Last week, our Access to Justice team convened a much-anticipated Policy Roundtable on Education and Race in the City of Bristol. After extensive exploration funded by the Disrupt Foundation surrounding how BSWN could improve the access to justice for Black and Racialised communities, it was decided that a focus on educational inequalities would be a priority within the project’s pilot phase. What we uncovered throughout the year regarding racial disparities in education was dire.
Black students remain behind in GCSE attainment levels. They are also three times more likely to be excluded from school. Black girls in particular are being punished by way of exclusions at an increasing rate. Bristol also remains one of the most unequal core cities in the UK for educational disparities. It was clear, change is needed in our schooling system.
This Policy Roundtable, organised by Dr Barbara Brown (Research & Advocacy Lead) and Japheth ‘Jeff’ Monzon (Project Officer) as a finale to this pilot phase of our Access to Justice project, invited numerous individuals from all parts of the education system. From head teachers, to educators, to community workers, and parents of affected children, this provided a necessary space for strategic coordination to push back against racism embedded in the schooling system.
Alongside providing the secondary research of our Access to Justice work, we also worked closely with Dr Annabel Wilson and Dr Arathi Sriprakash of Repair-Ed to conduct primary data collection on the experiences of Black parents and their children. Dr Annabel Wilson provided an excellent presentation on the findings of these focus groups, emphasising the difficulties and harms imposed on both parent and child in Bristol’s schools. Parents themselves, specifically Lavinia King and Jasmine Tippett bravely shared their own experiences, effectively bringing reality to the statistics that were being shared. The Black South West Network team would like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Jasmine and Lavinia for bravely sharing their experiences to the room.
We also had Margaret Simmons-Bird MBE, who has collaborated with us throughout the year, to present on the statistics of racial disparities that she has uncovered from her own research and her many years of advocacy for racial equity within education. Within the same session we also had Hannah Woodhouse, Executive Director of Children’s Services speak on the current state of education from the Council’s perspective. Finally, we had the pleasure of hosting Lana Crosby’s of No More Exclusions who shared the fantastic work of the Bristol Chapter of NME and how they’ve successfully been making changes to school policy on exclusions.
Our session ended with intense discussions amongst attendees, brainstorming the many ways we can take action to bring an end do school-centred racial discrimination. Here’s a summary of what we heard:
🚀 Centring Action over Discussion; Purpose over Process.
🚀 Creating cultures of honesty and belonging.
🚀 Trusting Black adults to make decisions for a change – bottom-up.
🚀 Clear KPIs to ensure equity-centred impact and accountability.
🚀 Cultural competency training that isn't just centred on unconscious bias.
🚀 Seeing communities as valuable resources of knowledge and guidance.
🚀 Re-shifting focus to view suspensions as just as damaging as exclusions.
🚀 Emphasising the intersectionality of race, class, and gender in schooling.
🚀 Putting further emphasis on the issues faced by racialised SEND students.