To think it's weird that our school only has pictures of white children on its website?

[BruhWhy]

Just that really. We live in an area that's increasingly ethnically diverse and my own children are mixed.

There is a mix of white, black, Asian and mixed children in every class, in every year.

They just updated their website and have taken lots of new pictures of pupils to put onto it, but they've chosen only white children.

I know it's not massively important in the grand scheme of things but it did make me sit there and think 'oh, this might have been a decision that was made' and it's made me feel a bit funny.

A predominately white school where people have an issue with predominantly white pictures.

I wouldn't have an issue with predominantly white pictures... They're all white, not mostly white, all of them.

Stop making stuff up

It doesn't seem right. Because it's not reflective of the school population.

My ds went to a school out of catchment on an ehcp. Very undiverse area. Very middle class white population.

There were about 5 black/ethnic minority kids in a school of 1200.

There were on every page including the front cover which was 1 white female and male black student. . One was a friends of DS and actually asked the school if they were being used as the token PC tool to ensure diversity is shown!

He was a very bright, articulate and emotionally intelligent young man. My ds is disabled and suffered lots of bullying due to this and he defended him to the hilt. He said he never felt his opportunities were lesser due to his race (although accepted this isnt the case for every bame student) but felt it insulting to have 40% of photos showing a black student in a school where there were less than 1% of the population - and that the school made more an an issue of his race than he experienced in day to day life.

He was very interesting to listen to and talk to. He at college now studying law and wants to go into equality discrimination type law. I think he'll go far!

Have you considered it might be about the kids saying they don't want their photos taken regardless of whether the parents agreed?

I didn't see if you said Primary or Secondary school but I do Beavers, Cubs, Scouts and Brownies we have a parental agreement for all the kids for photographs of activities and finished products for us in our hut. Some of the kids are super vocal about not wanting their photos taken, or their activities photographed even without them in it for display on our boards.

Some of them are so worried about not being "cool" they would rather not be included, this is also a problem with the kid's other activities.

Have you considered it might be about the kids saying they don't want their photos taken

It could well be.

My children are mixed race and in our almost entirely white primary were usually in photos. We used to laugh about it. They are VERY beautiful though (not bias at all obv).

but felt it insulting to have 40% of photos showing a black student in a school where there were less than 1% of the population - and that the school made more an an issue of his race than he experienced in day to day life.

Exactly. It’s just patronising tokenism driven by middle class guilt at the fact the MC sphere is incredibly non diverse.

I used to listen to all the diversity nonsense working at FTSE companies where there were pretty much only white people in senior roles. Now I work in construction and see British WC lads working alongside Eastern European’s, Sikhs, Muslims, British Jamaicans, etc, every day. Also meet plenty of small businesses run by Indians etc. No need for all the smoke and mirrors because it’s actually a fairly diverse environment by UK standards.

Well I for one don’t believe you!

Say you’re a racist without saying you’re a racist 🙄

What statistics and evidence to you have to back up these claims

DS and one of his friend were on the schools website in a few places (they both did music and martial arts and happened to pop up a few times) - now you may look at him and little pal (this was when they were in little school) neither classified as white (ME and North African). Their classmate was also on the homepage - she is Turkish, again you wouldn’t necessarily think she is white. A Lebanese boy was also on one page (pale skin and hair with green eyes).

Last week DSs current school has photos taken of all the students for a school event for the school website. Two white kids appeared on the website (one of these twice) and the rest mostly asian and some black student (ds said he hid when the photographer was about as he didn’t want to be on the site). If you just saw the site you would have no idea where it was located.

Sometimes it just depends on who is around when the photos are being taken and who wants to be photographed (and of their parents allow photos to be used).

It is worth asking the question. But for the record, we always withheld permission for our DC’s photographs or video to be taken and published on ANYTHING done by the school whether online or on paper/posters.

My DC would have been photoed a lot as quite often they were the only Chinese ethnic child in their class or year. I didn’t want them to be come the poster child to advertise “diversity” and also we have strict safety practice of none of our children’s photos ever being online. We never posted any pictures of them growing up.

That is very odd and really not ok. The photos should represent all the school children. I suppose it could happen innocently if the page is only featuring photos from a single event that happened to skew towards one demographic and it is a page that gets rotated regularly so when the next set of photos is loaded it should be a different sampling. But I’m really reaching to create that scenario as a legit explanation.

It is normally the reverse. Our area is almost exclusively white, but all the schools feature a diverse cast of children on the glossy brochures and websites. It’s only when you start touring that you realize they all do it.

The total opposite of every other school in the country. Since the 80s, if there's been a non-WASP pupil then they've been front and centre of the school prospectus.

@Glitteryone

Every child in our school is white so it wouldn’t be strange for us.

However, if your area and school is ethnically diverse then this is very off!!!!

Every single child in your local school is white?!? 😱 where do you live? I'm in the back end of nowhere in the Irish countryside and the local school is very diverse

I was driving the other day and a bus was in front of me with an advertisement of a sixth form college. All white children. I thought it was odd as this was in London and it just made me think badly about the college.

@Briony123

The total opposite of every other school in the country. Since the 80s, if there's been a non-WASP pupil then they've been front and centre of the school prospectus.

Yeah my DH was one of those kids, front and centre on everything because he went to a naice white school and they were keen to show how diverse they were.

The fact that so many have pointed out how unusual this is leads me to believe they've done it completely by accident.

^TwoMuchTwoYoung

I think it IS massively important and I would definitely ask them why^

100%

Please raise this with them OP

When I say the majority of the school population is white, that's not to say there isn't quite a sizeable minority that isn't.

We're not talking just my kids and a few others dotted about, it's fairly mixed for our area. It's one of the reasons I'm not considering moving them to a closer school when we move in a few weeks, even though it means a pain in the arse school run in the morning - I like my kids to rub shoulders with all sorts of different people, and some that look similar to them.

So yeah, I'll raise it and see what they say. Glad to know I'm not BU.

@BruhWhy even “accidentally” it’s just racially ignorant. Perhaps they didn’t sit there and think oh let’s not include x or y due to skin colour, but some (even subconscious) part of them has lead them to only represent white children and that is part of the problem.

Sound like subconscious bias. If accidental. Teachers at my school get training in trying to counter subconscious bias.

It’s not weird.

At best it’s unconscious bias and quite frankly sounds like racism. I’d be shouting from the rooftops it’s absolutely unacceptable.

Needs brought up with head and governors. I doubt every non white child refused to have photo taken

I completely agree with you and would raise it. A school’s publicity should reflect its ethnic mix, not least so it has a better chance of engaging with members of those groups.

The school seems to be in the wrong here except if it is something like 90% white pupils / only 3 photos on the website, in which case it is representative and I would imagine they just chose the nicest photos.

@EightWheelGirl

but felt it insulting to have 40% of photos showing a black student in a school where there were less than 1% of the population - and that the school made more an an issue of his race than he experienced in day to day life.

Exactly. It’s just patronising tokenism driven by middle class guilt at the fact the MC sphere is incredibly non diverse.

I used to listen to all the diversity nonsense working at FTSE companies where there were pretty much only white people in senior roles. Now I work in construction and see British WC lads working alongside Eastern European’s, Sikhs, Muslims, British Jamaicans, etc, every day. Also meet plenty of small businesses run by Indians etc. No need for all the smoke and mirrors because it’s actually a fairly diverse environment by UK standards.

It's not patronising, it's not tokenism, it's not guilt - it's saying that there's a place for non-white British children. Why would you think it was anything else?

@DameFanny

Actually, I agree with @EightWheelGirl that a school that disproportionately over displays ethnic minority children to exaggerate their actual real life diversity is in fact doing tokenism.

It is also very common in the west that this happens.

I was one of the reasons why I withheld permission for my DCs photos or videos to be taken or displayed in any format whatsoever for any reason whatsoever. Because I knew they’d become the poster Asian Chinese children for the school.

Are you saying this does not happen? That minority children are not ever exploited to advertise schools in a way that misleads other parents on a school’s real life diversity?