Dragons’ Ashton Hewitt on racism incident at Abertillery school

Last week, 11-year-old Raheem Bailey was seriously injured while climbing over a fence in a bid to escape what has been described as a racially motivated incident.

In the days that have followed, a number of people have reached out to the Abertillery Learning Community pupil – including Dragons star Ashton Hewitt.

Speaking on BBC Radio Wales this morning (Tuesday, May 24), Mr Hewitt told presenter Claire Summers that he wanted to reach out to Raheem, in order to “support him, reassure him, and tell him that he’s not the one in the wrong and that he should be proud of who he is.”

Describing what happened to Raheem as “heartbreaking”, Mr Hewitt said: “It always takes something as tragic as this to bring the conversation to the forefront, to make people realise that things need to change.

Continuing, he said: “It’s not something that’s new, it’s not a one off, the sad thing is that this has got the attention because a boy has had to lose his finger to talk about the bullying and the racism.”

What should be done in schools?

Following the incident in Abertillery last week, Welsh Government education minister Jeremy Miles stressed that anti-bullying training is available to schools, should they wish to participate.

But, there has now been calls for stronger measures to be put in place – including measures which specifically seek to combat racism in an education setting.

Mr Hewitt said: “I’ve experienced racism and when it’s children as well, anything that makes you stand out is something that a child you’re arguing with, or a child that doesn’t like you, or a group of children, are immediately going to go to, to bring you down. Unfortunately, the colour of someone’s skin is one of those things, so I’ve experienced racism, not to the extent where I was being bullied by groups of people but I think that’s down to the fact that I grew up in a very diverse school. But, there are certain parts of the country which are less diverse, and being black or brown in that school is obviously going to stand out a lot more.

"I think that’s one of the problems, the education around this. We think, as the minister said, that schools are a safe place, but evidently not. You’ve got more stories, alleged stories coming out on Twitter just because this one has been highlighted but it’s certainly not something that doesn’t happen.

“I think it goes beyond anti-bullying. I think anti-bullying is massively important, but I think there needs to be specific training around racism and how to deal with racist incidents. I think there’ll be a lot of teachers out there who aren’t comfortable in dealing with racist incidents when it comes under bullying in that sense. I think it can’t be solved, I think racism is a much bigger issue to be solved by just an anti-bullying policy. I think there needs to be specifics to equip teachers to be able to deal with racist incidents effectively and safely for the child.”

Dragons star Ashton Hewitt

Continuing, Mr Hewitt also suggested that schools should seek to employ a more diverse teaching staff. He said: “It would make a huge difference because a child from an ethnic minority might see themselves in the staff and leadership group of the school. Perhaps there were more black teachers, young black boys and young black girls would have the confidence to go to a teacher if they were being threatened with attention allegedly.

“You’d like to think there would be someone else in the school who understands what they are going through.

“I think diversity is hugely important, not only for kids as role models, but for the institution itself.”