Your say / Society
Lessons must be learned to end inequality
This comment article is written by Linda Tanner
After more than five decades of civil rights campaigning in Bristol, Paul Stephenson said this month: “We still have a long way to go on race.”
He has a right to be disappointed. Yes, the city is in many ways a very different place from the one where Stephenson led the bus boycott in 1963; equality is enshrined in law – but the reality is that not enough has been done quickly enough to tackle discrimination.
Paul Stephenson is backing campaigner David McLeod’s call for the city council to address issues of bias. They have launched a petition urging a full inquiry into inequitable practices and systems in Bristol schools.
McLeod says there is a “glass ceiling”, meaning that university-educated black people in the city cannot reach the higher-level jobs in schools and other institutions.
This is bad news not only for the aspiring young workers themselves but for the generation that follows. More than a third of Bristol’s primary school children are from non-white British households, yet the proportion of teachers and school leaders from those backgrounds is very low.
The council says it no longer keeps figures on staff ethnicity, but in 2008 the percentage of black and minority ethnic (BME) teachers was put at 4.4 per cent. At that time there was just one Somali teacher. The number of non-white British headteachers remains very low.
It goes without saying that if children only see people like them working as cleaners or caretakers, it is likely to limit their aspirations.
I have seen some great individual examples of schools encouraging and supporting BME people to train as teachers, and some inspiring individual successes.
But the fragmentation of the school system, coupled with public sector cutbacks, makes it difficult for citywide improvements to be made and sustained.
For example, the Bristol Education Attainment Partnership – born out of the Legacy Commission following events to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in 2007 – commissioned research from the University of Bristol into BME achievement in Bristol.
That study, led by Professor Leon Tikly, was published in 2012. But the BEAP was disbanded and the findings were only officially unveiled two years later. Nevertheless, they deserve to be widely shared, as the report – entitled Making the Difference – contains key messages on how the best elements of our city’s diversity can be shared.
The broadcaster Sherrie Eugene has made a series of videos based on the study. Interestingly, she starts by suggesting a change of terminology – replacing BME with GM, global majority.
Given Ofsted’s current emphasis on “preparing children for life in modern Britain”, these films are surely required viewing for all city schools.
You can be sure Paul Stephenson has seen them.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
