"Learning in Terror"

HC Deb 16 December 1988 vol 143 cc756-7W

Mr. Cohen

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the implications for his policies of the report of the Commission for Racial Equality on racial harassment in schools, entitled "Learning in Terror".

Mr. Butcher

There is no place in our schools or colleges for racial antagonism or intolerance. The Government are pursuing a range of measures to try to promote racial harmony. These include action on initial and in-service teacher training and a number of projects funded through the education support grant activity on educational needs in a multi-ethnic society. It is Government policy that ethnic minority pupils should have the same opportunity as all others to profit from what schools can offer them and that schools should preserve and transmit our national values in a way which accepts Britain's ethnic diversity and promotes tolerance and racial harmony.