BRANDED BIGOTS AT AGE OF FIVE
Hundreds of children are blacklisted over squabbles in the playground
CHILDreN as young as five are being branded racists by education a uthorities r ecording playground squabbles as potential hate crimes.
Pupils’ arguments are being monitored, recorded and kept on file for the rest of the youngsters’ school lives. There have been 323 so-called ‘monitoring forms’ filed at schools across the country since 2014 – the equivalent of nine children a month being labelled as bigots, racists or transphobic.
officials insist information on ‘prejudicebased’ incidents within primary schools is retained as a ‘key area of good practice’.
But the volume of children being officially branded racists has sparked concerns that teachers and staff are ‘seeking out’ evidence
of offence. Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said that the forms were tantamount to ‘cruelty’ and criticised staff who filled them out for ‘demonising children for being children’.
He added: ‘Scotland has caught the English disease of forcing school staff to become thought police and witch finders, zealously seeking out evidence of offence even when none was intended.
‘This can easily degenerate into a form of child cruelty since it labels them as guilty of “hate crime” from an early age.
‘In most circumstances a quiet word with the child and, if necessary, with the parent or guardian, is all that is necessary.’
Worrying examples of the monitoring have emerged through data released under the Freedom of Information Act.
In Moray, a primary six pupil was taken to task for calling a younger girl a ‘girlie boy’ in a schoolyard in Elgin.
The playground taunt was officially recorded as a transphobic incident after staff interviewed witnesses and a report was sent to Moray Council’s Equal Opportunities Officer. One youngster in Crieff, Perthshire, was put on file for referring to another child as ‘a Mexican burrito’ – an incident which saw both sets of parents called into the school for a ‘restorative meeting’.
Another child in the Stirling area was the subject of a ‘Prejudice Based Incident Monitoring Form’ for calling a classmate ‘a black widow’.
A primary pupil in Perthshire was reprimanded for calling another boy ‘a chocolate cake’ in 2014 after the pair collided in the playground.
Teachers fill in official forms stating if primary pupils have suffered racism or ‘socio-economic discrimination’ or been bullied because of their ‘transgender status’.
Copies of the forms show how teachers have repeatedly branded schoolyard jibes such as ‘you’re from gravy land’ and ‘your mum is the Taliban’ as evidence of racial hatred. Some education authorities require the victim of perceived racism to fill in a form which includes questions such as ‘have you ever identified as being transgendered?’
The documents are later fed into a local authority ‘Multi-Agency Hate Response Strategy’ and analysed to inform ‘future improvements’.
Figures published in England last year found the number of primary school pupils suspended for racist abuse had increased by a third in five years.
Department for Education statistics revealed that 430 children between the ages of five and 11 were given fixed-period or permanent exclusions from their schools in the 2014-15 academic year because of racist behaviour. Scotland’s councils filed 323 official reports against primary children between 2014 and 2016, although 13 councils either refused to disclose information on data protection grounds or claimed not to hold it.
South Lanarkshire Council recorded 63 incidents, while Renfrewshire Council and Perth and Kinross Council recorded 49 each.
A spokesman for council umbrella group Cosla said: ‘Specifically in relation to prejudice-based incidents, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission highlights recording and monitoring as a key area of good practice.
‘Recording is not related to the chastisement of perpetrators but is instead used as a management tool to continually develop antibullying strategies and act on any emerging patterns of bullying incidents.
‘Recording is to inform rather than to immediately act upon.’
He added that the forms ‘will usually also capture views about the process and the resolution reached… which allows improvements to be made to the effectiveness of anti-bullying policy and practice and make the learning experience more enjoyable and beneficial for all.’
‘A form of child cruelty’