Milk Honey Bees · 2025
This report by Milk Honey Bees examines how educators' perceptions of Black girls affect their identity, wellbeing, and treatment in London secondary schools. Drawing on surveys and focus groups with 121 Black girls across 12 schools, it finds that Black girls are adultified, stereotyped, and disproportionately punished compared to white peers, while their emotional and mental health needs go largely unmet. The report documents a damaging duality of invisibility (in systems of care) and hypervisibility (in punitive contexts), and calls on schools to challenge racial and gendered biases, adopt trauma-informed approaches, and create culturally affirming 'homeplace' spaces led by Black girls themselves.