Figures show all hate crimes

OLDHAM Council has addressed claims that racist incidents in the borough’s schools have increased by more than 40 per cent.

A BBC study, reported in yesterday’s Chronicle, showed there were nearly 88,000 incidents of racist bullying in data from 90 areas with Oldham among those showing a sharp increase.

But the council says it did not tell the BBC that the figure included all hate incidents — such as homophobia as well — when it responded to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

A council spokesman said: “The council previously used a system to track bullying called Notification of Racially Motivated Incidents (NORMI) — as the name suggests it just tracked racially motivated incidents. The number of racially motivated incidents actually fell slightly between 2008/09 (272) and 2009/10 (231).

“Since 2009 the council has used a new tracker for bullying incidents called Notification of Hate Incidents and Bullying (NOHIB) — again as the name suggests this includes all types of hate type bulling including for instance homophobia and racial motivated bullying. Work has also been undertaken with schools to increase the profile of the system and encourage schools to use this.

“Both these factors will have led to an increase in the overall figure which is 396 for 2009/10.

“I understand that this figure of 396 was provided in an FOI response to the BBC in June, 2011, however it was not accompanied with an explanation that the 396 figure included all types of bullying incidents and not just racial incidents.”