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BE THE CHANGE: Stephanie Pitter

AN ONLINE petition launched in a bid to get black history introduced on to the primary school curriculum is gathering pace.

The creator is mother-of-four Stephanie Pitter who believes black history should be a mandatory element of the national curriculum in order to "enrich the development of the spiritual, moral, social and cultural needs of all ethnic groups.”

As of this morning, 11,694 people had added their names to the campaign registered on Government website Direct.gov.

The former teaching assistant needs 100,000 signatures by February 10, 2015, to force the issue to be debated in parliament.

In a previous interview with The Voice, Pitter said: “We will never cut out racism but teaching black history in our schools would help our children realise where they have come from and where they are going. It helps children from other backgrounds understand each other’s culture – how and why they behave.”

She added: “I don’t want our history to be just about slavery, Martin Luther King or Mary Seacole. I’m not belittling these – they are major events and people in our history, but there is a lot more too that simply goes unnoticed.”

The parent governor from Birmingham also teaches black history voluntarily at her children’s school.

Rebecca Sullivan, chief executive of The History Association commented: “Any campaign that highlights the need to ensure that history teaching includes the lives and experiences of a range of people from a variety of backgrounds is important.”

To back the petition visit http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/60635