The last decade has seen a steady shift towards right-wing, in some cases hard-right, politics across Europe and the EU. From Italy to Finland, from the Netherlands to Greece, this shift is well documented in the media (e.g. Lynch 2023) and has also been the subject of academic analysis (e.g. Petrović et al. 2023). Europe’s lurch to the right is highly complex: on one level, as Petrović et al. (2023) demonstrate, it works through centrist and radical populism, which draw upon a variety of themes such as notions of national sovereignty and values, anti-elitism, and so forth. Another level consists of anti-immigration, “nativist” and racist discourses aimed at vilifying racial, ethnic, and religious minority populations. For example, a survey carried out in 2023 by the EU’s rights agency of 6,752 people of African descent in 13 EU countries found that racism is “pervasive and relentless” – in Austria and Germany, specifically, around three-quarters of those surveyed said they had experienced racism, a rise of around 15% since 2016 (Boffey 2023). A closely related third element is the right-wing movement against so-called “wokeism”, which has used culture wars, moral panics, and a discourse of “counter-extremism” to attack anti-racist, climate change and other civil rights and social justice positions it is ideologically opposed to (see Davies and McRae 2023). 

Our paper examines the effects of these interconnected political manoeuvrings and discourses on schooling and young people. Specifically, we focus on the conditions under which political education and free speech around issues of race and faith are produced and engaged with by young people in schools. The paper reports on our 2023 national survey of 3,156 Year 10 pupils from 29 state-funded secondary schools across 8 regions of England focusing on free speech around race and faith. 

Overall, while many pupils were positive about their school environment, they also expressed significant concerns about their ability to share their social or political views at school; their school and peer climate; engagement around race and faith equality, as well as anxieties about wider social disadvantages linked to a person's race and/or faith – a view that was surprisingly also shared by a sizable proportion of white pupils about their racial status. 

As discussed further below, we use our findings to address several weaknesses in education policy, especially in the areas of school environment, curriculum, and political impartiality. We particularly draw and build upon the seminal work of Michael Apple (2006; 2019) on the role of right-wing ideology in schooling, as well as the broader work of Habermas and Dewey on ‘the public (good)’, to make two arguments: 1) free speech around race and faith in schools is delineated by a social, political and affective “infrastructure of expression” that tightly governs the “speakability” of race and faith issues in top-down ways, even as it is presented through a policy of political impartiality; however, 2) the dominant, though fractured and sometimes inconsistent, right-wing ideology is unable to impose total ideological/hegemonic control in and through schooling partly due to young people’s political engagement in non-school environments. We attend to these dynamics by conceptualising schools as a site for ‘micro-publics’, i.e. multi-layered, multi-modal, and often intermittent forms of ‘public’ engagement. The significance of our findings and arguments are augmented by their relevance and applicability to education in liberal democratic societies across Europe and beyond. 

A national survey was conducted across England to collect quantitative data from year 10 students (14 and 15 year-olds). A stratified random sampling strategy was used to collect data from different types of schools across all nine regions of England, though in the end we only received responses from eight regions. In September 2022, the UK’s National Pupil Database (Department of Education, 2022) was accessed and edubasealldata2022 were used to identify and sample schools for a survey. The edubasealldata2022 file encompassed 49,755 rows, representing all types of schools in England. Filtering included open secondary schools, such as Academy Converter, Academy Sponsor Led, Community School, Foundation School, Free Schools, Voluntary Aided School, and Voluntary Controlled school. Alternative provisions, Special schools, sixth form, deemed schools, technical schools, and FE colleges were excluded. The refined list comprised 3,081 mainstream state-funded secondary schools, categorised by governance and geographic location (‘Academy/Free,’ ‘Maintained,’ ‘Voluntary Aided,’ 'Urban Major,' 'Urban,' and 'Rural'). Using a sampling grid with 81 clusters (9 regions X 3 geographic location X 3 types of school), 52 schools (1.75%) were randomly sampled from each cluster. However, 29 schools participated in the survey, with efforts made to reflect national demographics in terms of ethnicity, religion, and geography. Although the survey achieved a significant response rate, it is not claimed to be nationally representative. The survey data exhibited strong resemblance to national demographics in ethnicity and religion, while slight disparities were observed in gender distribution in urban major regions due to the inclusion of 'non-binary' as an option. The survey was developed in September 2022 thorough a review of existing relevant survey reports, including international and national studies on civic education and free speech (e.g. Hillman, 2022; Losito et al., 2018; Naughton et al., 2017). Consultation with the Project Advisory Board, composed of academics, education professionals, and equality advocates, helped to refine and contextualise the survey. We conducted piloting in two phases in October and November 2022 with Year 10 pupils, assessing administration, timing, and question accessibility. The pilot studies indicated that internal and external validity and reliability were strong, yet we adjusted some items based on our quantitative analysis of the pilot data and some qualitative interview data with the participants in the pilot phases.

Our findings are particularly relevant in three areas of schooling: school environment, curriculum, and policies governing political impartiality. Firstly, despite the importance of school in shaping young people’s political consciousness, 45% of our cohort (n = 3,156) do not bring up politics for discussion in schools; 32% disagree that pupils are confident about telling teachers about racial/religious intolerance; and 54% disagree that pupils treat each other with respect. The findings thus raise concern about the capacity of young people to speak and be listened to on race and faith matters due to an unsupportive school and peer environment. Secondly, our findings show that young people mostly turn to social media to learn about social and political issues. This is happening against the backdrop (in the UK) of a systematic denigration of Citizenship Education (only a requirement in maintained schools, now a minority, and often neglected by them due to budgetary and other pressures), and a National Curriculum that only focuses on broad-level political structures. Thirdly, our findings speak to political impartiality laws that govern schooling in the UK and exist, with minor variations, in other European countries such as France and Germany. Impartiality laws often exist alongside similar policies (e.g. counterterrorism) and can thus create confusion/contradiction for teachers and pupils. They are also mainly focused upon schools and teachers, not on pupils or their political engagement and education. Moreover, recently, the government has used these laws to shut down political views that it is ideologically opposed to, usually progressive positions addressing issues such as racism or climate change from below.

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