Footballer Troy Deeney Calls for More Diversity in English Schools

March 4, 2022 

Birmingham City FC striker Troy Deeney has launched a campaign to broaden diversity in school curricula across England. In an open letter to the government and through a public petition, Deeney is calling for the history and experiences of Black, Asian and ethnic minorities to be made mandatory throughout all schools in the nation. 

The letter to the education secretary Nadhim Zahawi expresses Deeney’s own heritage and history of racial abuse. He was expelled from school at the age of 15, becoming part of the disproportionally high number of exclusions amongst mixed-race or Black Caribbean boys across the UK. A teacher even told him that he would die before the age of 25. Deeney says that he was in his 20’s before he began to learn more about his heritage and what it means to be a Black man, noting that an earlier understanding may have resulted in a different outcome. 

With three young children, he feels the urgent need for schools to expand the diversity in their curriculum to ensure that “children, from all backgrounds, have a balanced and inclusive understanding of Britain’s past, and how it has shaped society today.” 

“I have seen more and more how important it is for my children to be able to see themselves represented in what they are being taught and learn about the contribution and background of people who look like them,” he said. “The importance of education at an early age to inform identity and combat racist beliefs and stereotypes cannot be understated.” 

Deeney detailed his current experiences of racist abuse on social media and in person. He also raised the discussions on race that followed George Floyd’s death, which he described as ending in an ‘eerie quiet’, and questions the conclusions of a Sewell Report that states that the UK doesn’t have a systemic problem with racism. 

In a direct challenge to that, Deeney commissioned research with YouGov into teachers’ attitudes towards whether they thought they were equipped and empowered to teach diverse subjects. The study surveying 1000 British primary and secondary school teachers found that only 12% felt empowered to teach ‘optional Black-related topics' such as colonialism, migration and identity against other competing optional topics. 72% felt that the government should do more to support teachers in the teaching of cultural diversity in the curriculum.

According to Deeney’s letter, this is not the first petition calling for more diversity in the school curriculum. Over the past two years, nearly 400,000 people have signed petitions calling for diversity in the mandatory national curriculum, along with numerous parliamentary debates on the subject. However, the teaching of Black, Asian and ethnic minorities remains optional in schools.

Denney’s call was backed by Lavinya Stennett, founder of The Black Curriculum which promotes a wider range of Black content to be taught in schools. “The students and the teachers are asking for our work, and it’s the time to listen and mandate,” she said. 

The football star has been encouraged by the Welsh Government, which will have a new curriculum framework in place from September where the stories of Black, Asian and ethnic minority people will be taught. 

More recently, the government is planning an overhaul of the history curriculum to tackle the diversity, migration and cultural change of Britain, instead of repeating the Tudors and Second World War teachings. The change will come for children aged 5 to 14 and will be published in 2024.