Review

Excluded Black pupils need more support

If school exclusions are not to blight the futures of African-Caribbean young people, strong local support has to be provided. According to a report by leading educationalists, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, African-Caribbean young people who are permanently excluded from school at some point in their lives, can easily drift into crime. And exclusion

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Review

Mounting criticism of detention of asylum-seeking children

In the last month, there have been a number of critical reports published into the detention of asylum-seeking children in the UK and the provision of care for them. Yesterday, Alvaro Gil-Robles, the European Commissioner for Human Rights, commented that ‘it is worrying… to note both the frequency and the duration of the detention of

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Plymouth school students detained after escaping racist harassment

Two asylum-seeking students who were forced to leave their school because of harassment are now facing deportation. Last September, a police investigation was launched at Parkside Community College in Plymouth, after a group of forty White students chanted ‘P*kis Out’ en masse in the school playground. The level of racism in the school had been

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Comment

Alem’s story

A school explores contradictions in attitudes to asylum seekers using video art. How would secondary school students react to finding out that one of their school friends was to be deported? And how would this help them reassess their beliefs about racism, belonging and asylum? As a Greater Manchester secondary teacher, I have been working

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Comment

The fight for community begins in Leicester

The threatened Council take-over of a Leicester community centre illustrates the contradictions in the government’s ‘community cohesion’ agenda. The withdrawal of funds from the hugely successful Highfields Youth and Community Centre (HYCC), in inner-city Leicester, has become the focus for a strong local campaign aimed at challenging the whole approach of the City Council and

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Review

A new anti-racist toolkit for youth workers

I Ain’t Racist But… aims to give youth workers the knowledge and tools ‘to respond constructively to racist incidents and deal appropriately with victims and perpetrators’. Written by Mandeep Rupra of the Racial Harassment Action Group Monitoring Project at Leicester Racial Equality Council, the stated intent of the toolkit is to encourage youth workers to

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