• About
    • Ethics policy
    • Privacy Policy
    • Ownership, funding and corrections
    • Complaints procedure
    • Terms & Conditions
  • Contact
  • Support
  • Newsletter
Brighton and Hove News
29 September, 2023
  • News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Opinion
    • Community
  • Arts and Culture
    • Music
    • Theatre
    • Food and Drink
  • Sport
    • Brighton and Hove Albion
    • Cricket
  • Newsletter
  • Public notices
  • Advertise
No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Politics
    • Business
    • Opinion
    • Community
  • Arts and Culture
    • Music
    • Theatre
    • Food and Drink
  • Sport
    • Brighton and Hove Albion
    • Cricket
  • Newsletter
  • Public notices
  • Advertise
No Result
View All Result
Brighton and Hove News
No Result
View All Result
Home Brighton

Are Brighton children being labelled bigots over playground taunts?

by Frank le Duc
Friday 2 Jan, 2015 at 4:21PM
A A
0
Are Brighton children being labelled bigots over playground taunts?

Children in Brighton and Hove as young as three years old are being labelled bigots, according to a campaign group.

The claims by the Manifesto Club are reported on the front page of the Daily Mail today (Friday 2 January).

The Manifesto Club, which campaigns against the hyper-regulation of everyday life, said that Brighton and Hove schools were filing details of relatively innocuous insults.

As a result, it said, small children were being branded racists, homophobes and bigots. Schools recorded incidents of children using insults such as “doughnut” and “gay”. Even calling a pupil a “girl” was classed as abuse.

Details were being passed on to the schools watchdog Ofsted, the children’s next school and to the local education authority Brighton and Hove City Council.

The Manifesto Club questioned whether this was the most appropriate way to deal with incidents that were often momentary and trivial.

Its findings were collated after a series of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.

They were published less than a few weeks after an Ofsted report on the Brighton Aldridge Community Academy (BACA) said: “Some students do not take note of the academy’s clear message that using the word ‘gay’ as an insult is not acceptable.”

Daily Mail front page 20150102

The council said: “Brighton and Hove City Council works closely with all schools in the city to keep children safe from bullying.

“Our city-wide approach enables us to work with schools to address issues and provide support where needed.

“We ask schools to record and share details of bullying by type, without identifying the children or young people involved.

“This helps tackle bullying in the most appropriate way and to develop assemblies or programmes about specific issues if required.

“Recording types and rates of bullying and prejudiced-based incidents is good practice for schools and is data that Ofsted is interested in.

“Responding according to type of bullying provides an effective way to tackle the complex issues.”

Adrian Hart, who analysed the data for the Manifesto Club, said it was “highly likely that thousands of incidents are being logged by schools across the country, regardless of whether their LEAs are requiring them to submit data or not”.

Of the 13 Brighton primary schools he surveyed, five said that they would attach incidents of prejudice-related bullying to the child’s reports submitted to the next school.

The Manifesto Club report said: “Hart issued a follow-up FoI (freedom of information) request to all Brighton primary schools, having identified this as one of the authorities concerned with a broader category of incident reporting.

“This revealed that the local authority has provided schools with a template ‘Bullying and prejudice-based incident report form’ which includes a classification of the incident into ‘ethnicity/race’, ‘appearance’ (hair colour, body shape, clothing), ‘disability/special needs’ (including ‘derogatory language’ such as ‘retard, spaz, geek, nerd’), ‘gender identity’ including ‘someone who does not fit with gender norms or stereotypes’, ‘home circumstances’ such as ‘class background’ (calling another child ‘chav, posh’) or ‘sex’ and ‘sexual orientation’.

“The form requires that the teacher report the location of the incident (bus/canteen/park/classroom), the nature of the bullying involved (‘cyberbullying’, ‘not being spoken to or being excluded’, physical abuse or ‘verbal abuse’ or ‘using language in a derogatory or offensive manner, such as name calling’).

“The form also requires teachers to consider whether the ‘victim’ is ‘especially upset’ or whether the incident has had an ‘impact on the wellbeing of the victim’, in which case the teacher is advised to ‘refer to the neighbourhood schools officer for a full risk assessment’.

“This form is for the school’s files. In addition to maintaining their own records, schools report prejudice-related bullying incidents to the local authority.

“Hart received 65 incident forms from 13 Brighton primary schools, of which 38 were racist incidents, 4 sexism/gender identity, 3 appearance or home circumstances, 14 homophobic and 3 ‘disability’.”

The Mail report said that passing records of children’s “prejudice-related” behaviour to their next school could potentially cast a shadow over their secondary education.

It warned that the practice could have serious consequences for any children labelled as bigots.

The Manifesto Club said that alleged offences by more than 4,000 pupils were logged in just 13 council areas, meaning that the national total may stretch into the tens of thousands.

The organisation’s convenor Josie Appleton said: “Particularly worrying is the expansion of incident recording and reporting to ever-greater categories of prejudice, which seem limited only by the strange imagination of education officials.

“One primary school pupil calling another a girl suddenly becomes a sign of gender image prejudice, subjected to recording requirements more thorough than accompanying most burglaries.

“A reality check is urgently required.”

Read the Mail report here.

Read the Manifesto Club report here.

ShareTweetShareSendSendShare

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Most read

Brazen bike thief steals £3.5k ebike as witnesses take pictures

Electric charging spots to be removed because they would block hearses

£1k a month garden cabin rental provokes outrage

Council faces £70m budget gap

Council books further £2.5m loss on Brighton i360 debt

Top music awards go to Bjork, Wet Leg and … a Brighton record shop

Football match-day guest parking permits look likely to be scrapped

Are Brighton children being labelled bigots over playground taunts?

Prankster artists swap snaps of Brighton tourist traps for housing estates

Is this your giant husky?

Arts and Culture

  • All
  • Music
  • Theatre
  • Food and Drink
Helen McCookerybook & James McCallum to bring The Chefs to Woodingdean

Helen McCookerybook & James McCallum to bring The Chefs to Woodingdean

28 September 2023
It’s certainly not the ‘End Of World’ for PiL

It’s certainly not the ‘End Of World’ for PiL

28 September 2023
‘Run Like Hell’ it’s Peter And The Test Tube Babies

‘Run Like Hell’ it’s Peter And The Test Tube Babies

27 September 2023
Green Door Store’s ‘2 3 4 Fest’ a resounding success! (Part Two)

Green Door Store’s ‘2 3 4 Fest’ a resounding success! (Part Two)

27 September 2023
Load More

Sport

  • All
  • Brighton and Hove Albion
  • Cricket

Sussex scent victory after a dominant day at Hove

by Will Symons
28 September 2023
0

Sussex - 202 and 505-7 (declared) Gloucestershire - 195 and 113-5 Sussex have victory in their sights after a commanding...

Manager of Brighton and Hove Albion’s women team dismissed after allegations

Albion ease out of Carabao Cup with Europa and Premier League taking precedence

by Tim Hodges
27 September 2023
0

Brighton and Hove Albion are out of the Carabao League cup after a goal from Nicholas Jackson settled the tie....

Carabao Cup Round 3 – Chelsea v Brighton and Hove Albion

Carabao Cup Round 3 – Chelsea v Brighton and Hove Albion

by Tim Hodges
27 September 2023
0

Brighton and Hove Albion go to Stamford Bridge for their first League Cup game of the season. Chelsea entered the...

Sussex come up short against Middlesex in County Championship

Sussex bat their way into a strong position on day two

by Will Symons
27 September 2023
0

Sussex 202 and 256-3 Gloucestershire 195 Classy fifties from Tom Clark, Ali Orr and James Coles put Sussex in a...

Load More
January 2015
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Dec   Feb »
ADVERTISEMENT
  • About
  • Contact
  • Support
  • Newsletter
  • Privacy
  • Complaints
  • Ownership, funding and corrections
  • Ethics
  • T&C

© 2023 Brighton and Hove News

No Result
View All Result
  • News
    • Opinion
  • Arts and Culture
    • Music
    • Theatre
  • Sport
    • Cricket
  • Public notices
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Contact

© 2023 Brighton and Hove News

This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.