Working with Schools and Education Authorities to address Racism

Background
 
In April 2005, the former Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) commissioned seven projects to look at how equalities were being addressed throughout the curriculum, staff development and school policies and practice. York Consulting was successful in a bid to deliver Equality Project 1: A Review of Guidance on Dealing with Racist Incidents due to the expertise and understanding displayed by the team. 
 
 
Task
 
The project, designed to be delivered over two phases, aimed to produce research on the:
  • effectiveness and impact of the anti-racist website Educating Race Equality – a Toolkit for Scottish Teachers;
  • practice employed by schools and education authorities (EAs) to deal with racist incidents and the influence of the anti-racist toolkit on practice.
Assignment
 
We used a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches to address the client’s requirements. This included:
 
expert analysis of the content and assessment of the practical guidance contained within the anti-racist toolkit
a quantitative postal survey to over 200 schools to provide an overview of how racist incidents were addressed and the use of the anti-racist toolkit;
a qualitative telephone survey with the 32 EAs to request their locally issued guidance on dealing with racist incidents;
detailed consultations with teachers, pupils and non-teaching staff in 29 schools to understand how policies worked in practice and their awareness of tackling racist behaviour.
 
 
Findings
 
The research identified the need for improvement in the approaches used to record and address racist incidents and highlighted areas where schools and EAs could benefit from more support and assistance. The final report provided an invaluable insight into school level activity to address racist incidents and the level of understanding about race equality.   http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2006/05/23155332/0


Since then…
 
The former SEED commissioned our experienced team to take forward Phase 2 by focusing on a revitalised anti-racist website toolkit and developing materials to support teachers in delivering anti-racist education. 
 
Contact
 
To find out more about this project or to discuss similar work with us, please contact us at info@yorkconsulting.co.uk.