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The Education Leadership and Professional Learning workstream of the Scottish Government’s Anti-Racism in Education Programme includes a wide range of stakeholders who bring their expertise and experience to inform strategic actions. Facilitated by Education Scotland, this workstream contributes to the ongoing review of what anti-racist professional learning is available to all school staff, from the national anti-racist professional learning programme, Building Racial Literacy, to more local offers and self-directed professional learning resources.

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.

Education Scotland provides a range of professional learning opportunities for school leaders, which focus on anti-racism. These include Into Headship, Connected and Collaborative Systems Leadership, Aspiring to Middle Leadership, and Middle Leaders Leading Change, as well as the award winning Building Racial Literacy Programme (BRL) and the Anti-Racism Mentors project. All Professional Learning resources are subject to review and, as part of the evaluation cycle, updated based on participant feedback.

In addition to this, the recent external evaluation of the BRL programme concluded that as a national anti-racist professional learning opportunity, it achieves its goal in supporting participants to become racially literate, with them feeling more confident in challenging discrimination and racist incidents. While the programme has welcomed a wide range of school leaders across Scotland, the evaluation identified the need for enhanced anti-racist professional development for school and system leaders. This in part led to the development of Education Scotland’s new Anti-Racism Mentors project being piloted this year.

Beyond Education Scotland’s offers, a range of local authorities and third sector organisations have different levels of professional learning available as well. These are not subject to formal Scottish Government review processes.

The Scottish Government is clear that there is no place for racism in our schools. Discrimination or prejudice of any kind is unacceptable and must be addressed quickly whenever it arises. All staff are expected to be proactive in promoting positive relationships and behaviour in the classroom, playground and the wider school community.

The Racism and Racist Incidents sub-group of the Anti-racism in Education Programme (AREP) is focussed on the support to schools and school staff to improve understanding of racism and to ensure that these issues are properly identified and addressed. It is currently developing guidance on a whole-school approach to preventing and responding to racism and racist incidents in schools. Further information about the workstream, including minutes from their meetings can be accessed here: Racism and Racist Incidents subgroup - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

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 current See Hear Strategy which was published in 2014 still exists to support children and adults who have deafness, sight loss and dual sensory loss to access the support and social care they need.

See Hear Leads, within local authorities, are in place to help drive progress across priority areas within each local partnership.

Since March 2023 policy officials have been engaged in extensive discussions with stakeholders, delivery partners and people with lived experience to hear what has been working well and any challenges people with Sensory Loss were facing in living a good life. Discussions are taking place across Scottish Government to identify other areas of policy work which can help resolve some of those challenges. The publication date of the refreshed strategy will be announced in due course.

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.

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 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 Digital Inclusion Alliance is the proposed national delivery mechanism to bring together the public, private and third sectors to jointly agree how to tackle digital exclusion through long-term, sustainable approaches.

The work to establish the Alliance commenced in November 2023 following approval in the Connecting Scotland Full Business Case. We are currently scoping out options for the financial and legal structure of the Digital Inclusion Alliance and once these are finalised and agreed with Ministers the Alliance will be formally constituted.

To help us co-design the focus of the Alliance and define the role of the third and public sector partnership within that Alliance, we established a Short Life Working Group in March 2024. This group is co-convened by Scottish Government and COSLA using the principles of the Verity House Agreement. Its members are the key organisations in the public and third sector who will work in partnership within the Alliance.