Hate crime “happens in the streets, not in schools”, insists Birmingham City Council’s director of education.

While Muslim girls had been victims of hate crime in the city - they had been spat on and pushed near cars - schools in Birmingham remained “sanctuaries of safety” from the wider world, Colin Diamond said in February.

But an investigation has now uncovered a much more worrying picture for schools across England. It reveals that schools experienced significant spikes in “hate crimes” and “hate incidents” last year, around the time of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump.

Tes submitted freedom of information requests to all 39 of England’s police forces. Of the 32 that responded, 30 provided comparable data. It reveals that:

• In May last year - in the middle of the Brexit referendum campaign - the number of police reports of hate crimes and hate incidents in schools rose by 89 per cent, compared with the same month in 2015.
• The number of hate crimes and hate incidents in schools increased by 54 per cent from May to July last year - covering the run-up to the referendum and the immediate aftermath of the outcome - compared with the same three-month period in 2015.
• During the summer and autumn terms in 2016 - when the Brexit referendum took place and Donald Trump won the US presidential election - the number of hate crimes and hate incidents in schools increased by 48 per cent, compared with the same period in 2015.

These spikes may surprise those in education who argue that schools - which encourage tolerance and respect, and celebrate diversity - are largely safe spaces in communities.

“They are fascinating statistics,” Diamond says. “Honestly, nothing has been brought to my attention to indicate a significant rise - or, in fact, any rise - in hate crime inside Birmingham schools.

“It has not been raised as a topic by any heads at meetings. There’s been absolute radio silence.” Statistics obtained from West Midlands Police, covering Birmingham, actually reveal a 16 per cent rise in the number of hate crimes in schools across the force area in the summer and autumn terms of 2016, compared with the same period in 2015.

Other areas of the country show even bigger rises. So why has this happened and what can be done to tackle the problem?

Anecdotal evidence from schools and organisations working with young people suggests that last year’s divisive political events - and the media coverage linked to them - has begun to normalise hate speech and hate crime against ethnic minorities and foreign nationals.

Robert Posner, chief executive of the Anne Frank Trust UK, which runs a national programme tackling prejudice-related behaviour among young people, says the charity has heard more “disparaging” comments about refugees during school workshops since the Brexit vote in June.

“Language that we might consider to be either racist or prejudiced has become more normal and more accepted recently,” Posner adds.

At the NUT teaching union’s annual conference over Easter, teachers warned of an upsurge in bigoted behaviour.

One Year 5 pupil had been overheard parroting Mr Trump and shouting “grab her by the pussy” in the playground of an East London primary, according to one delegate.

Children as young as 9 had told their Polish peers that they no longer belonged in the UK - and some pupils had rolled up their jumpers and thrown them at Muslim students, pretending they were explosives, the conference was told.

Teachers say that pupils appear to be regurgitating the negative views of their parents, or of hateful individuals they have come across on social media.

Chris Baldwin, a teacher at the William Allitt secondary school in Derbyshire, says: “On social media, trolling is accepted and not challenged as much as it could be. It is brought into real life too much and is perceived as normal behaviour - for students to say derogatory or negative things.”

And it is not only the pupil victims who schools need to worry about. Increasingly, teachers are becoming victims of hate crime, too - but they may not be as likely to report the incident.

Almost one in five teachers knows of foreign-born colleagues who have been subjected to verbal abuse at school because of their nationality since the Brexit vote, according to a recent poll carried out by the NASUWT teaching union.

Identifying, reporting and dealing with hate crime and hate incidents is one challenge. But some schools are trying to pre-empt that situation and prevent segregation and prejudices from emerging in the first place.

For example, one primary school in the Midlands intervened last year when pupils formed Muslim and Christian football teams during break time - even though no “hateful” incidents took place.

“In any school there are different identities formed around who’s ‘cool’ and who’s ‘uncool’, and that can play out almost along racial lines,” a senior leader at the primary says. “There is a sense that we are united against something else, an idea, a group of people.”

The school showed the pupils how to value and respect each other’s differences. “If the school doesn’t find ways to engage with it, it could develop into a hate crime later on in life,” the primary leader adds.

Improved awareness

Police say that the rise in the number of hate crimes recorded in schools may partially be explained by an increase in awareness of the problem.

The Metropolitan Police note “a growing willingness” of victims to report hate crime and an “improved awareness” among staff of the importance of identifying offences.

Some forces have made greater efforts to identify hate crime. For example, the Met have increased the number of specialist investigators and placed an extra focus on hate crime.

In addition, the government launched a hate crime action plan in July, setting out how it would reduce offences, increase reporting and improve support - which included £1 million of funding directed at young people (see box, right). And in January this year, a further £375,000 of funding was announced.

But despite these commitments, many teachers have not been shown how to tackle hate crime or address issues of racism in schools, research from teaching unions has shown.

A recent survey from the NUT revealed that less than a third of black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) teachers said they were comfortable when talking about race or racism at school - and less than a third were proactive in identifying and responding to racism.

Meanwhile, more than a third of school staff said they had not received any training on hate crime incidents, according to a poll by the ATL teaching union, despite more than one in 10 saying that they had seen a rise in hate crime and hate speech in the past year.

Helen Porter, a secondary school teacher and an equalities coordinator for the ATL, says: “Some staff are not confident in dealing with it and some staff don’t recognise it readily enough or quickly enough for what it is. They don’t know how best to tackle it.”

At the union’s annual conference last month, ATL delegates committed to providing more CPD on recognising hate crime and hate speech - and voted in favour of lobbying the government to produce updated guidance including discussion of hate crime and encouraging critical thinking.

But not all schools are trying to build a culture that discourages hate crimes from materialising. Nathan Servi, manager of Streetwise, a youth educational group that goes into schools to talk about hate crime, argues that some are still burying their heads in the sand.

“Even if there are cases of serious bullying, it is often minimised,” he says. “The school won’t say anything because their public image will be damaged.”

@Eleanor_Busby