As part of Peterborough Citizens wider listening campaign the experience of young people and parents highlighted racism in educational experiences. The listening uncovered 3 key experiences… Student to student, staff to student and staff to parent.

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And Peterborough Citizens have not been the only ones who have reported these issues city wide… Many key organisations have highlighted key concerns around racial injustice within education.

-Racial stereotyping & profiling

-Bullying & harassment

-Exclusion or differential treatment.

At the Inspire education group we felt it was imperative to be onboard with the campaign and ensured we listened to our students and staff. Since November we have listened to 75% of our FE full time students (around 3000) and over 10% of our staff. We have identified a number of key themes within their experiences. Just as in wider society, racism was an issue which some of our students had encountered.

Key themes included:

-Covert incidents or racism- Ignorance around cultural understanding, Racism described as jokes and banter.

-Use of racial slurs both directional and non-directional

-incidents of bullying and harassment outside of lessons, in spaces which are not always monitored both on and off campus

Some Actions we have put into place:

• Training Program: 450 staff through anti-racism training in july

• Cultural Awareness Week including sessions understanding migration

• Support and guidance for staff on dealing with offensive language

• Training on bias, and dealing with facilitating conversations for staff

• Updated anti racism action plan

Our largest theme was the experiences of students and staff hearing/ experiencing racism and racial slurs packaged up as ‘banter’ and ‘jokes’ often leaving students or staff feeling they can’t challenge due to it not being taken seriously. This finding was not unique across the listening both in our institutions and wider…

This is why the campaign has been re-launched the ‘It’s not banter!’ campaign. Racism has often hidden disguised as ‘I only said it as a joke miss’, ‘It’s just a bit of banter’... But is it really funny? Is racism a joke? Is it really banter?