One headteacher quoted in the report says:

 

"I’ve had to fill out reports for incidents where the child concerned [ie, the victim] hasn’t made any complaint at all, but one of my staff has felt that there’s been an element of racism. We’ve had a few where the children are best friends and so the trick is to try and handle the thing without it breaking up the friendship or instilling the idea of racism when really they haven’t any idea what that is." (p36)

 

He went on to say:

 

"We have to record incidents but they’re rare. A couple of times the County got in touch because we hadn’t reported any incidents for a couple of terms.... You can’t win this one – if you don’t report incidents you’re told you’re not being aware of racism – If you do report it there’ll be someone who decides there’s a major problem in the school".

 

Headteacher Jenny McCutcheon said:

 

"I don’t think its ever been about dealing with targeted bullying. We may have children that don’t like each other!  We had to have a race equality audit because of the number of incidents. So, because we log everything and our procedures are robust we get an audit!"

 

A parent said this:

 

"Last year my 10 year old daughter, mixed race (mother white) and her three friends were accused of racism by the mother of a fifth friend in the group. When the girls were 6, they played a pretend game of one being checkout counter girl and the others being a food item. My daughter wanted to be chocolate, so did a black girl in the group, so my daughter settled for strawberry. THREE years later the black girl mentioned to her mother that she had been called chocolate, which led to a complaint to the school, then an inquiry by the headteacher, a formal notification to my ex-wife and other parents the girls were being investigated for racism, and a lecture to all parents involved about how bad racism is."

 

A parent said this:

 

My 11-year old son was given a one day exclusion last year as a result of a so called 'racist incident' which I thought was absolutely ludicrous given that he had simply used the word 'Paki' to a 'white' class mate when his team had won the quiz in his French lesson!! My son & indeed our whole family have links with ethnic minorities in our own private lives & I can assure you that my son would NEVER deliberately cause upset by actually calling somebody of a different race anything detrimental. The whole thing had been blown out of all proportion as far as we are concerned. I might add that as a family, we have always supported my son's school & their decisions but on this one, we strongly disagreed. 

 

This whole issue has been brought on by ADULTS expecting children to think/behave like adults…God forbid! Children, naturally, are completely oblivious to race/colour or creed but these ridiculous policies are certainly going to draw to their attention children’s differences.