Schools told to do more to tackle racism after incident in Wales

As reported by the BBC News, the Welsh education minister has told schools to tackle bullying and racism head-on after a child lost a finger

Jeremy Miles has said that schools should have a “robust” approach and stressed that more needs to be done to prevent future incidents.

“Every school in Wales should have a robust approach to bullying and harassment and a robust approach to racist incidents,” said Mr Miles.

The comments come after reports that 11-year old schoolboy, Raheem Bailey lost a finger in his attempt to flee from bullies. Raheem’s mother Shantal said her son had been the subject of “racial and physical abuse” at school.

Ms Bailey said on Tuesday 17 May, Raheem caught his finger on a fence, after being attacked by a group of children.

Celebrities and sportspeople have come out in support of Raheem to offer support, notably boxing heavyweight star Anthony Joshua and Manchester United footballer Jadon Sancho.

Laruen Seager Smith, chief executive of Kidscape – a charity funded by the government to train schools on anti-bullying – has said it was “worrying” that school leaders did not have already any anti-bullying training in Wales.

“I think it’s really shocking to a lot of people that you can become a teacher or headteacher without any training in anti-bullying – when it’s so fundamental when it comes to children’s rights

“If you’re really going to tackle racist bullying – it takes really significant resource and the government have acknowledged they do need to do more work in that area,” said Ms Seager Smith.

A recent report by Show Racism The Red Card in 2020, for an inquiry into racism in schools, suggested that this incident is likely not unique.

A survey from the report found that 25% of teachers had observed, responded to or had a pupil report racial discrimination within the past year and that 63% of pupils said they or someone they knew had been a target of racism.