By Claudia Sanchez
“We do not mandate that schools record or publish racist incidents.”
The UK’s schools minister, Nick Gibb, told MPs in March 2023 that schools do not have to record or publish incidents of racism. Schools are the best placed to monitor such incidents, he said.
This week, the government accepted all 27 recommendations of the Bell Review into antisemitism in England’s schools and colleges. These include a national programme of teacher training, safeguarding, incident reporting and monitoring.
The government in power may have changed, but the position of the British state has not. It is cementing a hierarchy of racism, in which antisemitism is an urgent national crisis while the racism that black and Muslim children experience is denied. It also uses the language of anti-racism to police anti-imperialist solidarity, specifically with the Palestinian people.
The Bell Review’s headline statistic is based on the responses of 70 Jewish pupils, of whom 29 (41%) said they had experienced antisemitism and 18 said they had witnessed it. Just 70 pupils were somehow enough to prompt a national programme of action. Black and Muslim children have been producing far more evidence, over far longer, and schools have been told that they do not even have to record what is happening to them.
The report identifies anti-Jewish attitudes as being ‘typically less prevalent’ and remaining stable over time. In contrast, negative attitudes towards Israel have increased.
The state is using the long-standing conflation of the language of Palestinian dispossession and occupation with antisemitism to police opposition to the actions of the Israeli state. This is what the National Education Union (NEU) is concerned about. The NEU has opposed the IHRA definition of antisemitism for use in schools, and has argued that tackling antisemitism while ignoring other forms of racism would create a hierarchy of racism.
The approach of the state to black children is to challenge the whether they are experiencing racism at all. Conservative ministers have endorsed the Sewell Commission’s finding that ethnic disparities in education are more likely to be caused by factors other than discrimination. This is based on the different rates of exclusion of black African and black Caribbean children. But institutional racism does not require all black children to be treated the same.
In 2019, the Timpson Review into exclusions found that black Caribbean children were 1.7 times more likely to be permanently excluded than white British children, after taking into account gender, school location and type, special educational needs and pupil premium. Six years on, History on Loop, from the Runnymede Trust and Communities Empowerment Network, found the same pattern. Black boys are especially likely to be seen as “disruptive” and overly disciplined rather than supported for their special educational needs. Many exclusions are premature and the disciplinary records of black children are used to label them and to reinforce stereotypes. Parents seeking support meet an institution that has already decided their child does not belong.
Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee found that staff did not always take anti-Muslim bullying seriously, and that Islamophobia existed among teachers as well as pupils. It called for clear policies on anti-Muslim discrimination and specific teacher training. The Labour government has no definition of Islamophobia. It shelved one in favour of a narrow definition of “anti-Muslim hostility” that leaves most of what Muslim children face in schools out of its scope. Bell’s recommendations were accepted in full.
The Department for Education has promoted solidarity with Ukraine through its school partnerships programme. Promotional material for the programme includes images of children waving British and Ukrainian flags. Yet, when asked about pupils wearing Palestinian flag badges, Education Secretary Lucy Powell compared them to party-political badges and said that schools should not be places for protests about geopolitical events.
The Palestinian flag is not a Labour Party badge. It can represent a Palestinian child’s family, history, loss and homeland. It can also represent the solidarity of other pupils, including Muslim pupils, with the dispossession and occupation of Palestinians, and with the genocide being committed against them. Solidarity with Ukraine is encouraged because it aligns with British foreign policy. Solidarity with Palestinians is a problem because it challenges a British ally.
The same selectivity is evident elsewhere in the education system. Nathan Cofnas was dismissed from his research role at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 2024, after the college judged his views on race to be incompatible with its values. His dismissal did not end his platform. In fact, his allegations against Professor Jason Arday got extensive media coverage. That attention cannot be separated from the belief that black people do not deserve to be in elite institutions. The attack on Arday was an opportunity to question black people’s intellectual legitimacy more broadly.
The state’s approach to racism in education is fundamentally imperialist. It uses the fight against antisemitism to protect a genocidal, imperialist geopolitical ally and police anti-imperialist critique. It refuses accountability for the institutional racism black children face and fails to protect Muslim children from abuse and suspicion. Palestinian solidarity is treated as a threat, while anti-blackness is given a platform and defended.
The right of black and Muslim children to be protected from racist abuse, discrimination, and neglect in schools must be defended. The exclusion and adultification of black children must be challenged. A state that will not even record the racism black and Muslim children face, while inflating antisemitism to police Palestinian solidarity, is not fighting racism in schools. It is practising it. And it must be challenged!
The above article was originally published here on the For Liberation, Against Racism blog. To follow the For Liberation, Against Racism blog – subscribe here .