Chamber and committees

As part of Education Scotland’s Anti-Racism Mentors project, selected alumni from the Building Racial Literacy programme are working to take forward anti-racist action at local and national levels, with some of their activities exploring models of parental engagement.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-30894 on 11 November 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers.

Children and young people should feel happy, safe, respected and included in the learning environment and all staff should be proactive in promoting positive relationships and behaviour in the classroom, playground, and wider learning community.

It is for teachers, head teachers and other professional educational practitioners to decide the development and implementation of the curriculum within the overall framework. Schools are encouraged to work closely with parents and carers on the development and delivery of learning and teaching.

Guidance is, however, made available on health and wellbeing, such as relationships, sexual health and parenthood education, and is updated regularly. The Racism and Racist Incidents Sub-group of the Anti-Racism in Education Programme is currently developing guidance on a whole-school approach to preventing and responding to racism and racist incidents in schools, including how to engage with children and young people.

As part of the Scottish Government’s commitment to embedding the Breaking the Mould anti-racism curriculum principles, we have funded development of new online anti-racism in education resources, antiracisted.scot published last month. Personal and Social Education was identified as the priority for curriculum development by children and young people that were part of the Anti-Racism in Education Programme and this was selected as the first topic for focus. The resources were created by the Development Education Centres in collaboration with a range of different voices and perspectives. The voices of learners from St Euan’s Primary School in Clydebank and Drumchapel Hight School in Glasgow are reflected in the animations as well as other areas of the resource.

As part of the Anti-Racism in Education Programme - gov.scot (www.gov.scot), the Scottish Government has established the Racism and Racist Incidents (RRI) workstream. This workstream is focussed on developing support for schools and school staff to improve understanding of racism and to ensure that these issues are properly identified and addressed.

The RRI workstream is currently developing practical guidance for schools to support them to respond to racism and racist incidents, including strengthening approaches to recording and monitoring.

It is anticipated this guidance will be published in Spring 2025.

The Scottish Government has been progressing a number of areas of work in relation to articulating and embedding anti-racism in the curriculum. This has included the introduction of anti-racism curriculum principles Breaking the Mould, published in June 2023 which were co-designed with young people, educators and organisations with anti-racism expertise.

To support the education sector in designing and delivering an anti-racist curriculum we have also funded a range of programmes including: funding for diversifying texts and projects in school libraries; professional learning programmes for history teachers on the role of the British Empire in world history and its legacy today, and the impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade; and small grants for young people-led anti-racist clubs to deliver school-based activities highlighting the importance of an anti-racist learning environment.

In particular, we have partnered with the Development Education Centres to support early years practitioners and teachers to effectively deliver age appropriate curriculum content aligned with the Breaking the Mould principles. This work has culminated in the development of a suite of new online resources that cover health and wellbeing and personal and social education, which were published in 2024. The online resources include workshop plans, activities and animations to support classroom learning on issues such as discrimination, bias, stereotyping and identity as well as the causes and impacts of racism. The roll out of these resources is supported by funded online and in-person professional learning.

We are also currently working with the Children’s Parliament to create a new resource for children on racism and rights in education.

A number of approaches are being used to collect and publish effective practices underway in schools and local authorities that embed anti-racism practices in schools:

• Case studies are being gathered and published to illustrate Scotland's Breaking the mould: Principles for an anti-racist curriculum | Resources | Education Scotland located on Education Scotland’s Anti-Racist Curriculum Principles – Promoting Anti-Racist Education in Scotland (glowscotland.org.uk) web-based resource.
• As part of Education Scotland’s Anti-Racism Mentors project, alumni from the Building Racial Literacy programme are also providing case studies of effective anti-racist practice.
• Case studies taken from examples of practice that inspectors see in schools are shared on the Education Scotland webpage, Promoting improvement through sharing highly effective practice | Inspection and review | Education Scotland. Through inspection and review, HM Inspectors continue to identify and share highly effective practice, within and across sectors. They work closely with a range of organisations to disseminate good practice and build the capacity of establishments and authorities to provide education and services for children, young people and adult learners of the highest quality. HM Inspectors exemplify and promote good practice through web-based publications, video extracts and events.

The Scottish Government’s Anti-Racism in Education Programme continues to consider the best ways in which the voices of young people, particularly those with lived experience, are centred within the programme. Since 2021, we have provided funding to a range of young people’s organisations, including Intercultural Youth Scotland, Show Racism the Red Card, the Scottish Youth Parliament and the Children’s Parliament, to participate in discussions and support the development of all of our resources, guidance and professional learning.

We expect schools and local authorities to record all incidents of bullying and violence in schools.

In 2019 we introduced a consistent national approach to recording and monitoring bullying incidents in schools. HMIe carried out a thematic review of approaches to recording and monitoring incidents of bullying in schools and published its report in February 2023.

As part of its response to this review, the Scottish Government established a working group to review Respect for All, its national anti-bullying guidance as well as the supplementary guidance on recording and monitoring bullying incidents. The updated guidance will be published in November 2024.

The Scottish Government is currently consulting on Scotland’s draft palliative care strategy Palliative Care Matters for All. The consultation is open until 10 January 2025 and builds on extensive stakeholder engagement to develop a framework to support delivery and build on existing work to support those in need of palliative care and their families. Through our draft palliative care strategy, we are committed to working with Health and Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) and adult independent hospice organisations to develop a national guidance framework to support and improve consistency of local planning and commissioning of independent hospice services through Integrated Joint Boards (IJBs).

The Digital Citizen Unit (DCU) was created in 2022 with the Digital Citizen Division (DCD) forming in 2023. DCD is the team within Scottish Government that manage the Connecting Scotland Programme; Ethical Digital Nation; Unlocking the Value of Data; and the Knowledge and Information Shared Services Unit, which is an operational internal business support unit for Core Scottish Government and some public sector shared services customers, comprised of: Information Assurance and Data Protection; Knowledge and Information Management; and Library and Information Services functions.

The targets set out in SCVO’s grant agreement are 200 signatories by the end of March 2025. To date we have attracted 42 organisations, across the public, private and voluntary sectors, who have made a range of pledges to support the Charter.

Current signatory organisations include large businesses (Standard Life plc), public sector organisations (e.g. Edinburgh City Libraries) and local community projects (e.g. Milan Senior Welfare).

SCVO will be running a campaign focusing on each of the 5 pledges from November 2024 to March 2025, with examples of best practice and video case studies from existing signatories.