‘Equality of Opportunity for all Children’

This chapter assess how easy it was for dark-skinned Jamaica children to get into a prestigious secondary school having to overcome such hurdles as entry examinations and oral interviews. By drawing, amongst others, on school magazines and memoirs, it will also explore how race and colour shaped the experiences of the children that succeeded in gaining access to an elite secondary school, ranging from the relations with their teachers and peers to the curriculum they were taught. In addition, it will point to the ways in which lower-class African Jamaicans helped to uphold the class-colour hierarchy, showing that many lower-class parents valued the elite secondary schools over other types of secondary education, often making huge sacrifices to get their children accepted.