Young people don’t feel able to talk about race and faith in school - study

New research has found that young people from racially and religiously minoritised backgrounds are often unlikely to feel able to talk about issues around race or faith equality at school.

A new report, ‘Free’ expression at school? The making of youth engagements with race and faith, published today (20^th May), includes the final findings from a landmark research project led by the University of Birmingham and funded by the Leverhulme Trust, examining the extent to which young people are supported to express themselves about race and faith equality issues at school.

The study consisted of substantial quantitative and qualitative fieldwork across schools in England, including a school-based survey of 3,156 Year 10 students. The key findings paint a complex and concerning picture of multiple factors which lead young people to censor themselves.

Karl Kitching, Professor of Public Education at the University of Birmingham, who led the study said: “The idea that freedom of speech on equality issues is ‘under threat’ from anti-racist and other movements in education has become a feature of public and political debate in recent years. But little attention has been given to how young people experience expressing themselves on topics like race and religion in schools, and how heightened political debates might be affecting this.

“Support for child and youth ‘free speech’ is in principle part of education policy in England’s schools, yet no study has directly enquired into how expression for young people is formed, enabled, and limited through the school system. Our study was designed to address this gap.”

As well as the survey of students in eight of the nine regions of England, the team of researchers, including Dr Aslı Kandemir and Dr Md Shajedur Rahman, also conducted interviews with policy makers and influencers at a local and national level, a survey of 214 teachers, analysis of 98 government education policy texts, and in-depth case studies of schools including 246 Year 10 lesson observations, 47 teacher interviews, and youth photovoice activities.

The study resulted in eight main findings:

• Young people from racially or religiously minoritised backgrounds are often inclined to not tell their teachers about personal experiences of discrimination, or their wider social and political views.
• Racially and religiously minoritised young people’s expectations of school as a place to learn about social and political issues differ; this is partly linked to social class and their expected achievement level.
• The geographic location of a school has an impact on how, and to what extent, social and political issues are discussed, with rural schools less likely to be perceived as supportive of expression on these topics.
• Black and Asian young people are at least 2.5 times more likely to disagree that the history of people from their racial or ethnic background is accurately taught in their school.
• 75% of students surveyed said social media is where they learn most about social and political issues, and friends and family are the people they feel most comfortable talking to about them.
• Schools that do well in holding conversations about social and political issues are places where young people feel much more confident that racism and religious intolerance will be addressed.
• Schools that address social movements such as Black Lives Matter are far more likely to have teachers who present several sides of an issue and listen to young people’s opinions.
• The inflammatory nature of some education policy discourse in the past decade has had the effect of undermining scientific evidence of systemic racism in education. This has a negative impact on policymaking around political impartiality, and on which social issues are labelled as ‘contested.’

Reza Gholami, Professor of Sociology of Education, who co-led the study, said: “Rather than topics such as Black Lives Matter preventing free speech, our research found that when these topics were discussed in schools, students at those schools reported feeling more supported to express themselves. For example, where Black Lives Matter was discussed in their school, surveyed young people were 2.5 times more likely to say teachers present several sides of an issue, 3.5 times more likely to say teachers encourage them to share their opinions, and almost 3 times more likely to say teachers encourage them to make up their own minds. Where the concept of White privilege was discussed in their school, young people were twice as likely to say teachers present several sides of an issue, 60% more likely to say teachers encourage them to share their opinions, and 50% more likely to say teachers encourage them to make up their own minds.

“Our findings refute the idea that these issues are taught about in ideologically charged ways that prevent people from expressing their opinions; in fact, we found that schools that do not talk about these issues are less likely to have teachers who present several sides of an issue or listen to young people.”

The research concludes with six policy recommendations to help schools address inequalities in young people’s opportunities to learn about issues that matter and to express themselves. This includes updating both the national curriculum and assessment and inspection frameworks, improving reporting for schools on incidents of racism and religious intolerance, and empowering schools and teachers to address different views.

Professor Kitching concluded: “This study, for the first time, systematically captures the wide variety of factors that enable and constrain young people’s expression on race and faith equality issues at school, allowing us to understand how the school environment impacts young people’s capacity to express themselves on race and faith equality issues.

“It is important for our young people’s civic education at a time when extending the voting age to 16 is being proposed that young people believe that the problems they experience can be addressed. Policy on these issues should work to build trust with young people that anti-racism is a key priority in the education system, and in demonstrating to them that their voice and agency matters.”