Anti-Racism in Education Programme: letter to the Diversity in the Teaching Profession and Education Workforce sub group

To: members of the Diversity in the Teaching Profession and Education Workforce subgroup

From: The Anti-Racist Education Youth Ambassadors – Intercultural Youth Scotland

To members of the Diversity in the Teaching Profession and Education Workforce subgroup

Thank you for meeting with us on December 13th 2023. During this online session, you gave us some information regarding your current projects and the measures you are taking to address the underrepresentation of Black and People of Colour (BPOC) in the teaching profession. Using this information, we have outlined some key recommendations that are important to us. We urge you to consider these recommendations but to also respond to us on the points that we made. Additionally, we have engaged in a lot of discussion after the subgroup meeting and created some questions that will help us to understand your ongoing work a little bit better.

Regarding your work on the sponsorship model, we understand that this approach is aimed towards teachers of colour so that they can have someone who will advocate for them and help progress their career. Please answer the following questions to help us understand this model better: 

• will there be a monetary incentive for sponsors? 
• if there is a monetary incentive, do you think that this will become harder to sustain as the sponsorship grows perhaps due to funding issues?
• what does the process of becoming a sponsor look like? 
• will the sponsors be BPOC or can anyone take on this role?  
• is the sponsorship model for student-teachers, qualified teachers or both?  
• will sufficient time be set aside for the sponsors to carry out their duties and support their sponsoree?  
• how many years of teaching experience will a sponsor need to have before taking on this role? 

From our discussions as a whole group, we have created several recommendations as shown below, please read this and respond accordingly:

We recommend that the subgroup initiate a monetary incentive for teachers to participate in the sponsorship model and act as sponsors. We recognise that our teachers are underpaid and overworked, we think a monetary incentive could encourage more teachers to apply as sponsors. However, we strongly believe that the intentions behind becoming a sponsor should be honest, sponsors should want to take part because they want to advocate for teachers of colour. 

We recommend that all sponsors should receive diversity and anti-racism training before taking on this role. They must have the knowledge and skills to work with BPOC who are underrepresented in the profession.

We recommend having discussions with sponsors (this could take place during the training process) about the barriers/challenges that BPOC teachers can face in Scotland and recognise that BPOC have their own unique experiences which should not be lumped together. In doing so, sponsors can understand that there will be instances where they cannot fully empathise and/or support the sponsoree but should take every approach to ensure that they have a positive teaching experience. 

We recall having discussions with the subgroup about how there is work ongoing to ensure that BPOC not only enter the profession but stay in the profession too. As such, we have discussed the following recommendation: 

We recommend that the subgroup explore the ways in which BPOC teachers in Scotland can support each other. As only 1.8% of BPOC make up the teaching profession, it is important that they are given opportunities to network and connect. An online forum would be a useful way for teachers to share their unique experiences and feel as though they have a support system. This is especially useful if teachers of colour feel like their current school and/or local authority isn’t supporting them. An online forum offers a way for teachers to seek support, grow in their careers and gain advice from other teachers.

We are also interested in hearing from the subgroup about the ways in which they will attract young people of colour to the teaching profession. We think this is an important area to discuss as some of us believe that seeing more teachers of colour will be helpful, encouraging and motivating for young people and could potentially attract them to the profession. We also think it is encouraging for all BPOC (students and staff) to see teachers of colour in higher positions within schools because it can inspire other teachers who want to progress in their teaching careers. Lastly, we think it will be helpful for students of colour to see more BPOC in teaching positions because it can offer young people security and allows them to have someone who can support them and offer empathy instead of sympathy when it comes to their lived experiences of racism.  

Below are our recommendations that we think will encourage young BPOC consider teaching as a potential career: 

We recommend that the subgroup look at ways in which Scottish schools can provide work experiences in school. Young people should have the opportunity to see what teaching is like before considering this as a career path. Some of our schools do not offer work experience opportunities and therefore we are only limited to our personal experiences as a student. We believe that a work experience opportunity in teaching would offer a clean slate but also show us what teachers do day-to-day.  

We recommend that the subgroup develop an approach where young people are informed about the pros and cons of teaching, it is important that this is done in an unbiased way because some of us have observed the heavy workload and stress of our own teachers. Therefore, we think the subgroup should try to attract young people to the profession but a more balanced approach is needed for this. 

Lastly, we are aware that both students and teachers can experience racism and racist incidents. Although we are going to explore this further with our next subgroup, we’d still like to highlight how uncomfortable we have felt when bringing up racism and racist attacks in our school. Many of us have felt like our teachers have let us down or that they do not know how to handle a racist incident.

We strongly recommend that the subgroup explore the ways in which school staff (including student-teachers) know how to navigate conversations surrounding racism and racist incidents, we think this would be best done through training opportunities as part of teachers’ professional learning. It would make us feel a lot safer in school and would make students more likely to report a racist incident instead of keeping it to themselves. 

We hope to hear back from you regarding all our recommendations. 

Many thanks

The Anti-Racist Education Youth Ambassadors – Intercultural Youth Scotland