Njilan Morris-Jarra’s and Ebinehita Iyere’s (2025) report See Us, Hear Us: The Perceptions and wellbeing of Black Girls in London secondary schools has been circulating around social media and prompted conversation among those who are interested and/or invested in protecting Black British girls. The report states that secondary schools are unsafe environments for Black girls in London, who say they are traumatised, stereotyped, adultified, criminalised, hypersexualised, invisibilised and hypervisibilised. Contrastingly, the report also reveals that Black girl joy and/or security is still experienced through interactions with some teachers, family and peers (Morris-Jarra’s & Iyere, 2025). There is limited literature focusing on Black British girlhood; however, similar themes can be found in another study discussing Black girl education experiences in England.

‘See Us, Hear Us states that secondary schools are unsafe environments for Black girls in London, who say they are traumatised, stereotyped, adultified, criminalised, hypersexualised, invisibilised and hypervisibilised.’

Supporting Black British schoolgirls

The 2025 report builds on Akel and Iyere’s (2023) See Us, Hear Us: On girlhood and growing up Black in Lambeth publication which consisted of 10 participants from one London borough (number of schools have not been specified), by expanding the geographic location to include 121 participants, across 12 schools and 10 London boroughs. These reports are important and welcomed school interventions and a call to action for practitioners and leadership.

It is worth noting that both authors are ‘grown up Black girls’ themselves and Morris-Jarra expressed experiencing similar issues at school to the participants in the report (Morris-Jarra & Iyere, 2025) – I would imagine that many Black girls across multiple generations living in Britain would be able relate to some of the school experiences shared in the study.

Top-down guidelines and bottom-up recommendations

The UK government has provided a whole school/college strategy to address mental health and wellbeing for children and young people at a national level (GOV.UK, 2023). The strategy has eight core principles:

• leadership and management that promotes and champions healthy mental health and wellbeing
• respect and value for diversity is reflected in the ethos and environment
• involve students in decision-making where there is a direct impact on their lives
• utilise existing programmes to create opportunities that promote social and emotional wellbeing
• create opportunities for staff to access mental health and wellbeing support
• monitor and respond to pupil mental health and wellbeing essentials
• partner with parents, carers and family
• target the most vulnerable groups of children.

As positive as these principles sound, without proactively engaging with race/racism and intersectional forms of oppression, issues faced by Black girls on school grounds are unlikely to be resolved. My hope is that school professionals also actively and positively engage with the following additional recommendations that Morris-Jarra and Iyere (2025)   call for in their report:

• implement anti-institutional racist strategies
• meet emotional and mental health needs of Black girls
• create Black women-led ‘homeplaces’ for Black girls (delivered by staff or external organisations)
• investigate and resolve punitive practices that disproportionately impact racially minoritised children and young people.

These recommendations are a good starting point to address where schools fall short in creating healthy and safe environments for Black British girls. Examples of how the recommendations can be implemented include: 1) racism safeguarding practices; 2) cascade professional development models; and 3) restorative justice, trauma-informed care and multicultural education.

Conclusion

It is paramount that schools and individuals within school settings reflect on the findings of this report, take responsibility, and actively respond to the institutional racism that exists at the expense of Black schoolgirl’s wellbeing, even if they still can experience joy.

Morris-Jarra and Iyere’s (2025) report contributes towards addressing the lack of attention, research and literature on Black British girlhood. By utilising participatory forms of research grounded in critical theories of race, Black girls are empowered to affirm their racialised experiences and to take ownership of their knowledge production to ensure that it is not exploitative, which then helps them to build capacity for becoming agents of change. The report has raised pressing issues regarding Black schoolgirls in London schools, making strides in shining the light on Black British schoolgirl experiences, ranging from adultification to unrecognised trauma responses, resulting in lack of trauma support. These negative patterns have been reproducing themselves for decades, resonating with Morris-Jarra’s and my own school experience, and it is high time that school professionals, especially those in leadership, listen to what Black British girls are saying. Institutional racism persists, and both schools and individual staff should respond appropriately to safeguard the wellbeing of Black schoolgirls within their pupil population.

I invite readers to consider the applicability of Black British girls’ school experiences to Black girls in other geographic contexts.

References

Akel, S., & Iyere, E. (2023). See us, hear us: On girlhood and growing up Black in Lambeth. Milk Honey Bees. https://milkhoneybees.co.uk/

GOV.UK. (2023). Promoting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing: Guidance. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/promoting-children-and-young-peoples-emotional-health-and-wellbeing

Morris-Jarra, N., & Iyere, E. (2025). See us, hear us: The perceptions and wellbeing of Black Girls in London secondary schools. https://milkhoneybees.co.uk/