The UK government must adopt a BlackCrit approach to racial justice within the education system
There is an ongoing wilful failure to secure the rights of people of African descent in the United Kingdom which is leading to an endemic of anti-Blackness in UK schools that I witness, and seek to disrupt and dismantle through my organisation – Black Learning Achievement and Mental Health - BLAM UK.
BLAM members have written extensively elsewhere about how police presence in schools causes serious harm to young people, who are constantly subject to scrutiny, fears of racialised harassment, and interference in their day-to-day lives, triggering race-based anxiety. Policing in this country remains racially discriminatory and the policing that takes place in schools is no exception. Only poor and racialised schools are made into spaces that require constant police presence. Schools are supposed to be places of learning and safety, and having police in schools adversely impacts the learning outcomes of Black children and often unnecessarily funnels them into the criminal justice system.
