Incidents of racial harm

Guidance on recording and reporting incidents of racial harm in schools

The LA recommends that:

All discriminatory incidents should be recorded.
Summary information about discriminatory incidents should be regularly reported to governors and parents through the requirement of the Equality Act 2010 to publish equality information annually.
Schools’ behaviour policies should cover discriminatory incidents and bullying and make clear how staff and pupils should deal with them.
All teachers should be trained to deal with discriminatory incidents.
Schools should always advise the police of any criminal activity related to discrimination.

Despite the commonly held belief (a belief also held by the DfE for some time), it is not, and never has been, statutory to record and report racist incidents. However, recording and reporting are still widely considered to be good practice, and their importance and value are reinforced by the Equality Act 2010.

Recording incidents enables schools to monitor incidents of prejudice related bullying, identify any actions required to eliminate discrimination, and evaluate whether actions taken are effective.

Ideally, the behaviour module in SIMS should be used to record details of individual incidents.

Collection of racist incidents data by the LA

The decision was taken several years ago that the LA would no longer collect racist incidents data from schools. This decision was reached for several reasons. One of the main reasons was that there was always great variation in schools’ recording of incidents, with some schools recording only incidents that they felt were very serious and others recording every incident. This meant that the data was not meaningful. Under the Equality Act 2010 it no longer makes sense to collect data only on racist incidents, as all prejudice-related incidents are now covered by one law. The LA continues to strongly encourage schools to record all discriminatory incidents and report on them to governors and parents, as per the guidance above.

School Improvement Officers may ask about prejudice-related bullying during their school visits.

Guidance on dealing with incidents of racial harm

Developing an approach to dealing with incidents of racial harm requires very careful thought, and expertise. Training for schools is available through the LA's racial equity programme. Alternatively, schools can arrange bespoke training directly with Race Matters: https://www.racematters.education/

Recommended books include:

Robin Richardson and Bernice Miles: Racist Incidents and Bullying in Schools www.betterworldbooks.com/RacistIncidents

Joe Brummer: Building a Trauma-informed Restorative School www.hive.co.uk/Joe-Brummer/Building

Onjali Q Raúf: The Lion Above the Door

A thoughtful KS2 book that highlights the experiences of two global south heritage children at primary school. While this book is aimed at younger readers, it is highly recommended to educators and parents to gain insights into the subtle, complex and overt issues children experience. www.hive.co.uk/The-Lion-Above-the-Door

Schools should consider incidents of racial harm within the context of their racial equity work, and think in terms of preventing and reducing incidents through their curriculum and school ethos.