Collaborating for anti-racist education in Leeds

Why have you and your school signed up for the antiracist schools network?

I've known about the work of CRED (Centre for Race, Education and Decolonial Thought) for some time, and wanted to get the school to go through the self-auditing process that they have available through their Anti-Racist School Award. But it was my chair of governors who flagged up this particular opportunity to us – we both understand systemic racism, and conscious and unconscious biases, can exist in all kinds of organisations.

It is vital for really authentic reflective work to start from the top, and we both feel this is probably one of the most important pieces of work that we can engage in. It's not really good enough for our school to talk about equality. We want to be proactively, vehemently, antiracist.

What are you hoping most to gain from joining the network?

I think a clearer understanding of the kind of theory and practices around antiracist work, which will hopefully guide us and help us explore systems that we have in school. Systems such as recruitment, retention opportunities, opportunities within the organisation for training and promotion from a staffing point of view. 

And also with our systems that affect children, such as our curriculum and the resources we have available. We want our children to be able to see themselves in our curriculum. It's a really diverse school that we work in, and we're represented by all kinds of children, with all kinds of heritages, and we want them to see themselves represented in our curriculum. And that's not always easy. 

So we’re hoping to develop more understanding around the practices and theories, and how we can critically evaluate what we do – both in terms of the staff who represent the diversity of Leeds, and also our diverse intake of children as well.

What are the challenges of developing an antiracist practices and policies in school?

Buy-in is the most important thing. I think that's where we'll see the most resistance and the most challenge, and having personally read quite a bit about the notion of white privilege, white fragility, I understand that many of our staff will feel vulnerable when beginning work of this nature. 

I know that if I were to ask my staff openly about whether racism exists in our organization, they would absolutely respond robustly that it did not, but I think I've educated myself well enough to know that that's not a good enough answer. 

So, despite good intentions and good self-belief, and us all trying our best, we need to rigorously explore our organization. We need to be certain that we're doing the best that we can, and we can always do better to ensure people of all heritages face no barriers, whether it's working here or learning here. 

I think we're not there yet. We need to explore that robustly, and I'm sure we're doing good work, but we can always do better. And I think if I can get that buy-in from staff, that understanding that this is a safe place and this is a safe process, then I think it will be a lot more effective than if it's something which is done to people.

Why do you think it's important for educators to engage in anti-racism programmes?

I think schools are the starting points – they're the foundation blocks for wider society and it's where we can be most transformative. But it is also where, without a critical understanding of the systems that we have in place, we can perpetuate systems very easily, which can exclude, under-value or fail people because of their heritage. And I think it takes courage to be able to be self-reflective, especially where we might not like some of the things that we find, or that we uncover.

It's vital work that needs to be done. This is where we make the most difference in in future societies and future communities. So that's why I think it's most important to be starting at our level.