Racist: A damning report on UK schools

Black pupils are three times more likely to be excluded than white, and five times less likely to be on the official register of gifted and talented students. Why? Because, according to a Whitehall report, teachers in England and Wales are unconsciously prejudiced against Caribbean-origin pupils. Ian Griggs reports
---

The choice facing Lord Adonis was stark: accept that black pupils are more likely to be badly behaved or brand Britain's schools "institutionally racist".

One of Tony Blair's favourite ministers had been presented with the conclusions of a high-level official report into why black pupils are three times more likely than whites to be excluded from school.

Although couched in careful Whitehall language, it makes for uncomfortable reading. "The exclusions gap is caused by largely unwitting, but systematic, racial discrimination in the application of disciplinary and exclusions policies," concludes the report by Peter Wanless, the director of school performance and reform at the Department for Education and Skills (DfES), and two other officials.

"Even with the best efforts to improve provision for excluded pupils, the continued existence of the exclusion gap means that black pupils are disproportionately denied mainstream education and the life chances that go with it."

More
http://education.independent.co.uk/news/article2062500.ece

Sometimes it takes a single phrase to make clear what had been cloudy. The finding that "a compelling case can be made for the existence of institutional racism in schools" in Britain is a good example. As The Independent on Sunday reports exclusively today, that is the phrase chosen by the authors of a government report - not yet published - on why black boys are so much more likely to be excluded from school.

In the report - Getting It. Getting It Right - written for the Department for Education and Skills, the authors agonise over whether to use the term "institutional racism", aware of the reaction it could provoke. In particular, they fear that it might demoralise teachers in the way that many blameless police officers were offended by its use in the Macpherson report in 1999. The phrase was made famous by the report on the Metropolitan Police's handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence. Yet its use in that case undoubtedly had a dramatic effect on attitudes and organisation in police forces throughout the country. It is to be hoped that this report can achieve a similar beneficial change in the education system.

The central message of the education report is simple. There are only two possible explanations for the fact that black boys are three times more likely than other pupils to be excluded from school. One is that their family background or street culture makes them badly behaved. The other is that schools treat them differently. Clearly, there may be some truth in both explanations. The key question is the balance between the two. The authors of the report conclude that "in-school" factors are more important than "out-of-school" influences. What really matters, they say, is "largely unwitting but systematic racial discrimination in the application of disciplinary and exclusions policies".

More
http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article2062418.ece