A five-year-old girl was told off and her parents were contacted when she refused to let a black girl join in a game, the report says.
On another occasion, a primary school pupil was “spoken to severely” and warned he could be reported to the head teacher and his parents after calling two classmates “a chocolate bar”.
Martin Ward, the deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Certainly any racist incident in schools should be dealt with swiftly but the definition of racism can be taken too far, especially with young children who clearly don’t understand the connotation behind the words.’’
After the introduction of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, which put public bodies under a duty to eliminate discrimination, schools were told they had to monitor the impact of their policies on the educational attainment of pupils of different races.
In 2002, racist incident forms were created that required teachers to name the alleged perpetrator and victim, and spell out what they did and how they were punished. Schools can keep these details on file.
Today’s report – The Myth of Racist Kids – calculates that some 280,000 such incidents have been reported in England since full records began.