How our school will help to tackle racism

When I watched the recent murder of George Floyd, I found myself moved to tears. The police officers involved were not, it seemed to me, deaf to Floyd’s plea to breathe but decided that he did not deserve to breathe. That he was not the equal of them.

The video clip is haunting. It makes me angry. It has also made me feel overwhelmed and numb. That is my response as a white man. For those who are black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME), I know it must be far worse, for it must represent their lived experience and fears.  The microaggression, the over-scrutiny of everyday actions, the reduced access to jobs and health provision, the need to do more to succeed at work, structural inequality and the lack of recognition of the role that black and minority ethnic people play in all areas of society. These are just a few of the lived experiences that I am aware of from the outside.

The increased activism in the past week has been wonderful to see. A movement is growing that will help us to create a fairer society. A movement that is being led by those who know and understand the issues because they are a lived experience.

As a white headteacher of a predominately BAME school, I feel I am in a privileged position. I hope, over the next few weeks, months and years, to be able to play a part in our school community coming together to challenge racism within and outside our school.

Our work will be informed and challenged by our BAME staff, students and families and will, I hope, start to radically question all that we do. Through doing this, I know we can inspire all of our students and staff to better understand the BAME lived experience and to know how to take real action to improve it inside and outside of school

Inside the school, I want to see our curriculum revised so that we look at the whole range of BAME contribution in all areas. I want to see the books that we read better reflect BAME writers and experience. I want to see more staff question their unconscious biases and question each other, including me and our governors.

I desperately want to see a better school - a school that responds far better to the lived experience of our BAME students. A school that helps all our students to make their community and far further afield a fairer, more just place in which racism in all its forms is challenged at all times.

Gary Phillips
Headteacher, LiIian Baylis Technology School, south-east London

Why didn’t the government asks schools about student numbers?

Once again, the government has succeeded in making the life and work of teachers more difficult.

When the prime minister first pronounced on the return to school, it seemed that Year 12 and Year 10 would start to come back from 1 June. Like all other providers, we went into action. We brainstormed, we surveyed students and parents, we contacted bus companies, we timetabled, we laid out desks, removed desks, painted lines and spots on the playground, worked out rotas and came up with what we thought was a pretty good plan to get our Year 12 students back for some effective teaching and learning.

We would work it like a “mock” exam timetable. We could put three, even four subjects on at once. We have two large exam halls and we could use them to set out desks, at the correct distance, in such a way that all our psychology students could safely be in one place with their teachers, all our chemists in another. Meanwhile, our small groups could be happily learning - at a safe distance - in a classroom. We could have hour-and-a-half sessions - staggered, obviously - and then send them on their way. With only three or four sites to clean, we could put on more sessions later in the day. Our plan was good and would have enabled us to have had significant contact with all our students (for whom attendance was safe and appropriate) for the rest of the term.

Then the government plucked 25 per cent from the ether. Suddenly, we could only have a quarter of our students - from any one year group - on site at any one time. There was no consideration of the size of school site or of the size of a year group. There was no thought that many schools have quite small Year 12 cohorts - I am sure there are many institutions that were planning for all of their 20 or 30 students to return quite safely. How can the application of a percentage be made with no “up to a maximum of” proviso? Why are individual schools not trusted to take responsibility for providing sensibly and effectively for their own students?

For us, the 25 per cent represents 43 students.  We have more than that number taking psychology alone. All of a sudden, plans to have them all together, in one large space, with their teachers was impossible. If we had wanted to timetable our historians to be in school at the same time as our geographers, we now can’t, as there are more than 43 of them. So maybe let’s put history (a large subject) on at the same time as politics (a small one) - but there are too many student clashes for that to be effective.  The logistics were shot.

So we are now at the drawing board again and the inevitable result of this seemingly arbitrary figure is that our students will receive significantly less time back in school and their education will suffer.

If only they would consult us.

Tim Godfrey
Head of Sixth Form, Gillingham School, Dorset

What about middle school pupils making the transition to high school?

As a concerned grandparent of a child due to transition to high school in the three-tier middle school system, I would like to know why these children have been ignored when the prime minister said he wanted Year 6 pupils to return to school to aid their transition to high school. 

Are middle school pupils not important enough because they are in a minority? They deserve a smooth transition, too. Boris Johnson said he wanted parity; this is not it.

Marion Holdsworth
Bromsgrove, Worcestershire