NASUWT says 68,000 BME teachers needed.

Where do I start...

Your false comment about says a lot about your refusal to engage in a proper discourse. It's not as if you'd listen anyway because you clearly don't understand the different types of racism BME people have to go through.

Secondly, posting yawn pictures on a sensitive topic such as a racism says a lot about your attitude. You might think that people are on your side but don't forget this is a public forum open to the entire internet which will be read by a wide variety of people racists and non racists so it's not going to be as one sided as you think.

A couple of questions from me

1) are you a BME teacher?
2) do you work with BME teachers
3) do you think BME teachers have valid concerns about racism?
4) have you experienced or seen racism against BME teachers?
5) what have you done to combat racism in your life?

I hope this thread hits several hundred comments so that people like you can start coming out of the woodwork and be exposed for they really as well realising the racial issues in teaching. Keep commenting as you are helping this issue gain momentum.

 

You are only speaking yourself. What makes you think nearly everyone viewing this thread is supporting you? Your racist mindset is straight out of the 1960s.

What a shame it is to have people like you in teaching.

 

In my school (a predominantly white school) we have a fairly diverse workforce compared with other schools I've worked in.
There is (in a very small SLT) one BME member of SLT - very much a loved member of staff and who will be much missed when she moves school later this year. She applied and was appointed out of a field of six, the other five of whom were white, by a white headteacher.
On the rest of the staff there are several BME teachers/support staff as well as white non-British teachers. We all sit together at lunchtimes and breaktimes, socialise together and enjoy one another's company. I've never heard a racist comment from any colleague about BME teachers (but I have about white EU teachers as well as Australian teachers - and yes, I did challenge the comments and complain) and it simply would not be tolerated. However, out of the BME teachers at my school only one (the member of SLT) is in a leadership role. I don't know if that's because they haven't applied or if other factors are at play.
The racism in my school comes from students, not staff. Racist comments made towards French, Spanish, German and Turkish teachers have been prevalent in the past. I've heard snide comments about Polish colleagues and Australian colleagues. I don't think these are dealt with well. I have also heard but not seen that racist graffiti has been seen with comments about some of the BME teachers in my school in the kids' loos. I know of two supply teachers, one white but not British and one Muslim woman from London, who left the school after racist abuse from students. Again, I don't think it was dealt with as robustly as it should have been.
I fully acknowledge that there is dialogue and action that needs to happen to tackle institutional racism and sub-conscious bias, as it's hard to believe that schools are bastions of racial equality when the rest of the world isn't. However, in my school the BME teachers are not 'BME teachers' - they are simply part of our team and often part of a wide friendship group. I would be horrified to find that any of my colleagues felt ostracised or were treated differently because of their race or religion, sexuality, or other personal quality.

I think that in all areas of life, good role models are essential to provide children with an example of the possibilities they might have. Whether that means male role models in the Primary classroom or more BME teachers in leadership roles, it can only be a good thing if it opens up a more equal, less splintered society.

 

Top quality post.

What I'm trying to do is get people to understand that many BME teachers experience discrimination and racism but not everyday or in every school. A balanced view is required in these topics but when people deny the experiences of your community flat out, of course we get defensive and one sided because we are under attack. What some posters here have done is flat out deny racism exists because they haven't seen it which is absurd. Now can you imagine hundreds of thousands of teachers with the mindset of people like Frankcommenter or Ed? We would never make progress towards racial equality because they deny the problem even exists. They are part of the problem!

 

You have to remember that when people don't see things, it's not always because of blindness but because of a limited view. I regularly have arguments with people about why feminism is still needed because I've experienced misogyny personally and been treated as dumb/ditzy/just a big pair of walking breasts. They haven't experienced it so my view is 'prudish' or 'simply not true anymore' or 'can't be true because we've moved on a long way'. It's not necessarily sexism that drives their viewpoint: it is a lack of experience.
I, as a white British woman, will never experience what it is like to experience the anti-Semitism that my Jewish friends do, nor will I experience the undercurrents of racism that permeate British public life. It's easy, therefore, to assume they simply don't exist because they don't exist to me.
I don't have the exact figures but I did read recently that there are staggeringly low figures of BME headteachers in British schools in proportion to the number of BME teachers. Why?

 

Are you advocating putting (for example) black pupils into classes with back teachers and white pupils in with white teachers? I'm not sure I like the sound pf that.

Or are you arguing that the proportion of BME teachers in the UK should be the same as BME pupils in the UK? Or the same proportion of BME people in the UK as a whole?

But then we have another problem. If you have, for example, a black maths teacher then the pupil has 0% white maths teachers. Do you want this equality by subject?

What about different schools in different areas? Do you want each individual school's teaching body to represent the pupil body? Or do you want it to represent the local area? Or the country?

Is it right we have schools with large numbers of Asian pupils having an equally large proportion of Asian staff? If an Asian member of staff leaves should you ban all white applicants (or vice versa)?

Is it right that a school in another area of the same town with a mainly white pupil body has almost all white staff? Isn't school an almost perfect opportunity to open them up to contact with people who are BME?

If members of the BME population don't apply to be teachers, do we make the profession more attractive to them? 10% extra pay if you're non-white?

There are more questions than answers.

 

I think the key thing would be more support through their training and early careers to help overcome obsticals. Something akin to the likes of Athena Swan in STEM or the guarentied interview scheme for disabled people when applying for jobs. It gives them a leg up for getting started and support during without undermining their efforts. I can only speak for myself and those that have echoed my sentiments in this respect, but suspect that it's true for many that it applies to, I would hate to be employed just because I ticked off a diversity quota.

 

What a surprise your alter ego has liked your post...

FWIW I suspect YOU are a racist.

 

You are the sort of fantasist who makes integration much more difficult. A very sad piece of work.

 

The point you are making is that 'ghettoisation' is wrong...and I agree 100%.

But no-one yet has grown that there is a problem of BME teacher numbers - there is actually a very close correlation between the % of the population that is BME and the % of teachers that are. The real issue may well be the % of BME teachers in SLT & (esp.) HT roles.


Of course that doesn't excuse comments made by pupils/parents about teachers, and sometimes that includes comments that are (rightly) perceived as racist (& I'm including comments made about teachers or, indeed, pupils from other EU countries, whatever their skin colour). Schools need to deal with them and, in my experience, do, otften as well as they can.

But the issue won't be helped by the inane and provocative whining by some posters (or is it just one?) here...

 

I will let Mr FW answer this and your other questions, if he wishes to, but I have a question for you, Smithy84: Do you have to be a BME teacher/person to really understand this issue, can an enlightened white person not do so, also?

 

I assume you are also sympathetic to the argument that white students should be taught be white teachers?

You do realise you are arguing for segregation in schools yes?

 

I pretty much gave up as soon as ''white privilege'' reared its head... excluding a group based on race... so classy.

 

At one school where I supplied, it was the Black and Asian parents who did not accept BME teachers. They wanted their little darlings to have white teachers.

 

No one is arguing for segregation, that is your interpretation. Having BME teachers does not mean having only BME teachers.

 

Or dismissing a group because you don't believe what they say and their experiences?

 

Why are you associating a heavy BME population with ghettoisation? It actually is a genuine question, no snark or anything. It is important to have a healthy representation for BME pupils though, would you argue against that point?


(Sorry if you see a similar post above somewhere, I tried to answer you before but I can't see my other post)

 

Bless. You really can't handle the fact that other people challenge views.

 

I was referring to the point that some (for example in the discussions on R5Live the other morning) were making about schools with a very high % of BME pupils 'needing' more BME teachers..even though, in one example, there was already 41% BME teachers in that LA. To my way of thinking the idea that 'only' BME teachers are suitable for schools with a high % of BME pupils will soon lead to BME teachers being pigeon holed. And that would, I suspect, be a bad thing both for them and for all schools. Some have said that education in the USA follows this pattern in many areas.

I would suggest that schools with a very small number of BME pupils would benefit from more BME teachers, in fact. But, as I've said more than once, the % of BME teachers is very much the same as a the % of BME people in the country. So maybe this isn't a real problem.

 

Multiple personality disorder raises its sad head again?