Racism in education should be treated as a safeguarding issue, with anti-racist policies in all schools in England and training for staff, according to a new book.
Jeffrey Boakye, a black English teacher, author and broadcaster, argues that schools are unsafe places for students marginalised by race, and warns that black children are attending institutions that might “actively contribute to their harm”.
He says issues of social justice, including racism, should be taken as a key performance indicator in schools. “This isn’t just about making new boxes to be ticked,” Boakye told the Guardian. “This is about highlighting social justice as an area that teachers and schools must have a specific position on.
“Racism is something that needs to be seen and acknowledged before it is understood,” he said. “And once understood, it can be tackled. In this country, too many people don’t even know what it looks like.”
A secondary school teacher with 15 years’ experience, Boakye sets out in I Heard What You Said to expose structural racism in schools and the failure of the English education system to address racial inequality, and draws on his own experience, first as a pupil and then as a teacher.
The book, which will be published this month by Picador, comes months after the case of Child Q – a black 15-year-old girl who was strip-searched by police officers while at school in London after teachers claimed they smelled cannabis – sparked widespread outrage.
“What happened to Child Q is a culmination of various toxic legacies: the adultification of black girls, the demonisation of black people, the abuse of black bodies, the fear of blackness among our institutions,” said Boakye. “It also speaks to a profound failure of care among professionals across sectors, whereby suspicion of criminal misdemeanour completely overshot basic empathy.”
“I would argue that racism is a safeguarding issue,” he writes in his book. “And in the same way that you can’t get hired as a teacher until you know the basics of how to keep children safe, perhaps you shouldn’t be allowed to teach in a modern, multicultural society unless you know the basics of racist abuse and how it can harm all children.”
In the book, Boakye cites a Guardian investigation last year that revealed more than 60,000 racist incidents were recorded in UK schools over a five-year period. The true figure is likely to be considerably higher as many incidents are either not reported or not recorded, and since 2012, schools have been under no legal duty to report racist incidents to local authorities.(Guardian)