Schools are reporting 40,000 incidents of racism a year involving children as young as five after everyday playground squabbles, a report warns.
29 Oct 2009
Primary schoolchildren and toddlers in nurseries are being punished for making racist insults, it claims, even if they do not understand the terms they use.
The report also says teachers are being treated like counter staff in police stations, having to fill in forms detailing name-calling and jokes.
At the same time, diversity “missionaries” sent into schools to teach pupils about bigotry are said to be increasing the divide between white and black children by forcing them to see everything in terms of race.
Schools were placed under a duty by the Government in 2002 to monitor and report all racist incidents to their local authority.
Adrian Hart, the author of the report which is published by the Manifesto Club, a civil liberties group, said: “The obligation on schools to report these incidents wastes teachers’ time, interferes in children’s space in the playground, and undermines teachers’ ability to deal with problems in their classrooms.
“Worse, such anti-racist policies can create divisions where none had existed, by turning everyday playground spats into ‘race issues’. There are a small number of cases of sustained targeted bullying, and schools certainly need to deal with those.
”But most of these ‘racist incidents’ are just kids falling out. They don’t need re-educating out of their prejudice – they and their teachers need to be left alone.”
The report gives an example of a Racist Incident Referral Form which records the case of a girl who called a boy “white trash” during a primary school football game. She was “severely spoken to” and suffered “loss of lunchtime play”.
A five-year-old girl was told off and her parents were contacted when she refused to let a black girl join in a game, the report says.
On another occasion, a primary school pupil was “spoken to severely” and warned he could be reported to the head teacher and his parents after calling two classmates “a chocolate bar”.
Martin Ward, the deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Certainly any racist incident in schools should be dealt with swiftly but the definition of racism can be taken too far, especially with young children who clearly don’t understand the connotation behind the words.’’
After the introduction of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, which put public bodies under a duty to eliminate discrimination, schools were told they had to monitor the impact of their policies on the educational attainment of pupils of different races.
In 2002, racist incident forms were created that required teachers to name the alleged perpetrator and victim, and spell out what they did and how they were punished. Schools can keep these details on file.
Today’s report – The Myth of Racist Kids – calculates that some 280,000 such incidents have been reported in England since full records began.
An earlier investigation, using Freedom of Information requests, found 95,022 incidents between 2002-03 and 2005-06.
Birmingham City Council alone has seen numbers rise from 943 incidents in 2002-03 to 1,606 in 2008-09, while 1,248 were logged by Leeds City Council last year.
Essex County Council figures show that most of the children involved in reported racist incidents were aged between nine and 11.
Schools that send in “nil” returns are criticised for “under-reporting”, and are sent letters telling them to put up posters raising awareness.
Mr Hart recommends that the compulsory reporting of alleged racism is scrapped, and that schools are allowed to develop their own policies on diversity and playground disputes.
Diana Johnson, the Schools Minister, said: “Bullying in all forms, including those motivated by prejudice, is totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated.’’
The Telegraph
Congressman Howard Berman (right)