By: Jason Swanson

By: Maria Crabtree, Katherine Prince, Jeremiah-Anthony Righteous-Rogers

Using Critical Anti-Racist Discourse Analysis, the study reveals significant divergences in reform trajectories. England and Northern Ireland largely adopt race-evasive, technocratic framings that obscure structural racism under broad categories like “disadvantage” or “diversity”. In contrast, Wales and Scotland demonstrate comparatively stronger commitments to equity and anti-oppressive education, though they, too, stop short of fully embedding decolonial or race-explicit frameworks in their core curriculum guidelines. The analysis highlights the critical need for “Conscientization”, arguing that the omission of explicit racial discourse sustains white ignorance and erases the lived experiences of racially minoritised communities.

The article concludes with policy recommendations aimed at radical structural transformation, including the decolonisation of curriculum knowledge, mandatory anti-racist teacher education, and intersectional accountability measures. Ultimately, this important and original paper calls for a shift from rhetorical commitments to racial equity toward substantive, system-wide change across UK education.

After the racist riots in 2024, most Award schools failed to respond. Findings suggest Award leaders often see racism as external, ignoring its presence in institutional processes, policies, and deficit views of racially minoritised staff, students, and families. While many describe pursuing anti-racism as a ‘journey’, the starting point and a definition of the destination remain unclear. Few adopt Bell’s (1992) ‘permanent racism’ stance, recognising schools’ roles in sustaining racism and committing to ongoing unlearning.

Unlearning racism as a continuous process conflicts with neoliberal school cultures focused on quick fixes and ‘completer-finisher’ mentalities, reflecting white supremacy culture (Okun, 2022). Effective anti-racism requires leaders to accept racism’s permanence and adopt an unsentimental approach (Warmington, 2024). Only through this perspective can schools recognise and challenge systemic racism, fostering enduring anti-racist vigilance. The key question remains: how can schools sustain permanent anti-racism praxis amid the persistence of structural white supremacy?

Palestine operates here as both an acute site of violence and a diagnostic mirror that illuminates a transnational repertoire of epistemic governance: censorship, securitisation, campus injunctions, and weaponised definitions that chill debate and criminalise solidarity. The article extends the concept of scholasticide beyond material destruction to include ideological and institutional assaults on dissent and critical thought, demonstrating how marketised, securitised universities reproduce racial regimes while disavowing complicity.

Against this architecture, the paper advances a praxis-oriented framework drawing on critical pedagogy and the Palestinian ethic of Sumud to envision universities as sites of freedom rather than corporate neutrality. It sets out concrete strategies for scholars and institutions, including protections for dissent, refusal of censorious definitions, divestment from complicit partnerships, cross-border classrooms, and recognition of emotional–political labour, to convert witness into transformative action. The article concludes by insisting that academic responsibility is irreducibly collective: education must commit to liberation, not serve domination.

The book traces Tooley's journey across continents — from sprawling shanty towns in Africa to remote villages in the mountains of Gansu, China — introducing readers to the children, parents, teachers, and entrepreneurs who reshaped his understanding of poverty and learning. What he discovered was that low-cost schools in the poorest areas of the world are supporting education rather than passively waiting for aid or handouts. Instead, they are actively building their own schools, often from nothing, and finding ways to educate their children on their own terms.

James Tooley has a rare gift for weaving together personal narrative, grassroots activism, individual resilience, and family devotion into a single, compelling thread that pulls readers straight into the lived reality of education in the developing world.

What makes this book especially personal for me is that Hyderabad, my own city, is featured in Tooley's research. His Indian study included Mr. I. V. Subba Rao, then Education Secretary of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh — a sharp, perceptive bureaucrat who was also, at the time, Chairman of my school. Reading about a figure so closely tied to my own institutional history, in the context of a global study on low-cost private schooling for the poor, gave the book a sense of immediacy that few academic works manage to achieve.