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CERES: Centre for Education for Racial Equality in Scotland

Past Work 2001 – 2004

A combination of events in the late 1990's, namely the establishment of a Scottish Parliament and the publication of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report have contributed to a conceptual shift in political thinking and commitment towards social justice issues, including that of racial equality.

The Stephen Lawrence report challenged Scotland to confront and address institutional racism. The Scottish Executive (SE) responded by publishing An Action Plan for Scotland and creating two Scotland-wide groups to take forward its recommendations. The first, chaired by the Deputy First Minister and Minister for Justice, Jim Wallace QC, concentrated on the criminal justice system and its agencies in Scotland. The second, the Race Equality Advisory Forum (REAF), led by the Minister for Social Justice, Jackie Baillie, prepared a Race Equality strategy for policy areas including housing, local government and education. The REAF report published in October 2001 has an education section. The Education sub group was chaired by Rowena Arshad OBE, the Director of CERES. The response by the Scottish Executive Committing to Race Equality: A Response from the Scottish Executive to the Race Equality Advisory Forum Report gives endorsement to many of the recommendations of the REAF report. The Race Relations Act 1976(Statutory Duties) (Scotland) Order 2001 (more commonly referred to as the RRAA2000) which came into force on 13 March 2002 was enacted in Scotland in November 30th 2002. This placed race equality on the Scottish education agenda. CERES was commissioned to run a series of regional seminars across Scotland for Headteachers on the implications of the RRAA2000. Some Local Authorities followed this up on a local basis with all Headteachers attending a seminar.

In addition, Her Majesty's Inspectorate Education (HMIE) have also begun to mainstream equality issues into the audit frameworks. The updated version of the self- audit tool How Good is Our School 2 included a specific quality indicator for the first time on equality and fairness(see QI5:3) . HMIE provides further guidance through the publication A Route to Equality and Fairness on how schools could self-evaluate on matters related to equality. HMIE are producing as part of their Planning for Improvement series, specific indicators for race equality. A major new development was the launch of the CD-rom and website Educating for Race Equality - a Toolkit for Scottish Teachers, written by CERES staff, Laura Mitchell, Principal Equalities Officer, City of Edinburgh Council and published by Learning and Teaching Scotland in 2003. The CD was sent to all schools in Scotland.

Implementation of The Race Relations Act 1976(Statutory Duties) (Scotland) Order 2001 Schools and authorities were subject to the amendments of this Act from November 2002. CERES conducted a series of seminars in November and December 2002 for education authorities, school management teams and other interested individuals to become better informed about the practical requirements of this new legislation. In addition, briefing sheets were produced which provided practical support to classroom teachers and schools to take forward race equality work in schools.

Race Relations Officer Network- CERES began a network with three meetings a year to assist education officers take forward the Act.

Seeking good practice examples - School visit Programme CERES staff visited ten schools during 2003 and wrote up a variety of interesting work from around the country. These reports are referenced to the QI's in HGIOS and can be found on the Toolkit website.

CERES took part in the National Debate (April - July 2002). This involved a wide consultation and a CERES submission to the Debate.

Several staff development seminars for early years teachers were held in different locations on Persona Dolls.  Early years staff experienced inspiring training from early years practitioner Babette Brown. Babette provided day long workshops on how to raise issues of equity and discrimination with very young people. Her methods and approaches are equally suitable for areas of high ethnic diversity as they are for areas where race issues remain relatively invisible. A photographic record of one of the training days in Dumfries and Galloway can be seen in here

Materials for teachers- Zee Sulleyman, a CERES associate developed ideas for including anti-racism into the teaching of drama.

Working with the Scottish English as an Additional Language Co-ordinating Group (SEALCC) to produce a document presenting the case for a more coherent framework for supporting pupils with English as an Additional Language post-devolution. To obtain a copy of this, contact Edna Sommerville on 0131 651 6371 or e-mail us at ceres@ed.ac.uk

 

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