260

of 500 signatures

Open letter text

Dear Principal and Chair of Governors,

Recent events in the USA have rightly sparked reflection on the racial inequality that continues to permeate our own society. Many of us have found ourselves examining what role we should play in dismantling the systems that uphold white supremacy.

As we know schools are in a unique position to cultivate young people's perception of the world and therefore affect change from the ground up. As US teacher Dwayne Reed so succinctly put it ‘white supremacy won’t die until white people see it as a white issue they need to solve rather than a Black issue they need to empathise with’. The population of Berkhamsted and the surrounding villages and towns from which the school’s students come are majority white.

For this reason, we feel that Berkhamsted School has the opportunity to play an important role educating it's students about the role that Britain has played in implementing and upholding systemic racism and the responsibility that we now have to dismantle such systems.

We understand that all schools are subject to limitations in both time and exam board specifications however as an independent school, Berkhamsted School is not restricted by the national curriculum and therefore has the opportunity to incorporate an unsanitized teaching of Britain’s colonial past and the ongoing effects of that in society today.

As a school that prides itself on developing ‘successful and fulfilled adults who will use the advantages of their education not just to aim high, but also to help others’ we invite you to respond to us with an outline of the current teachings of these subjects at Berkhamsted School and your plans to expand and improve upon these moving forward.

Yours Faithfully,

Pupils, parents & staff, both past and present

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Open Letter to Berkhamsted School

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Thank you for taking part! Here's a list of fantastic organisations campaigning for justice right now. Please give what you can to support the movement:

Black Lives Matter UK: https://www.blacklivesmatter.uk/

Black Visions Collective: https://www.blackvisionsmn.org

Emergency Release Fund: https://emergencyreleasefund.com

The Bail Project: https://bailproject.org

If you want to start a campaign calling on your workplace or industry to support the Black Lives Matter movement, you can start a campaign here: https://teamup.organise.org.uk/