Anti-Racism in Education Programme: letter to the Curriculum Reform sub group

To: members of the Curriculum Reform sub group

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

To members of the Curriculum Reform sub group

Thank you very much for meeting with us on the 6 March 2024. During this online session, we had some interesting discussions about your ongoing work and how you’d like to hear some ideas and recommendations from us. From the discussions we had with you, and the reflections we had in the sessions after, we have created several recommendations. We urge you to read these recommendations and respond to us accordingly.

Curriculum reform and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA)

We recommend that the subgroup collaborate with the SQA to explore the ways in which the language used within the SQA exam papers can be less hurtful, harmful and offensive. An example of this is when the exam papers have used terminology such as ‘slaves’ instead of ‘enslaved people’. The youth panel have collectively agreed that the language used in exams must be scrutinised and investigated. 

We recommend that the subgroup and SQA further collaborate to encourage Black and People of Colour (BPOC) to take up the position of an exam invigilator. We understand that the role of an invigilator is to ensure the exam is taken in a safe environment and that all guidelines and procedures are followed. However, we think Black and Students of Colour would feel comfortable in having more BPOC within the exam room as taking an exam can be daunting and this would make us feel more comfortable. 

Embedding anti-racism in the Scottish Ccrriculum

We recommend that anti-racism in the curriculum should be an ongoing process that is continuously growing and evolving. Currently, we are concerned that schools might be embedding anti-racism in a tokenistic way by having one-time lessons or events in which diversity and various cultures are celebrated. We recommend that the subgroup explore the ways in which an anti-racist curriculum can continuously be upheld. Diversity/culture days can be fun and engaging but can also often be done in a ‘tick the box’ kind of way – we recommend that the subgroup ensure anti-racism is brought across all areas of the curriculum instead of these big one-time events.  

To continue, anti-racism should be prevalent in all subjects within the curriculum. Decolonising the curriculum something that all schools should aim to do – we want to hear about the origins of various things that we might learn about in school. An example of this would be mathematics, a way of bringing anti-racism into a maths lesson could be to discuss the origins of mathematics in relation to Arabian history. Moreover, when it comes to subjects such as the expressive arts, we recommend that the subgroup explore the ways in which more cultures and backgrounds can be celebrated. We want to see more variety of music being discussed and explored, we want to see various forms of art across the world and to understand the cultural contexts behind these. Lastly, when it comes to subjects such English and Media, we want to see BPOC in multi-modal texts such as books, videos and poems. 

We recommend that the subgroup provide opportunities for the following people to collaborate and create anti-racist curriculum resources:

• BPOC led organisations
• BPOC with lived experiences
• curriculum specialists
• researchers
• students
• parents 

Additionally, these people should also be given the opportunity to create a guide on inclusive and safe language to be used in schools by all school staff. Sometimes we feel that our educators are not informed or aware about the language they use when they discuss anti-racism and some of this language can be harmful, hurtful or offensive. Therefore, a guide for all school staff on anti-racist language would be a way to ensure that all students are respected when they come to school. 

We recommend that the subgroup should strongly encourage all schools to have anti-racist club. This club should be student-led but a teacher could oversee this provided that they have anti-racism training. It would be an excellent opportunity for the older students (S5+) to oversee this club as it would give them leadership skills and also collectively give students a way to have meaningful discussions that they might not have if there were lots of adults in the room. All students should be welcome to join the club as their aim would be to tackle the racism that is happening within the school. This would also be a way for students and staff to get involved and take a pro-active anti-racist stance. 

Student feedback 

We recommend that the subgroup create an online system where feedback on teachers can be made publicly or privately to underpin whether teachers are successfully embedding an anti-racist curriculum within their classroom. Like a university course, students could have a public forum for a subject/department and share their feedback on whether each subject has been implementing anti-racism. However, the opportunity for 1-1 feedback on teachers should also be available. Teachers should be held accountable for their role and duty in delivering an anti-racist curriculum, if a student were to have any positive or negative feedback then they should have a method to provide this such as google forms. The idea is not to shame teachers or pressure them, but to ensure they are upholding their professional requirements of making all students feel seen, recognised and heard in the curriculum. We further recommend there should be a panel of teachers and black and students of colour who can review this system and see where improvements and positive changes need to be made. It is important that this system is used to address gaps in anti-racist learning and to hold our educators accountable in delivering an anti-racist curriculum. 

Curriculum Reform sub group accountability

As the Anti-Racist Education Ambassadors have become more aware of the work that the subgroup is doing, we recommend that the subgroup provide annual reports about their ongoing projects, issues they have encountered and the measures they have sought to address any issues related to their projects. Moreover, it would be useful for the subgroup to collect data on how successfully Scottish schools have embedded an anti-racist curriculum. We understand this process of collecting data and research would take a lot of time, so we would encourage the subgroup to release this report every one to two years. We also encourage the subgroup to make this report available online to the public as we think it would be a really useful way for students and staff to see the work that is being done to address racism in schools. 

Questions

• as a result of our reflections and discussions after meeting the subgroup on March 6th, we have a couple of questions we’d like the subgroup to answer:
• how have intersectional approaches been considered throughout the work that this subgroup has done? 
• given the understandable caution for teachers not to express political views, how can they be motivated to advocate for anti-racism? Some might use the "political" excuse to avoid speaking out. Where does the boundary lie between anti-racism and politics in this context and how will this be emphasized to teachers?

Please read our recommendations and questions and get back to us as soon as possible. We thank you for your time and look forward to hearing your response. 

Many thanks

Anti-Racist Education Youth Ambassadors – Intercultural Youth Scotland