A Championship footballer has called on the government to make teaching the history and experiences of “black, Asian, and ethnic minorities” compulsory in English state schools.

Birmingham City captain Troy Deeney has written an open letter to the education secretary and launched a petition in a bid to make topics about ethnically diverse communities part of the national curriculum.

He believes the current framework is failing children from diverse communities and commissioned a YouGov survey which found the majority of British teachers think the school system has a racial bias.

A total of 72% said the government should do more to support the teaching of cultural diversity.

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It also found just 12% of teachers feel empowered to teach diverse topics, which Mr Deeney described as “worrying”.

At present, the curriculum includes a requirement to teach children about a period that includes much of Britain’s colonial history, but does not specify which topics within it must be taught. It also includes examples of “key black and minority ethnic historical figures”, which many schools do choose to teach about, even though they are not required to.

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The Welsh government is set to introduce a new curriculum in September, which will see the “stories of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people” taught in schools – a move that has given Deeney some encouragement.

Speaking to Sky News, the 31-year-old said: “I don’t think there is anything you can really say nowadays that isn’t divisive. What I’m more in the business of is solutions.”

He added: “If there are solutions there, why don’t we try and do that, why don’t we have a conversation. The more information everybody has, we will be in a better place moving forward.”

In his open letter to Nadhim Zahawi, the striker opened up about his own school struggles, including how he was expelled at the age of 15 and told by a teacher that he would die before his 26th birthday.

“I believe the current system is failing children from ethnic minorities,” he wrote.

“I’ve found I’m not the only one to feel strongly about this subject – over the past 18 months or so, nearly 400,000 people have signed petitions calling for changes to be made to mandate more diversity on to the national curriculum.”

He added that the importance of educating children at an early age “to inform identity and combat racists beliefs” cannot be “understated”.

He added: “Mr Zahawi, I urge you – as Secretary of State for Education – to review this topic again and make the teaching of black, Asian and minority ethnic histories and experiences mandatory throughout the school curriculum.”

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He told Sky: “People are worried about what they say and how they say it so they just don’t say anything.

“The biggest thing is there are groups out there now actively teaching the dialogue, the right way to deliver it, because as we know it is a really difficult and tough subject.

“So we want to be able to speak but also give teachers that self-assurance that what you are speaking will not get you sacked.”

‘My family experience vile racist abuse’

Last week Mr Zahawi published guidance on political impartiality in schools which added that campaign groups such as Black Lives Matter may cover “partisan political views”.

Mr Deeney wrote in his letter: “Nearly two years on from the death of George Floyd… an eerie quiet seems to have descended on national cultural debate, the issues raised have receded from the news agenda…

“Yet in that time both myself and my family have continued to experience vile racist abuse on social media and, at times, in public.”

In June last year, during a parliamentary debate on the teaching of diversity, then skills minister Gillian Keegan said the government has made the teaching of a unit called “ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-1901” compulsory at Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14) but admitted the individual topics required within the unit were not set out.

She added: “The reformed history curriculum includes teaching pupils the core knowledge of our past… (It) does not set out how… topics within the subjects, should be taught. We believe that teachers should be able to use their own knowledge… to determine how they teach pupils.

“At the same time… we believe that good teaching of history should always include the contribution of black and minority ethnic people to Britain’s history, as well as the study of different countries and cultures.”

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