The Race Relations Amendment Act places a new duty on all public bodies including
schools and including, for that matter, the Department for Education. They will be
required, not only to have a written policy on race equality, but also to assess the impact
of their policies on ethnic minority pupils, staff and parents, and to monitor levels of
attainment of ethnic minority pupils. This Act provided a unique opportunity for a
concerted focus on raising the attainment of ethnic minority pupils. What it means in
practice is that every school will need to mainstream racial equality. (Ashton, 2003, p.
11)
But simply asserting our antiracist intentions means nothing if we leave unchanged
the dominant systems of testing, the curriculum, teacher education, and punitive
inspection regimes that penalise schools serving working class and minoritized
communities. The “Race Relations Amendment Act”, referred to by Baroness Ashton
(above), provides a startling example. The Act arose directly from The Stephen
Lawrence Inquiry and represents the government’s primary response to the report’s
numerous recommendations. It was flagged, on the day that the Inquiry Report was
published, when Prime Minister Blair told Parliament that:
The publication of today’s report on the killing of Stephen Lawrence is a very important
moment in the life of our country. It is a moment to reflect, to learn and to change. It will
certainly lead to new laws but, more than that, it must lead to new attitudes, to a new era
in race relations, and to a new more tolerant and more inclusive Britain. (Tony Blair MP,
Hansard, 24 February 1999, col. 380)
The amended legislation placed new duties on more than 45,000 public authorities,
including every state-funded school in England, Scotland and Wales. They must:
• have a written policy on race equality;
• monitor their activities for signs of bias (especially focusing on student
achievement); and
• must actively plan to eradicate race inequality.
These new duties are mandatory and require public authorities to be pro-active in their
pursuit of race equality. This is a major step forward and is among the most radical
equalities legislation on Earth. Unfortunately, early indications are that the education
sector in general, and schools in particular, are lagging well behind other public
authorities in their attempts to meet these new requirements.
Data gathered for the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)3 paint an
especially discouraging picture in relation to the education sector. In a survey of more
than 3000 public authorities, schools were the least likely to reply: only 20% of
schools replied, compared with an overall rate of almost 50% (Schneider-Ross, 2003,
p. 5). Of course, nothing substantial can be read into a return rate. For example,
among countless possible explanations, it might be thought that schools were not
interested in race equality, or that they were more fearful of responding to a survey
sponsored by the authority that polices the race equality legislation. The most obvious
explanation in the eyes of most teachers with whom I have discussed this, is simply
that schools are too busy to fill in questionnaires. Any or all of these might have a
grain of truth. Looking ahead, however, we might have assumed that since relatively
few schools managed to respond, then at least those few that did return the
questionnaire might be assumed to be among the more confident of their counterparts
when it comes to race equality. If that is the case, the detail of their responses gives
even more cause for concern.
The CRE data suggest that more than half of respondents in the education sector
have not identified any clear “goals” or “targets” for improvement (Schneider-Ross,
2003, p. 6). In relation to differences in attainment, which is an especially prominent