Xeno-racism and the scourge of school exclusion | Institute of Race Relations

20.1.17

Xeno-racism and the scourge of school exclusion | Institute of Race Relations: The conservative restoration continues apace at every level of the British education system, most markedly in our schools. While cuts and austerity policies force local education authorities to become weaker and weaker and more and more comprehensive schools are replaced and consumed by privately-controlled academies and their corporate chains, OFSTED surveillance dominates the working and after work hours of teachers, curriculum development is taken out of their hands, testing and examinations rule supreme from the earliest pupil age, the power of headteacher/managers has never been so extreme and the democratic involvement of teachers and communities has never been so held down and discouraged. Such is the educational landscape nearly three decades after the 1988 Education Act, brought into being by the Thatcher government, yet pursued and institutionalised by successive Tory and Labour administrations.