The teaching of race ideology in schools is “absolutely terrifying”, the equalities minister has said, as she warns that children should not be asked to take the knee in class.

Kemi Badenoch said that critical race theory is “morally wrong” and should have no place in lessons, but added that she is unable to ban it altogether.

Speaking at a launch event for the Government’s race strategy in the Commons on Thursday, she said that classic liberal values should not be “thrown away” and replaced by a “newfangled idea”.

Asked about the teaching of anti-racism in schools that is based on critical race theory in schools, she said: “What you are seeing in schools – it is absolutely terrifying.”

Ms Badenoch said schools should not be teaching white children that they are oppressors and black children that they are victims as this will “give young people a grievance before they have even experienced it”.

She also said that schools should not teach children to take the knee as it is a “political opinion”, which means “different things to different people”.

‘Levelling up opportunities’ 

The long-awaited Inclusion Britain strategy is the Government’s 97-page plan containing 70 actions which it believes will tackle racial inequality and address mistrust by “levelling up opportunities”.

The new strategy covers a number of points from healthcare and education, to crime, employment and language. It includes a new school history curriculum developed with “a diverse panel of historians” to create “a new knowledge-rich model history curriculum by 2024 to support high-quality teaching of our complex past”.

The overhaul of history in schools will cover topics such as slavery to “help pupils understand the intertwined nature of British and global history”.

It also covered reporting of ethnicity pay gaps in the workplace – but unlike with the gender pay gap, this will be voluntary. Furthermore, it said that first-time offenders, particularly for drug crime, should be dealt with without going to court or by deferred prosecutions.

The strategy also unveiled a campaign drive to match more black children – who are more likely to be in care and less likely to be adopted – to adoptive families, and for the Department for Education to work with leading schools to create a resource on pupil hairstyles and uniform policy “to avoid unfair treatment of ethnic minority children whose hair type may not be like the majority”.

‘BAME’ should no longer be used

The report also confirmed that the Government and public sector bodies would stop using the term “BAME” (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic), claiming it was “imprecise” and obscured “important disparities between different ethnic groups”.

It also deemed other “racialised terms”, such as “white privilege”, to be “unhelpful, stigmatising and potentially divisive” and “have the unintended consequence of pitting groups against each other”.

The strategy was developed in response to a controversial report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) last year.

CRED was ordered by Downing Street and chaired by Dr Tony Sewell – the founder of Generating Genius, a charity that helps black children access higher education – who concluded: “We no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities.”

He also faced backlash over the claim that: “There is a new story about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period not only being about profit and suffering but how culturally African people transformed themselves into a re-modelled African/Britain.”