Children as young as five are having innocent-sounding playground remarks logged as 'racist incidents' by primary school staff, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.For what possible purpose?
Many schools, including those in London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool and Brighton, record incidents on pupils' files which can be transferred when they move to secondary school.
Others use a national database of the incidents for other teachers to access and monitor files.
If only there was such a database for actual misbehaviour. Maybe then genuine threats could be tracked...
School leaders say they are encouraged to report all racist incidents to local authorities, though there is no legal requirement.
There's a saying about journalism:
"One cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank god, the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do unbribed,
There's no occasion to!"
I guess we can add 'teachers' to that list!
Adrian Hart, a researcher who uncovered the incident reports at Brighton schools, said: 'The vast majority of the so-called 'racist' incidents we see schools recording are simply evidence of children behaving childishly.'
And these incidents of teachers gleefully recording non-incidents for their fellows is...what? It's not 'childishness', is it? It's something rather more sinister...
The National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Headteachers, the Local Government Association and Leeds City Council were unable to comment.
I think the word you were grasping for there was 'unwilling'...
Can the public (who pays for this "service" ) read this data?
ReplyDeleteAfter all they need all the information they can get when choosing a school for their precious.
Presumably there is also an Anecdote Coordinating and Recording Officer on the Council payroll.
My God, how the money rolls in.
Also, this demonstrates the advantage of having a first language that the stasi / teachers do not understand.
Silly me.Of course, the Council will have to employ playground translators.
And another coordinator.
See above.
I'm sure something under the data protection act covers this. Data gathered needs consent or is mandated by the Stasi. It must be stored in certain ways and deleted after so many years, access is limited, data subjects have right to know what is being held on them. A FOI request should be the end of this and although there should be prosecutions for unlawful data recording we all know that there is one law for us and one for them.
ReplyDeleteDon't slag off teachers, join them and spare someone else becoming a bullied, overworked bloody donkey. I regret the idealism that misled me into joining the profession.
ReplyDelete"Can the public (who pays for this "service" ) read this data?"
ReplyDeleteI suspect the answer's 'no'...
"Data gathered needs consent or is mandated by the Stasi."
I very much doubt consent has been sought for this!
" I regret the idealism that misled me into joining the profession."
It used to be a respected one, though...