The need to promote racial inclusion is “too often” being overlooked in education, Baroness Anne Longfield has warned.

The executive chair of the Centre for Young Lives, who sits on a national taskforce on inclusion, made the comments during a keynote speech at a Tes safeguarding event.

She said that Black children, particularly teenage boys, are more likely to be subject to “adultification” and be viewed as “less innocent”, which leads to disproportionate targeting by school behaviour and uniform policies.

“We have heard how Black children can feel unsafe and over-policed at school - including being disciplined more harshly,” the former children’s commissioner told delegates at the Tes Trust Series event in Bristol.

Focus on racial inclusion

Baroness Longfield said she wanted to see an “emphasis on racial inclusion, which, again, everyone wants to really tackle but it so often falls off the agenda”.

She told Tes that she was having meetings with organisations and educational leaders about ensuring that racially inclusive practices are “firmly at the heart of a new era of inclusion”.

“We heard how zero-tolerance behaviour policies often disproportionately punish Black and mixed-race students - especially boys - and can reinforce harmful stereotypes of these children as troublemakers”, she added.

Asked why she believed racial inclusion often fell off the agenda, she said the education system “had not been developed to be inclusive”.

“Incentives have been built into the system that can reward exclusion and penalise schools that are inclusive,” Baroness Longfield said.

“In the past, too little attention has been paid to the impact of the curriculum, insufficient training for teachers, and the need for a system that celebrates and supports diversity and inclusion.”

She also said she was “hopeful” that changes were beginning to happen.

The government has said it wants schools to become more inclusive and has appointed multi-academy trust leader Tom Rees to be its inclusion adviser. Mr Rees leads a panel focused on inclusion for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

And last month Ofsted confirmed that its new report card inspections will include a specific grade for inclusion.

‘Recognising the problems’

Baroness Longfield called on education leaders to commit to “embedding a culture of anti-racism into the heart of their schools” and for the Department for Education to make anti-racism “a key thematic priority”.

She said this includes ensuring that global majority education leaders and young people are “meaningfully engaged” in the DfE inclusive education plans. She also warned that a curriculum lacking diversity and representation is “another barrier to fostering a sense of belonging and inclusion”.

Baroness Longfield called on policymakers, education leaders and Ofsted to prioritise inclusion.

“It should never be a tick-box exercise - it should run right throughout the whole education system. To achieve this, we need government, Ofsted and school leaders to both recognise what the problems are and, most importantly, tackle them”, she said.

Her comments come as Tes has today reported on serious concerns among school leaders about rising levels of racial tension within schools.

Elsewhere in her speech, Baroness Longfield called for more statutory guidance on inclusion, for pupil attendance dashboards and for admissions departments “to look at going to your local school becoming the norm”.

Geoff Barton, who leads the IPPR inclusion taskforce that Baroness Longfield is part of, previously told Tes that Ofsted’s inclusion plan would be “diluted” without a focus on admissions.

Baroness Longfield also expressed concerns about an increase in both persistent absence and suspensions.

Mental health is ” a big concern”, she added. “One in 10 children had a nominal mental health condition before Covid - now one in five. And the one in five is just such a huge number that it’s really coming into all our lives.”

While children’s mental health struggles have attracted significant media attention, this has not translated “into the kind of action that’s needed to really tackle that level of crisis”, she said.

Baroness Longfield was children’s commissioner for England from March 2015 to February 2021. Last December she was granted a life peerage by prime minister Sir Keir Starmer.

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