Anti-Racism in Education Programme: letter to the Education Leadership and Professional Learning sub group

To: members of the Education Leadership and Professional Learning sub group

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

To members of the Education Leadership and Professional Learning sub group

Thank you for very much for meeting with us on the 17th April 2024. We really enjoyed learning about the work of the subgroup, and particularly our discussions about the Building Racial Literacy Programme (BRL). We were really impressed with your enthusiasm to get young people involved in your work and we appreciated the space you gave us to discuss each of our own ideas and views. Below you will find a list of recommendations, please read each of these and respond accordingly. We will await your response in three to four weeks. 

Engaging youth: increasing awareness of the sub group’s work 

We (the Youth Ambassadors) recommend that the subgroup should use social media to reach out to young people and let them know about the work of the subgroup. This is a quick and effective way of reaching out to young people and can be done in various ways, such as:

• posts and pictures on social media such as Instagram which contain small snippets of information about what the subgroup are working on
• videos/animations of the ongoing projects of the subgroup, this is a more fun and interactive way of knowing about their work
• Instagram or TikTok live, this is a way of speaking live to an audience of young people on social media and getting their views on anti-racism in schools. Creating a TikTok or Instagram live would give the subgroup an opportunity to do something different and would gain the interests of many young people 

For young children at nursery level, we recommend that the subgroup focus more on diversity and inclusion activities than to focus on anti-racism. The subgroup should explore how diversity and inclusion activities are currently being carried out in nurseries and should provide an activity guide for nurseries so that any necessary improvements can be made. Examples are shown below:

• storybooks in which various backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities are represented
• toys that are more diverse e.g. a range of dolls that have different skin colours
• songs, movies, poems that represent different cultures but these resources must be carefully selected to avoid stereotyping
• culture days at nursery would be fun and engaging for children as they can try different foods and clothing
• projects where the children can do a presentation with their parent/guardian about their culture and background 

To continue, we recommend that the subgroup further explore the ways in which they can let young people know about their work outside of the school setting. As such, we recommend that the subgroup reach out to the local and wider community in places such as community centres and faith institutions as this is another way of reaching young people in a more personal setting. The subgroup could have flyers and posters distributed in these places to show their work in an eye-catching way. Moreover, we recommend that the subgroup should do an outreach in these community spaces where they can speak to young people to get their views and ideas. 

Additionally, for subgroup members who might not have as much experience of working with young people, we recommend that these members should get involved in community events that are happening around them. This could be an effective way of networking with people in the local community and would be a more personal way of reaching out to young people. Many of us Youth Ambassadors have gotten involved with events happening in the community and events created by our faith institutions, therefore, we would appreciate seeing subgroup members coming along to these events. 

Giving young people more voice and agency

We recommend that the subgroup should include young people in creating, developing and delivering the Building Racial Literacy Programme. We know that those who take part in the programme will undertake tasks and atten webinars, but we think more space should be created for young people to create presentations and deliver this to the cohorts of the BRL programme.

Furthermore, we recommend that young people should also be invited to these webinars to understand more about anti-racism and learn alongside their educators. 

We also recommend that the subgroup should encourage educators who take part in the BRL programme to have discussions with their students about this and get them involved as part of their learning journey. We collectively agree that we would want to know if our educators were taking part in the programme as we would want to ask them questions about this and have meaningful discussions. Educators should share with their students the knowledge and skills they have learned on the BRL programme and together they would be able to critically reflect on this experience. 

We further recommend that the subgroup look at ways in which they can continuously collaborate with young people to understand the impact of the BRL programme. The subgroup can do this by reaching out to young people through surveys such as Microsoft forms or by creating a project like the youth ambassadors where they can meet with young people online and in person to gain some feedback. 

A big part of our discussions with the subgroup were around pupil voice and how we feel that sometimes this is being taken away from us in school. In line with sections 12-15 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), we feel our voices should be heard in schools and not taken away by our educators when we discuss our views on current events in the world or the changes that need to be made in schools. We recommend that the subgroup explore the various ways in which students are given agency and voice in Scottish schools and the ways in which this can be upheld and not taken away. 

We would like to thank you once again for coming along to our Youth Ambassadors session and we look forward to hearing from you. 

Many thanks

The Anti-Racist Education Youth Ambassadors – Intercultural Youth Scotland