Tony Sewell

Teaching

After graduating from university, Sewell was employed as a school teacher in Brent. Sewell left this role to teach in Jamaica for two years.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he wrote a weekly social commentary column for The Voice. This column was entitled "Live and Kicking" and was intended to be thought provoking. In July 2020, The Guardian reported that 1990, Sewell had said in a column in The Voice newspaper that: "We heteros are sick and tired of tortured queens playing hide and seek around their closets. Homosexuals are the greatest queer-bashers around. No other group of people are so preoccupied with making their own sexuality look dirty."^[8] In response, Sewell apologised and said that his comments were "wrong and offensive".^[8] Sewell also had a weekly programme on Choice FM as a talk show host.

After gaining his doctorate in 1995, Sewell worked as a university lecturer at Kingston University in South West London and later at the University of Leeds.

Educational improvement

Sewell helped with the transformation of education in Hackney as part of the team that set up the Learning Trust and the Mossbourne School. This work had national significance given that it was the flagship of the Academy movement.

In 2006, Sewell said that boys were being failed by schools because lessons had become too "feminised".^[9] John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, described Sewell as making "sweeping generalisations" and argued that "schools have put an immense amount of effort into raising boys' achievement in recent years, just as they did for girls in the previous years".^[10]

Sewell has been an international consultant in education for the World Bank and Commonwealth Secretariat.

In 2012, Sewell was appointed by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, to chair an inquiry into the challenges faced by primary and secondary schools in London.^[11] The inquiry's findings resulted in the government agreeing to provide £26 million to improve teachers' subject knowledge as part of the London Schools Excellence Fund.^[6][12]

Youth Justice Board

In October 2015, Sewell was appointed as a member of the Youth Justice Board^[12] for England and Wales.

Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities

In July 2020, Sewell was appointed chair of a Government commission tasked with looking into race disparity in the UK. His appointment was criticised by the Muslim Council of Britain, which argued that Sewell was "keen on downplaying race disparities".^[2] On 31 March 2021, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities led by Sewell, published its 258-page report,^[13] which concluded that while racism exists in the UK, the UK was not institutionally racist.^[14] The report was praised by writer and former Social Mobility commissioner David Goodhart and by The Times, which described it as a "nuanced and practical document".^[15][16] Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission who supported the report, criticised the "white establishment" for not defending Sewell from criticism.^[17] In March 2022, the Government's formal response to the Commission's Report, the Inclusive Britain report, was published, which accepted all of the recommendations Sewell's report made.^[18]

After the report's publication, Sewell received extensive online criticism, including from Labour MP Clive Lewis, who tweeted a picture of a Ku Klux Klan member,^[19] and from Cambridge post-colonial studies academic Priyamvada Gopal, who sought to deny that Sewell had a real doctorate and then compared him to Joseph Goebbels.^[20] Commentators on race, education, health, and economics, chiefly from the political left, criticised the report's findings for downplaying the extent of racism in Britain.^[21][22] The Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, said it was a "let down" by the report and its denial of the existence of institutional racism.^[23] A further study on racial disparity, led by Nissa Finney, a professor of human geography at the University of St Andrews specialising in inequalities and social justice, was published in April 2023. It asserted that the Sewell Report downplayed the existence and impact of structural and institutional racism and concluded that "Britain is not close to being a racially just society". Its findings were not recognised by the government.^[24]

Peerage

It was announced on 14 October 2022, that as part of the 2022 Special Honours, Sewell would be appointed a life peer.^[25] On 16 December 2022, he was created Baron Sewell of Sanderstead, of Sanderstead in the County of Surrey.^[26][27]