After graduating from university, Sewell was employed as a schoolteacher 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 titled "Live and Kicking". In July 2020,
The Guardian reported that in a 1990 column in
The Voice newspaper, Sewell had written: "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". Sewell also hosted a weekly talk show programme on
Choice FM. 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. In 2006, Sewell stated that boys were being failed by schools because lessons had become too "feminised". 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". Sewell served as an international consultant in education for the
World Bank and
Commonwealth Secretariat. In 2012, Sewell was appointed by the then
Mayor of London,
Boris Johnson, to chair an inquiry into the challenges faced by primary and secondary schools in London. The findings of the inquiry led to the government agreeing to provide around £25 million to improve teachers' subject knowledge as part of the London Schools Excellence Fund. In October 2015, Sewell was appointed as a member of the
Youth Justice Board of the
Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities led by Sewell, was published. It concluded that while racism exists in the UK, and from Cambridge post-colonial studies academic
Priyamvada Gopal, who questioned if Sewell had a real doctorate and then compared him to
Joseph Goebbels. Commentators on race, education, health, and economics criticized the report's findings for downplaying the extent of racism in Britain. The
Runnymede Trust, a race equality think tank, stated that the report was a "let down" that denied the existence of institutional racism. A further study on racial disparity, led by
Nissa Finney, a professor of human geography at the University of St Andrews, 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.
Peerage It was announced on 14 October 2022, as part of the
2022 Special Honours, that Sewell would be appointed a
life peer. On 16 December 2022, he was created Baron Sewell of Sanderstead, of
Sanderstead in the County of
Surrey. == Honours and awards ==