As the Anti-Racist Teacher Education Network notes, all public authorities, including teacher educators, now have a legal duty to be proactive in promoting racial equality.

There are eight sections on matters important to teacher educators, including recruitment, school experience and assessment. Each section is divided into “issues”, “principles” and “guidelines”. Under “issues” are points such as the grave under-representation of black and minority ethnic communities in the staffing of initial teacher education.

In the “principles” section, the focus is on the need to monitor recruitment by ethnicity, while in the “guidelines” section there are brief notes on how to turn the principles into practice. There is also a series of appendices, including an important one that outlines recent changes in the law relating to teacher education and racism.

This is an important publication, and one that will do much to help any teacher education institution that is attempting to audit and improve its current practice on combating racism and achieving racial equality.

Gary Thomas is a professor at Oxford Brookes University Institute of Education