Group raps playground 'race police'

According to civil liberties organisation The Manifesto Group, young children are being branded racist before they even know what the term means - and playground spats are being turned into full-blown racial incidents.

Teachers are also being made to operate with the attitude of police officers, filling in forms about name-calling and jokes, it said.

Under the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, schools in England and Wales have to report "racist incidents" to local authorities.

The Manifesto Group report - entitled The Myth of Racist Kids - said of 5,000 incidents in Yorkshire schools in 2006/07, the majority were in primary schools. In Essex, most reported incidents involved children between the ages of nine and 11. Birmingham's education authority saw the number of incidents almost double to 1,606 between 2002/03 and 2008/09, while east London saw an increase from 584 reported incidents in 2002/3, to 881 in 2007/08.

Report author Adrian Hart said: "The obligation on schools to report these incidents wastes teachers' time, interferes in children's space in the playground, and undermines teachers' ability to deal with problems in their classrooms. Worse, such anti-racist policies can create divisions where none had existed, by turning everyday playground spats into 'race issues'.

"There are a small number of cases of sustained targeted bullying, and schools certainly need to deal with those. But most of these 'racist incidents' are just kids falling out. They don't need re-educating out of their prejudice - they and their teachers need to be left alone."

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT teaching union said the report "trivialises and downgrades the importance of challenging racist abuse."

She said: "Teachers and all school staff take their responsibility to challenge inappropriate behaviour, whatever its nature, very seriously. It is part and parcel of educating children and young people and essential to creating a safe learning environment. To seek to dismiss racist taunts as 'playground spats' shows a breathtaking degree of ignorance and irresponsibility.

"Prejudice-related bullying makes the lives of too many young people a compete misery. It leads to serious problems such school refusal, ill-health and low self esteem. It is not, and should never be considered as, part of growing up."