Abbott Calls for More Support for Black Teachers

09 Nov 2009
Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbott called for more support for black teachers and more action against institutional racism in schools. She was responding to a report by researchers at Manchester University and analysts at Education Data Surveys which says that institutional racism is partly responsible for the lack of Black and ethnic minority teachers in leadership roles.

Currently only 1% of headteachers in England come from a Black or ethnic minority background, despite the BME presence in the population as a whole being 10.1%.

Almost half of the ethnic minority teachers interviewed said they had been the victim of some sort of discrimination based on their ethnicity and 70% said they thought it was harder for ethnic minority teachers to become headteachers.

Commenting on the findings today Diane Abbott said:

”I am concerned by these findings but not altogether surprised. For years black teachers have been telling me about the difficulties of getting promoted and making it to the top of their profession. I have regularly pushed the education department to seriously address the under-representation of black and ethnic minority teachers in headships. Having more Black and ethnic minority heads would help to diversify the whole teaching workforce and would provide brilliant authority role models for youngsters. There is some great work being done by organisations such as the London Centre for Leadership in Learning diversity programme but we need more of this work.”
 
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