Whole school approach to racism and racist incidents: guidance

Monitoring and Review

It is important that schools regularly review their approach to responding to racism, both in terms of responses to individual incidents and their whole school approaches.

Monitoring and review of work to address racism and racist incidents links to HGIOS Quality Indicators 3.1 and 2.4.

Establishing prevalence of incidents

Establishing prevalence of racist incidents is the first step in understanding progress. Schools should utilise their recording system to extract information about recorded incidents and analyse for patterns or trends. It is important that incidents experienced by school staff are part of the monitoring, to capture a whole school picture of prevalence. Quantitative evidence of decreasing prevalence may not be seen in the shorter term, and schools engaging in improvement work in this area may initially find an increase in recording. This can reflect an increased confidence in reporting and an improvement in racial literacy amongst staff. Progress monitoring should include both quantitative indicators and qualitative methods such as focus groups with children and young people, families, and staff. For further information, please see Respect for All pages 38-9.

Schools may wish to consider if there are patterns of incidents occurring:

• in particular locations in school
• amongst or between certain cohorts of children and young people
• at similar times of the school day
• at particular times of year (for example, when observing religious festivals)
• reflecting specific stereotypes, media narratives or trends in popular culture or social media which can be challenged/countered within the school
• linked with other types of recorded data, such as attendance data

Reviewing whole school approaches

The following reflective questions are designed to help schools review their whole school approach to racist incidents and determine if further actions are needed.

School policies

• How well do existing school policies consider racism and racist incidents and the particular sensitivities of responding to a racist incident? For example, school relationships and behaviour policies, school anti-bullying policies.
• Have children and young people been offered the opportunity to shape school policies, and to what extent have they engaged with this?
• Have families been offered the opportunity to shape school policies? If engagement has been low, what are the possible reasons?
• Are staff engaged in the development of school policies?

School culture and ethos

• How do school values support and embed anti-racism throughout the school?
• How can this be used to communicate expectations that racism is unacceptable and will not be tolerated?
• What opportunities are there to ensure consistent application of these expectations?
• How can school leaders and staff promote school values and an anti-racist culture?

Professional learning and development

• What collegiate space is offered for staff to reflect on their practice and experiences? Are opportunities utilised to discuss anti-racist approaches?
• What professional learning have staff accessed on anti-racism and developing racial literacy? How has it influenced their practice?

Curriculum

• Have the Anti-Racist Curriculum Principles been shared with staff and support given to reflect on how they can be utilised?
• Are children and young people supported, according to their age, stage and needs, to understand what racism is and the different ways in which it may manifest?
• Is anti-racism increasingly integrated across the school curriculum, through dedicated lessons and as a cross-cutting theme across all subject areas?