HUNDREDS of current and former students of Dorchester schools have signed a petition, asking for the curriculum being taught in the county town’s schools to be ‘decolonised’.

A letter urging the Dorchester Area Schools Partnership (DASP) to ‘take action in calling for, and implementing, a decolonised national British curriculum’ has been signed by more than 600 current and former pupils.

DASP is a strategic partnership between 19 schools in the Dorchester area which aims to help all its schools by working in collaboration.

Former DASP pupil Scarlet Furness, 23, started the petition after seeing some friends at schools in Bristol doing the same thing.

She said: “I didn’t write the body of the letter, I got it from one of my friends who got it from a template online. I left Thomas Hardye in 2015 having come through the DASP system, starting at Cerne Abbas First School, then on to Dorchester Middle School and Thomas Hardye.

“Reflecting on our education within DASP, we feel we were provided with a predominantly white, Eurocentric perspective that often left many of us ignorant to systemic racism and the injustices that black, indigenous and people of colour have faced and continue to face. By de-colonising the curriculum, we mean teaching children from primary school age an honest portrayal of British colonialism and its central role in the slave trade, and how those structures still pervade society globally today.

“It also means acknowledging the vast contribution that black, indigenous and people of colour have made to every aspect of society.”

Miss Furness said she would like to thank everyone who has signed and shared the letter and thanked her friend Emma Schwier, who has helped her spread awareness of the petition.

Mike Foley, headteacher of The Thomas Hardye School, said: “That so many of you have chosen to act suggests that the school, and the wider family of schools in DASP, instilled the right values for you to become the broad-minded and tolerant young people you have turned out to be.

“Schools have limited flexibilities over the curriculum but we will use this moment to review what we are doing; if we can improve we will. I am acutely aware that in counties such as Dorset there is an even greater need to be outward-facing, internationalist and tolerant of people who do not come from a white, British background.

"The Thomas Hardye School is an inclusive school: everyone who lives in Dorchester and the surrounding environs comes to school here regardless of their income, their colour, their creed or their academic ability.”

 Mr Foley added that The Thomas Hardye School has already done many thing to broaden the cultural aspects of its curriculum.

He said: Unlike most secondary schools, we have maintained modern foreign languages as part of the core curriculum at key stage 4.

"We do that to give students the confidence to speak face to face with people who come from different parts of the world.

“Whereas most schools have reduced the amount of time devoted to theology, we have increased it to develop an understanding of other cultures and creeds.

“It is through that holistic approach to the curriculum, not just one-off weeks or days, that we will change hearts and minds. Racism breeds on ignorance, rumour and fear. Our aim is to open minds to what is different and to preach tolerance for other people whoever they are and wherever they live.”