Many Senior Leadership Teams (SLTs) are engaging in professional development to nurture explicitly anti-racist practice. Teachers' knowledge gaps about racism, its traumatic, lasting impact and how racism is generated through schooling persist within a cloak of silence. This small-scale study explores interview data from senior leaders in English schools, questioning legacies of colour-evasion and breaking silences to understand the role 'race' plays in their schools, appearing exigent due to Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements and the inescapable reality of racism seen in George Floyd's horrific murder. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) as theoretical tools, we explore negotiations and challenges of leading anti-racist work in systems favouring whiteness as the norm. Findings show senior leaders undertaking the Anti-Racist School Award (ARSA) and/or Race, Identity and School Leadership (RISL) programme are novice 'race' practitioners, despite their seniority, wrestling to recognise whiteness and to connect their own 'race'(d) identities to role-enactment and policy. They must negotiate and make the case for anti-racist leadership to colleagues trained not to notice, and mitigate wider external systems operationalising whiteness, blocking the development of anti-racist practice. We examine resistances to anti-racist work in English school systems that (re)centre whiteness.
This paper explores the literature on the prevention of exclusions of Black children in English schools which has remained an entrenched problem and persistent concern for many decades. It examines grey literature from projects, as well as tested approaches, and the impact of preventative strategies, identifying patterns of when and where Black pupils are most excluded. This review begins by exploring the combination of systemic and policy changes that may have contributed to increased exclusion levels and triangulates evidence from reviews and academic analysis from experts in the field. The paper then explores projects that have responded to increases in the exclusion of Black girls and presents evidence of the experiences of intersecting identities and discrimination, such as adultification, and how this has been found to contribute to growing disproportionate numbers of exclusions for girls. Qualitative data from multiple Ofsted and DfE reports are reviewed and the effects of using role models, as well as the roles that teachers and leaders play in reducing exclusions as key systemic apparatus. The paper ends with research on different types of interventions to prevent school exclusion and their varied successes.
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