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Are private schools serious about tackling racism? I give them a D-

<span>Photograph: Tim Ayers/Alamy Stock Photo</span>
Photograph: Tim Ayers/Alamy Stock Photo

Can private schools solve racism?
Charlie, by email

This is my first day back at the Guardian after I took two weeks off, although – hoo boy! – it feels more like a decade. Since I last wrote here, there have been global protests about the racist murder of George Floyd. JK Rowling sparked widespread fury when people realised they couldn’t cast a silencio spell over her and stop her committing that terrible crime of talking about how female biology has affected her life. And – oh yeah! – we are still living through a global plague.

So a lot has been going on. This may be a radical admission from a journalist, but I pretty much stopped stopped following the news while I was off, for my own sanity. But just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in again. While I was blissfully trying to ignore everything and stop having more sodding opinions, I received an email from my old private school in New York, which reassured the alumnae that, in the wake of the epidemic of killings of black people in the US, there would be “discussions” between the teachers and pupils about “violence against people of colour”. Also, the school library is curating an “anti-racism reading list”. Alas, the discussions and reading list were not enough and some former students told the New York Times that they had suffered from racial abuse while at the school. Cue further panicky-slash-handwringing emails from the school, culminating in a “plan of action”. This included more “diversity training”, an “inclusive curriculum” and, last of all, a promise to “review student composition”.

British private schools have sent out similar letters and made comparable statements. They are, as the currently popular phrase has it, “doing the work”. But are they? Westminster School has said, in response to recent complaints from former students, that it is establishing a “challenging racism committee”, and that it will work to “ensure a diverse school community that is truly reflective of the multicultural city in which we live”.

I called Westminster, curious as to how it would achieve this diverse and reflective community, given that its fees are in excess of £41k a year for boarders, and more than £28k for day students. It could not share that information, but it reminded me it had formed the challenging racism committee “which will look at the diversity of both the staff and pupils”. When I asked whether this would just be about racial diversity or also other forms too, I was told to ask again later in the year.

According to the Independent Schools 2020 census, the percentage of “minority ethnic” students in the UK’s private schools is almost the same as in the state sector – 34.9% versus 33%. But “minority ethnic” is a big umbrella. I occasionally give talks at private and state schools, and while the ethnic minority kids in the latter are generally black and Asian inner-city children, in the private schools they are largely wealthy foreign students. This is not a surprise, given how much private schools cost, but it does highlight how elite institutions and corporations, in their rush to score woke points with as little cost to themselves as possible, conveniently ignore the crucial factor of social class.

Gender and ethnicity are important, but social class remains the biggest factor in determining the quality and length of a person’s life in this country, so it should play a bigger part than it does in the vogue for identity politics, not least because race and class intersect so much. If private schools were really serious about diversity, they would expand scholarships for working-class kids of all backgrounds. At the very least, they would let state schools use their facilities; I once visited a state school in the morning that didn’t even have a library, and then a private one in the afternoon that had a screening room. Instead, they issue press releases about “discussions” and reading lists. It boggles the brain that these schools have charitable status in the UK.

I get a lot of guff in my inbox, from fashion brands avowing how anti-racist they are despite never featuring black models in the shows, to Instagram influencers fighting oppression one sexy selfie at a time. But the schools issue is more important, given what an enormously unfair advantage private schools give to a child’s long-term prospects and it is gross – if entirely predictable – how little the schools are willing to try to change to stop entrenching inequality. As efforts go, I give this a D-. More work needed, buckos.