Best Practice

Racism and pupil voice: Creating safe spaces

Pastoral issues Pupil wellbeing Anti-Bullying
As part of becoming an anti-racist school we must understand how our pupils feel and their lived experiences in school. But we must also ensure that these pupil voice exercises are safe. Orlene Badu advises
Are you listening? 'Pupils tell me frequently about how they are often reprimanded in schools for using the word 'racism' to describe an incident' - Adobe Stock

The work of race equality is challenging and necessary. Many school leaders are grappling with how they confront race equality to disrupt long-standing inequalities in pupils’ outcomes and lived experiences.

A whole raft of national data continues to indicate disproportionate outcomes for black and global majority children in comparison to their peers. This persistently stubborn inequality in outcomes has led many schools to seek new or adapted ways of creating “real” systemic change.

And of course there remain schools that continue to hide away from this challenging work – convincing themselves that “racism is not a problem here”. Yet racism exists across society – schools are not immune.

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