In My View: Janet Daby, MP for Lewisham East

For most children, school is a fantastic place to be. At school, they have the chance to learn in a safe and caring environment.

Children in the UK benefit from hundreds of thousands of hardworking and inspiring teachers.

With a decent education, children develop into young people who are equipped with the skills and knowledge to progress in life.

However, while so much of what our schools and teachers do is fantastic, sadly some children experience and endure discrimination. In some circumstances, this has shown itself to be brutally harmful.

Last month there was a deeply disturbing attack on a child outside Thomas Knyvett school in Surrey, where a young black child was physically assaulted by a group of white children.

Had it not been for social media, in this instance I don’t think the public would have believed the level of racial abuse that this poor and vulnerable child had endured, while people stood by watching and adults shouted instructions as to how to hurt this child.

I raised the case in Parliament and co-ordinated a cross-party group of MPs in writing to the Home Secretary to ask how the victim was being supported and that this awful incident is fully investigated.

It quickly became apparent, however, that this issue went much further.

I was soon contacted by a stream of teachers, parents and members of the public from across the country who raised their own concerns and experiences of racial discrimination in our schools.

We all recall the terrible case of Child Q that made the headlines last year.

This incident is an example of the growing list of cases where children have not been properly protected in schools.

It is truly astounding that estimates indicate there were more than 60,000 racist incidents in British schools between 2016 and 2021. But we sadly do not know the full scale of the problem.

As of 2012, schools were advised they have no legal obligation to report racist incidents to their local authority.

This makes it nigh-on impossible to accurately track racial discrimination tormenting our schools.

This leaves us grasping in the dark for solutions.

When racist incidents turn violent the head teacher, senior teachers, and school staff must safely intervene and safeguard children.

Yet the Government does not require schools to train staff on this despite giving them the power to intervene.

I commend the work headteachers and all school staff across the country.

However, it is head teachers’ responsibility to challenge, educate and root out hatred toward people of colour in their schools.

The Government must offer them their full support to do so.

That is why I led a Parliamentary debate on racial discrimination in schools.

In the debate, I called for the Government to:

• Ensure that data on racist incidents in schools can be collected and tracked
• Require schools to provide a policy on the use of force during physical altercations
• Recruit and retain ethnic minority staff and encourage the promotion of ethnic minority staff into school leadership roles
• Include greater ethnic minority representation in the school curriculum

The Minister took on board some of what I was calling for, but not the most central issue of mandating schools to record incidents of discrimination based on skin colour and ethnicity.

This data is important to identify the problem, monitor and review change.

To effectively reduce and eliminate this type of discrimination local authorities and education regulators must play their part to identify discrimination and hold schools accountable.

I will continue to press the Government on this fundamental issue because children deserve the right to be kept safe. In fact, we all have a role to play.