Launching an Anti-Racism Framework for Initial Teacher Education and Training

The background

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests, many organisations - including schools and universities - added anti-racism statements onto their websites and some have sought to decolonise their curricula.

It appeared as if the tide had turned. But this wave of change was soon tempered by government responses. For example, in October 2020 (Black History Month), the then Women and Equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch, made a speech in the House of Commons, emulating the backlash against BLM and Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the US.

Further attacks on CRT and decolonising the curriculum followed. Badenoch insisted schools that taught CRT were breaking the law.

The assaults on anti-racism continued when on 27 June 2022 the then Education Minister, Michelle Donelan, warned universities to rethink their membership of the race equality charter. This was a clear message that engaging in race equality was counter to free speech and academic freedom. There was a robust retort from Universities UK.

In contrast, in March 2022, there was a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review about the case of Child Q - a “Black female child of secondary school age, [who] was strip searched by female police officers from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). The search, which involved the exposure of Child Q’s intimate body parts, took place on school premises, without an Appropriate Adult present and with the knowledge that Child Q was menstruating.” The report (p6) found that “racism (whether deliberate or not) was likely to have been an influencing factor in the decision to undertake a strip search”.

Why have an Anti-Racism Framework for Initial Teacher Education/Training?

The slow and stealthy deracialisation - a term used to refer to a process where references to race and race equality are present in their absence from policy - has culminated within Initial Teacher Education/Training (ITE/T) in the Core Content Curriculum (CCF) which has no mention of race, racism, cultural diversity, ethnicity, or race equality.

The CCF is the curriculum which all providers of ITE/T must deliver. This means that pre-service teachers will not be prepared to teach in a multi-ethnic society.

This is rather stark when we consider that the pupil population is ethnically and linguistically diverse. 33.9% of primary and 32.1% of secondary pupils are recorded as being of Black and global majority heritage - and 20.9% of primary pupils and 17.2% of secondary pupils recorded as having a first language other than English (¬DfE, 2020-2021).

Yet 85.9% of teachers are White. Research by the National Foundation for Educational Research shows that Black and global majority candidates are interested in teaching - but as they progress through their initial teacher education/training programmes and their subsequent career in teaching, their numbers decline. So, the diversity of the pupil population is not reflected within the profession.

The case of Child Q, and the continued disparities in educational experiences and outcomes for Black and global majority pupils, indicates institutional racism plays a part in the differential treatment of these youngsters. We also know that the rate of permanent school exclusion for pupils from Black and Mixed backgrounds is higher than the national average.

So, there is an urgent need to educate beginning teachers to understand how racism operates in education in order to address the negative experiences and outcomes for Black pupils.

The research

It is against this climate of the denial of racism and its effects that Professor Heather Smith and I undertook research, funded by the National Education Union and the University of Newcastle, to establish current practice within ITE/T regarding anti-racist teaching practice.

Supported by and in consultation with partners: NALDIC (National Association for Language Development in the Curriculum), the Centre of Race Education and Decoloniality, Show Racism the Red Card, National Education Union, Universities of Sanctuary, and BAME Ed Network, we:

• Carried out a global literature review on anti-racism and ITE/T
• Conducted a survey of all ITE/T providers in England and
• Undertook interviews with ITE/T providers to ascertain the range of anti-racism pedagogy and practice.

Our Key findings

• All the literature which focussed on directives from the state, avoiding reference to racism, were from the UK - whereas many examples of anti-racist pedagogy and practices in ITE/T came from the US.
• The need to embed anti-racist pedagogies in ITE/T was stressed - ‘one-off’ or stand-alone anti-racist workshops were ineffective in developing student teachers’ critical thinking and proactive responses to racism in education.
• Where anti-racism work existed, responsibility tended to rest with one or two ITE/T tutors who had the skills and confidence to deliver anti-racist pedagogies.
• Lack of tutor knowledge and confidence was cited in several studies as a barrier to anti-racist teaching in ITE/T, along with lack of time.
• Training on anti-racist teaching for ITE/T tutors was cited as a need in several studies, along with greater encouragement from the institution/provider to embed anti-racist teaching.
• The impact of not teaching anti-racism in ITE/T was identified in several studies in the review as resulting in, for example: lower admission and higher non-completion rates for Black, Asian and Global Majority (BAGM) student teachers; BAGM student teachers experiencing racism on the ITE/T course and on school placement; and student teachers’ lack of confidence and knowledge to challenge racism and/or embed anti-racist teaching in their practice.

How the Framework can be used

The Framework, global literature review, and survey findings, are free to download from the University of Newcastle website. We suggest that ITE/T providers draw on the Framework alongside the Teacher Standards and Core Content Framework in ways appropriate to their course context. The themes can be addressed holistically, or separately as per course needs. We hope to add further resources as the Framework begins to be used.

The Framework was designed to provide ITE/T institutions with a systemic model for culture change within the provider and its partner placement schools.

We believe the Framework can be adapted to embed anti-racist practice within nurse education, youth work and social work. We look forward to hearing from colleagues within ITE/T and beyond regarding how they have used the Framework to transform their course content, management, and pedagogy.

What is next?

The Centre for Race Education and Decoloniality hosted the launch of the Framework on 29 September 2022. This will be followed up with a conference at Leeds Beckett University on Wednesday 29 March 2023.

Action is needed to shift racism:

“What’s the problem with being non-racist? It is a claim that signifies neutrality. ‘I’m not racist but neither am I aggressively against racism’. But there is no neutrality in the racism struggle. …One either allows the racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There’s no in-between safe space of ‘not racist’. The claim of ‘not-racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.” Ibram X. Kendi (2019).