A conversation about race: The road ahead

As the UK begins to emerge from crisis, deep structural inequalities have been laid bare, particularly within the areas of mental health and education.

Bloomberg’s Diversity & Inclusion team, in partnership with the Black Professional and Pan Asian Communities in London, hosted a conversation with Dr. Ohemaa Nkansa-Dwamena, registered and accredited counselling psychologist and co-founder of the Black and Asian Counselling Psychologists’ Group (BACPG), and Gina Cicerone, co-CEO of the UK’s Fair Education Alliance. They discussed the barriers, disadvantages, and biases embedded in mental health and educational systems. The conversation also examined the frameworks and policies that need to be dismantled and rebuilt to shift from survival to growth on the road ahead.

In discussing some of the ways that race and inequality manifest in the UK’s mental health system, Dr. Ohemaa Nkansa-Dwamena noted that, in therapeutic psychology especially, the experiences of Black, Asian and other ethnic minority people aren’t always taken into account. Racial inequalities commonly result in misdiagnoses, treatment which is not fit-for-purpose, and a general mistrust of services.

These discrepancies are further perpetuated by the way psychology curriculums are taught, how front-line practitioners are developed, and the resulting inability to provide equitable, culturally sensitive services to Black, Asian, and other ethnic minority communities.

On the educational front, Gina Cicerone explained how the UK’s sizable achievement gap is largely the result of inequalities in socioeconomic status. Data trends show that young people from low-income backgrounds regularly fall behind their wealthier peers. In addition, while results differ across ethnic minority groups, there is a correlation between income and race.

As we consider impacts on the next generation, and look at mental health and education in terms of equality, conversations like this one remind us that to create lasting change, we must continue to focus on data collection, changing mind-sets, and taking concrete policy action.

Seven essential takeaways

1. Data is a key component of change. In education, measuring the disadvantage gap every year has proven integral to exposing challenges, demonstrating progress and influencing policy. Collecting more qualitative data around mental health can help us better represent the diversity of individuals in need of services by illuminating the lived experience of Black, Asian and other ethnic minority people. It also allows for policy implementation that quantitative data alone cannot capture.
2. The Fair Education Alliance has measured the socioeconomic gap since 2011. The Alliance’s annual report outlines many significant, data-backed findings, including the following:
   • Young people from low income communities within England are more than 9 months behind their peers in reading, writing and maths by age 11.
   • On average, pupils from low income backgrounds are 18 months behind their more affluent peers by the time they finish their GCSEs (reach secondary school).
   • Black Caribbean pupils are at greatest risk of falling behind as the gap has continued to widen since 2011 and are three times more likely than their white peers to be permanently excluded from school.

3. COVID-19 and racism have been dubbed the “double pandemic”. With data supporting the fact that COVID-19 disproportionately affects those in underrepresented communities, supporting individuals, families and front line workers from these communities presents a new frontier of complex challenges. Issues ranging from reactivation of traumas, anticipatory and collective grief, and mental exhaustion, as well as inequalities in access to services are proving to be doubly hard to navigate and solve.
4. A multifaceted solution is the only way to change mindsets in mental health. Conversations plus concrete solutions will be required to:
   • Develop a more holistic approach to working with Black, Asian and minority ethnic people and the traumas that emerge from this era.
   • Decolonize the curriculum in psychology training so it does more than just include case studies representing Black, Asian and other ethnic minority communities
   • Overcome the financial and support barriers preventing a diverse workforce and keeping the numbers of Black individuals admitted into clinical psychology programs much lower than their white counterparts.
5. Wellbeing and belonging must be prioritized as equal to academic attainment. A well-rounded education should include the fostering of a nuanced, culturally appropriate understanding of every child’s unique life experiences through:
   • A diversity of viewpoints that make education fair across the board.
   • An inclusive workforce who can share their life experiences and help introduce race into the curriculum (only about 1% of Britain’s Headteachers, Deputy Headteachers and Assistant Heads are Black).
   • Support measures that help teachers and leaders in areas at greatest disadvantage stay and thrive.
6. Supporting policy change is paramount. As government funding in England is not designed to specifically support pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, the push for equal academic achievement cannot be sustained without diverting resources to where they are most needed. Policymakers listen to public opinion, so getting behind such initiatives is crucial.
7. Policy action is central to everything we hope to accomplish. Mental health policy must address individual experience in the world. While we cannot discuss racial inequalities in mental health without discussing structural or economic inequalities, advancing the mental health services framework will have a positive effect on how inequalities are addressed in other areas.

Looking ahead

Pushing for collective growth is the best way to ensure change continues to light the road ahead for all of us.

Here are some positive achievements that emerged from this conversation:

• More attention is being paid to decolonizing curriculum in psychology training and to capturing, representing, and reflecting the individuals with whom psychology professionals engage.
• England’s £1 billion National Tutoring Programme package is a prime example of how advocating for change can make a difference.
• While Pakistani pupils in the UK were 3½ months behind their white counterparts on average in 2011, that gap has since narrowed to just half a month – significant progress that would have been missed without data collection.

To keep the dialogue going, we must learn more about inequalities in mental health and education, continue to talk about race with our peers, and remember that challenging one another through conversations like these helps us all become better allies. Name things for what they are. Accepting and acknowledging racial inequality and our position in that is actually a very active process that gives us the impetus to work from a place of greater awareness.

By becoming drivers of change, and ultimately staying the course, we can all thrive and share opportunities to build exceptional lives and careers.

At Bloomberg, we consistently prioritize inclusion in an effort to truly represent the communities in which we all live and work.

Bloomberg’s Corporate Philanthropy team are proud to support The Fair Education Alliance (FEA) as a strategic partner in their mission to tackle inequality in the education system. Our current partnership builds on a legacy of being lead sponsor of the Innovation Unit from 2016. During this time, 24 organisations were incubated through the Innovation Award, enabling them to start-up and scale, and 39 additional organisations were supported to accelerate growth and deepen their impact, with a combined annual reach of over 6,000 schools and 1.2 million pupils.

More recently, Bloomberg supported FEA’s Innovation Award, which identifies innovative grassroots solutions to tackle educational inequality and provides the mentoring, advice and support to help realise these ambitious goals, and the Intrapreneurship Award, which offers existing members of FEA the support to develop, pilot and embed a new programme, partnership, product or service to make education fair.

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