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.
As part of this work, many leadership teams are turning to community voice as a way of understanding lived experiences and the actions that need to be taken.
And the voice of our children is vital in understanding how well we are doing as a school and what we need to do to disrupt inequality.
But – and it is a big but – this must be done with care…
The dangers of pupil voice
Findings from the report into the Child Q incident (CHSCP, 2020) warn us that we must safeguard children against racism – that which has been experienced, is being experienced, and could be experienced within our schools.
To this end, we must ensure that children are safeguarded when sharing their experiences. We have to ensure that we do not create or cause further harm.
We also need to ensure that all those who contribute to pupil voice are confident that the exercise is going to affect change. It is important to know that many people who experience marginalisation no longer participate in surveys or focus groups or discussions about the inequality they experience because, too often, this experience itself can be painful, and often nothing changes after these exercises take place.
Racial literacy of staff
One key to safeguarding against this is developing the racial literacy of your staff. We need to ensure that we all have the language to manage conversations in an age-appropriate and safe way.
Many of us do not have the language and harm can be caused if we have these conversations without being equipped to do so.
As such, staff should have opportunities to practise conversations together. They should have the time to engage with research, literature and books about anti-racism work; they should have a shared glossary.
And this training should be a whole-school focus so that we can add value to pupil voice conversations. This training will not just support pupil voice, it will also help staff to handle racist incidents as they happen – I have touched upon this in my previous article about how schools can respond to incidents of racism.
Racial trauma
In my book How To Build Your Antiracist Classroom (2023), I refer to teaching staff being responsible for building “psychologically safe” classrooms.
Such spaces “allow every child the right to a space in which they can be open and honest; a space in which their views are valued (no matter how challenging); a space in which they are intentionally made to feel they belong; a space in which they can be their whole self”.
It is also “a space that they can thrive in; a space which places importance on their mental wellbeing; a space in which they can trust and be trusted; a space in which they are truly seen”.
Staff in a safer classroom should be aware of racial trauma and should have considered ways to reduce it. Racial trauma is the physical and psychological symptoms that can be experienced after and/or during a racist incident.
All adults need to ensure their racial literacy is such that they can regulate their emotions and not unwittingly create racial trauma in the questions or discussions they have. And of course we need to ensure our pupil voice exercises are not adding any further racial trauma.
I would challenge any school – if you believe that there are safe spaces in your school to discuss race, think again. Remember – there is always a personal risk felt when engaging in discussions about race and those who experience racism have had a range of negative impacts when discussing their experiences.
For example, pupils tell me frequently about how they are often reprimanded in schools for using the word “racism” to describe an incident – how they have received consequences for calling something racist and how little to no attention was given to their views, experiences or wellbeing.
Too many pupils have learnt that when they speak of their own experiences of racism in their school, schools begin to defend positions and dispute experiences. Again I talk about this in more detail in the article on handling racist incidents.
To begin with, in order to ensure your spaces are safer, only ask the questions when you are confident that you can handle the answers. Some things you can do to make the pupil voice space safer include:
- Ensure children understand that their responses will not be held against them.
- Ask their parents/carers for permission and tell them why you are doing it.
- Be aware of which staff member you choose to do the pupil voice and their capabilities to deal with race and racism as well as their racial literacy.
- Ensure you know what you plan to do with the information before you ask for it.
- Think about what strategies you will employ within the session to show your commitment to their privacy, anonymity and safety.
Asking the right questions
Having done hundreds of pupil voice interviews over my career, it is important to stress the importance of asking the right questions. Most children answer the big, sweeping questions in a similar way:
- “Yes, my school treats everyone fairly.”
- “Yes, I feel I belong.”
- “Yes, we treat everyone equally.”
These are answers to questions that were not scaffolded to allow children to share their experiences effectively with full understanding. For example, when I ask primary children if the school treats all its pupils fairly and how, most children who are “sent” to me say “yes”, they have values that support equality, or that they are a Rights Respecting School (among other answers). They are able to repeat the messages shared in assemblies, classrooms and lessons.
However, when you ask them questions such as – “Is everyone treated the same with regards to behaviour?” – they are often able to offer a number of ways in which treatment is not the same. They are then able to articulate inequalities where they exist.
When asking older children about belonging, giving them some examples of how you might feel a sense of belonging is helpful – such as: “Do you feel like someone cares that you turned up today? Do people smile at you every day? Do you feel that you are important here? How?”
Final thoughts
As I have discussed, racial trauma is often triggered by asking those who experience marginalisation to speak about their experiences but then only for systems, practices, relationships not to change.
So, above all, be clear about what the purpose of collecting pupil or community voice is and also about what impact it is going to have. What will be done with the feedback? How will the school community be affected or changed by these discussions? How will it help them and others?
If you cannot answer these questions, you are not ready to ask your pupils about racism or other lived experiences.
Pupil voice is not something that you can just “slip” onto the timetable for 30 minutes, turn up, gather their views, and then walk away with no consideration of wellbeing. It is deeply personal, especially when talking about race and racism. We need to do a lot of work prior to pupil voice activities to ensure a psychologically safe space that allows children to share, if they choose to.
- Orlene Badu is a former primary school headteacher who also has experience working in alternative provision. She is the author of How to Build Your Antiracist Classroom (Corwin UK, 2023) and now works across London as a leadership and management advisor supporting schools and local authorities. She is also a school improvement advisor and is the curator of Hackney’s Diverse Curriculum. Read her previous articles for Headteacher Update via www.headteacher-update.com/authors/orlene-badu nd visit https://orlenebaduconsulting.co.uk/
Further information & resources
- CHSCP: Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review: Child Q, 2022: https://chscp.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Child-Q-PUBLISHED-14-March-22.pdf