The government now thinks this is a waste of time. In December 2020, the Cabinet Office's “Nudge Unit” declared that “there is currently no evidence that this training changes behaviour in the long term”. For this reason, the Cabinet Office announced that unconscious bias training is to be “phased out in the Civil Service”. In the statement, the government makes it clear that this “phasing out” should be followed by local government, the police and the NHS – in other words, the whole statutory part of our systems.
Putting to one side the question of whether “nudge theory” itself has a convincing evidence base (the jury seems out on that), stray comments from within the government suggest this is not just an argument about proven effectiveness. Getting people to go on the record is difficult, but it seems clear that some ministers don't believe there is such a thing as unconscious bias. This is a strange position to adopt in respect of a system that is clearly biased against some groups of children. If this bias is not “unconscious”, then what is it, and why has it been allowed to continue across 11 years of government?
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