been described as

“unregulated” in a speech by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron (Sellgren,

2015). The term “unregistered” has also now entered the government’s lexicon, with

concern being expressed by the Department for Education (DfE) (2016, p.2) about

potentially “independent” schools “operating unlawfully”. In this recent policy

statement, “an independent school” is defined as providing “full-time education for

five or more pupils of compulsory school age, or one or more pupils who are looked

after, or have a statement of SEN” (DfE, 2016, p.1). Although this policy does not

apply directly to supplementary schools, this shift in language indicates heightened

surveillance of undesirable entrepreneurship in education, notwithstanding new

funding streams becoming available for ever more independent forms of mainstream

schooling. In the context of privatisation, de-politicisation and fragmentation of the

English education system (Courtney, 2015), and alongside regimes of central control

and current securitisation agendas, the private entrepreneurial educational initiatives

of some supplementary schools seem to be perceived as undesirable. A research

agenda which documents supplementary schools’ role and contribution in promoting

community responsibility and resilience …..

ConclusionWe began by claiming the centrality of supplementary education to concerns about

cultural affirmation and community capacity-building. At the same time we have

recognised that the few commonalities across supplementary school provision may

arise precisely because of the way they compete with, support, and potentially

transform mainstream education (Aurini and Scott, 2013).

Our contribution in this article has been, firstly, to bring philosophical analysis to bear

upon and inform educational debates, applying the critique of the “pedagogy of the

supplement” (Trifonas, 2000) to a hitherto under-researched educational context.

Secondly, we suggest that, in doing this, this thereby also performs deconstruction in

showing how attending to the marginal brings into question assumptions that were

previously overlooked, in this sense doing the work of witnessing (rather than

authorizing) transformation advocated by Biesta (2013). Thirdly - beyond, or rather

by virtue of, these conceptual-methodological interventions - we indicate how such

analysis necessarily engages practically and politically with the material inequalities

of the “economy of difference” exemplified by the “mainstream/supplementary

education” binary (Dixon-Romàn, 2010).

The significance of this analysis is that it both promotes new perspectives on current

educational trends and controversies and suggests new lines of analytical and

empirical inquiry. We recognise that the conceptual resources we have mobilised

pose more questions than they resolve; however, this is precisely our contribution.

As Dixon-Román, (2010,107) comments: “The affirmation of difference in community

embedded supplementary education will enable the continued struggle and

challenge against the normalization and standardization of advanced capitalism and

the economy of difference.” We have identified some of the gaps, occlusions and

preferred visibilities in the limited research available. Our suggestions for research

with the supplementary education sector arise from a commitment both to better

understand and to support the role of supplementary education in celebrating and

supporting their distinctive and multiple practices of cultural diversity and creativity,

which are currently under threat through increased surveillance and pressures of

regularisation.

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i We are grateful to Tendayi Madzunzu for initially bringing these issues to our attention, via her experience of organising a Maths Club for Zimbabwean heritage boys in Manchester.ii Akala is an artist, writer and academic.