Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights - anti-racist policy making: review summary

Learning for specific policy areas

The review identified a number of factors which need consideration in order for work to meet the visions and goals of the Race Equality Framework for Scotland (REF) 2016-2030.

The considerations are drawn together under the key policy areas set out in the Race Equality Framework for Scotland 2016-2030: Overarching issues; community cohesion and safety; participation and representation; education and lifelong learning; employability, employment and income; and health and home.

Overarching considerations for policy on race equality:

• Developing clear mechanisms for leadership, responsibility and accountability on race equality across all directorates, including levers to support implementation and progress monitoring
• Creating joined-up approaches to capacity building, particularly in light of the commitments on training for public sector staff within the REF
• Planning an approach following the end of the Equality Evidence Strategy 2017-2021 which addresses the remaining gaps and standardisation issues with ethnicity data (particularly ensuring granular disaggregation of data to match Scotland's Census ethnicity categories)
• Using procurement and funding processes to lever equality commitments from external organisations through contract compliance
• Maximising the potential of external equality funding by embedding criteria and evaluation processes that support evidence based approaches

Considerations on community cohesion and safety:

• Development of preventative anti-racist initiatives based on evidence of what works to create attitude and behaviour change, with evaluation mechanisms designed to strengthen this evidence base, reflecting the Equality and Human Rights Commission's principles for evaluation of anti-prejudice work (developed by CRER on behalf of the Commission)^[7]
• Strengthening community cohesion through national and local policy approaches, with a focus on reaching those in the majority ethnic community who are not engaging positively with people outside their own ethnic group^[8]
• Building capacity on race equality within the Police Force and justice system
• Reviewing minority ethnic representation throughout the justice sector
• Improving connections between minority ethnic communities / community organisations and Police Scotland

Considerations on minority ethnic participation and representation:

• Increasing access to mainstream participation in arts, culture, heritage and leisure programmes, and in access to mainstream funding in these areas
• Targeting specific under-represented ethnic groups for public appointments, and considering ways to improve diversity at Chair level
• Identifying the factors underlying the success of positive action measures regarding public appointments and sharing the transferrable learning

Considerations on education and lifelong learning:

• Capacity building on race equality and anti-racism from Initial Teacher Education stage onwards
• Continuing the existing programme of work to improve teacher diversity
• Reviewing, recording and monitoring of prejudice-based bullying and racist incidents, with consideration of the potential to develop a mandatory approach
• Investigating how schools address racist bullying and racist incidents to identify opportunities to strengthen good practice and eliminate poor practice
• Reviewing the availability and use in policy making of disaggregated education data (particularly relating to Gypsy/Traveller pupils and granular ethnicity breakdowns, but also datasets where disaggregation has regressed such as free school meals, and data which is not published such as exclusions where the incident includes a racial motivation)
• Building on the work begun by Education Scotland to look at the race equality implications of Curriculum for Excellence
• Working with early learning and childcare (ELC) providers to increase access for minority ethnic families
• Joining up approaches between future race equality policy and the work of the Race Equality and Anti-Racism in Education Programme Board

Considerations on employability, employment and income:

• Levers for increasing workforce diversity in the public, private and voluntary sectors (including reviewing the effectiveness of the Workplace Equality Fund, which initially attracted few applications focussing on race equality)
• Commissioning research on the impact of Universal Credit on BME people
• Ensuring that child poverty and poverty strategies include action specifically focussed on minority ethnic communities
• Maximising the number of Scottish Government vacancies advertised externally in order to widen the diversity of potential applicants

Considerations on health and home:

• Implementing the recommendations of the Expert Reference Group on Covid-19 and Ethnicity
• Co-ordinated approaches to capacity building on race equality in the health sector, taking into account its size and complexity
• Strengthening the availability of consistent, robust housing data disaggregated by ethnicity
• Targeted work to address minority ethnic communities' disproportionate concentration in the private rented sector and disparities in overcrowding and housing quality

For more information on any of the considerations for future practice within this briefing, please contact:

Carol Young
Deputy Director
CRER
carol@crer.org.uk