Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of creating a statutory requirement to log centrally incidents of hate at (a) schools and (b) colleges.

The department has published guidance for schools on how to comply with their duties under the Equality Act 2010. The Public Sector Equality Duty also requires public bodies, including maintained schools and academies, to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and other conduct prohibited by the Act, advance equality of opportunity for people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it, and foster good relations across all characteristics.

Education is a key component of building a fairer and more equal society. As part of a broad and balanced curriculum, there are opportunities in the curriculum for children to learn about:

• Citizenship education, which teaches about diversity, mutual respect and understanding.
• Relationships education, which teaches about the impact of prejudice and the importance of respect.
• Religious education, which teaches about religious tolerance.

The department is making sure that all children in England will learn about respectful relationships, in person and online, as part of mandatory relationships, sex and health education. These subjects are designed to give pupils the knowledge they need to lead happy, safe and healthy lives, and to foster respect for other people and for difference.

The department has published ‘Respectful School Communities’, which is a self-review and signposting tool to support schools to develop a whole-school approach which promotes respect and discipline. This can combat bullying, harassment, and prejudice of any kind, including hate-based bullying. This tool is available here: https://www.educateagainsthate.com/resources/respectful-school-communities-self-review-signposting-tool-2/.

Educate Against Hate provides education settings with access to free, quality-assured teaching resources that build students’ resilience to all forms of extremism and hatred. These resources help settings discuss sensitive topics with students, including discrimination, hate-crime and holding classroom debates and discussion.

Non-crime hate related incidents are often managed under school and college behaviour policies and procedures. The Home Office’s statutory guidance on Non-Crime Hate Incidents is clear that if a report is made to the police about an incident that occurs in a school and does not amount to a crime, the appropriate police response would be to refer the matter to the school management team and to offer advice to the complainant about available support.

The school management team will assess the risk and decide on a proportionate response. When considering resolution of such incidents, the school management team should implement safeguarding measures for any children involved, and in appropriate circumstances ensure that a parent or guardian is notified and present when a child may be questioned.

Ofsted inspectors will expect to see records and analysis of bullying incidents, discriminatory and prejudiced behaviour, either directly or indirectly, which puts the onus on schools to keeping these records already. Where bullying, aggression, discrimination and use of derogatory language has occurred, inspectors will expect that this is dealt with quickly and effectively and is not allowed to spread. Ofsted’s school inspection handbook sets out that the behaviour and attitudes judgement is likely to be inadequate where such incidents are frequent, and pupils have little confidence in a school’s ability to tackle them successfully.