Racial Discrimination in Schools
Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Stephen Morgan(1 year, 8 months ago)
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Kirsten Oswald
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has spoken about teacher representation, which I did not. Is he aware of a Women and Equalities Committee sitting on racial harassment, discrimination and higher education, in which Professor Nicola Rollock described the experience of black female professors in the UK, noting undermining, stereotyping and passive bullying as issues? Also, is he aware that data from May 2022 shows that there are only 40 black female professors in higher education? That is a shocking figure.
Stephen Morgan
I thank the hon. Member for those statistics, and I am pleased that she got them on the record. I hope that the Minister is listening and will address those points later in his contribution.
Baroness Doreen Lawrence’s review identified how structural inequalities caused black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds to be discriminated against because of covid-19. She made a series of long-term recommendations to tackle the structural inequalities in several key areas, including the machinery of government, health, employment and the education system. Systemic solutions are required to fix systemic problems. That is why the next Labour Government will introduce a new race equality Act to tackle the structural racism that scars society.
In conclusion, the highest priority for the Department for Education and all schools must be to protect children’s safety and wellbeing. In the Minister’s response, I hope he will outline what his Department is doing to evaluate whether the current safeguards to prevent racial discrimination are robust enough; whether we should look further into school staff training on handling racism in schools; whether we are doing enough to encourage young people to speak out against racism when they see it; and whether the Government are doing enough to prevent incidents such as those we have seen recently from taking place again. I finish by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East for securing the debate. I hope that any actions taken forward from today will ensure that awful incidents such as those that prompted this debate will never take place again.