Why school leaders must do more to combat divisive and radical language

Alison Kriel, experienced headteacher and CEO, on why schools need to take a more proactive, rather than a reactive, approach to tackle hateful language  

Read the full article below or on page 14 in our February magazine 

Last year racist hate crimes reached over 100,000 for the first time. Social platforms, such as Twitter, have become breeding grounds for radicalised thoughts, and stories such as the backlash faced by Nicola Sturgeon on a visit to a diverse Scottish school show how quickly – and openly – racist sentiment can be shared. 

Radicalisation online, whilst often fuelled by the echo chambers of social media, is something that schools are certainly not immune to; we all know how children are quick to pick up things from others, and when language such as ‘invasions’ or ‘illegals’ become normalised, this quickly filters through to the school playground – but for those children who may be refugees, or new arrivals to the country – or even children whose families have been in the UK for much longer – hearing these words, and the wider sentiment around them, is hugely damaging, and that hurt never goes away. 

From personal experience, I know how much it can make you feel like an outsider. The way in which migrants are discussed, even by those who are compassionate to the cause, is so negative and perfunctory that we can often feel uncomfortable and unseen, even when we have been here for a long time. It’s also harmful for the children in the class who are not from a migrant background – and staff too; exposure to these kinds of attitudes, and this kind of language, can feed directly into the perpetuation of prejudice, as well as risking opening the door to deeper radicalisation. There’s not only the fear that pupils will move into deeper and more active radicalisation, but that these pervasive attitudes will continue to warp the perception of migrants in ways which contribute to further division and day-to-day prejudice. 

What more can be done?

A report from UCL’s Centre for Teachers and Teaching Research, Addressing Extremism Through the Classroom, found that increasing exposure to radical material online has made the issue worse, whilst lockdown made it much harder to have face-to-face conversations or create safe spaces for discussion – this is why schools must act to both recognise this radicalisation when it happens, and work hard to make sure all children feel welcomed and valued. School leaders need to think about what more they can be doing to ingrain anti-racist action within their school cultures. 

In UCL’s report they also found that teaching around extremism was ‘highly variable’ and sometimes ‘tokenistic’, and that a focus around reporting this behaviour, rather than educating against it, does little to address the problem – and can even make educators less likely to act. 

It’s not just a case of challenging the language itself; working to simply ‘stop’ the kind of comments being used in school settings, or apologising after the fact, won’t go far enough to tackle the roots of the issue which are already well-embedded. Schools need to take a proactive approach, with clear strategies for supporting pupils who are new arrivals to the UK, or from migrant families.

Organisations like HOPE Not Hate have been able to offer fantastic whole school support, pushing for behavioural change and offering training to eneable schools to take an active anti-racist approach. Training plays a dual role in learning how to better tackle prejudice and, perhaps more importantly, in provideing the tools needed to spot it in the first place. 

A safeguarding issue?

Extremism cannot be challenged until it is understood. In teacher and author Jeffrey Boakye’s book, I Heard What You Said, he argues for racism to be seen as a safeguarding issue. “In the same way that you can’t get hired as a teacher until you know the basics of how to keep children safe, perhaps you shouldn’t be allowed to teach in a modern, multicultural society unless you know the basics of racist abuse and how it can harm all children.”

There needs to be greater support for school staff to spot the signs of radicalisation before it’s too late, and resources put in to take the matter seriously. At a much broader level, there are issues that need to be addressed through the curriculum, with considerations of how we frame wider conversations around race. With unparalleled access to hate speech online, and several content-creators producing steady streams of far-right, misogynistic and racist content, the problem will continue to grow exponentially if left unchallenged.  Most often, it is the offhand comments, or ‘banter’ that show the signs of radicalisation; these are, too frequently, brushed off, despite the fact that it is these kinds of comments which can spread most quickly. 

With last year’s hate crime statistics providing evidence of the rising intolerance in this country, which many – in education and beyond – can easily attest to anecdotally, it’s fundamental that we take the issue more seriously at every level. 

It is the role of school leaders to set examples from the top, as well as to dedicate time and resources to providing a meaningful path towards eliminating radicalisation.