Our panel of experts and Guardian journalists will question how our children are taught about Black people’s contribution to Britain.

Today’s school curriculum has changed little in terms of diversity: over the past several decades there has been little recognition of Britain’s increasingly multicultural society, and few set texts feature Black literature or the Black experience. As a result, children are given little understanding of the impact of slavery and colonialism, and how the profits of free Black labour has helped to turn Britain into an economic powerhouse.

Not only that, Black pupils still face racial injustice: UK schools have recorded over 60,000 racist incidents in five years, 95% of Black pupils hear racist language at school, and exclusion rates for Black Caribbean pupils are five times higher than for their white counterparts.

What must change for Black pupils to feel they fully belong in our education system and wider society? How can we teach pupils the full story of how modern Britain was created? Joseph Harker, the Guardian’s senior editor for diversity and development, chairs our panel of speakers, which includes Jeffrey Boakye, former schoolteacher and author of I Heard What You Said; Lavinya Stennett, founder and chief executive of The Black Curriculum; and Desta Haile, deputy director of the Royal African Society.

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