Mark WilberforceWhen my mother told me at the age of 16 that we were going from the UK to Ghana for the summer holidays, I had no reason to doubt her.
It was just a quick trip, a temporary break – nothing to worry about. Or so I thought.
One month in, she dropped the bombshell – I was not coming back to London until I had reformed and had earned enough GCSEs to continue my education.
I was hoodwinked in a similar way to the British-Ghanaian teenager who recently took his parents to the High Court in London for sending him to school in Ghana.
In their defence, they told the judge they did not want to see their 14-year-old son become “yet another black teenager stabbed to death in the streets of London”.
Back in the mid-1990s, my mother, a primary school teacher, was motivated by similar concerns.
I had been excluded from two high schools in the London Borough of Brent, hanging out with the wrong crowd (becoming the wrong crowd) – and…
