Respect for All Review Prejudice Based Bullying Subgroup Minutes: February 2024

Attendees and apologies

Attendees

• Support and Wellbeing Unit, Scottish Government (chair)
• Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights
• Enable Scotland
• Enquire
• Equality and Human Rights Commission
• Independent anti-racism consultant
• NASUWT
• PhD Student, University of the West of Scotland
• Rape Crisis Scotland
• respectme
• Scottish Council of Jewish Communities
• Zero Tolerance
• Support and Wellbeing Unit, Scottish Government (secretariat)

Apologies

• School Leaders Scotland
• Time for Inclusive Education

Items and actions

Welcome

The chair thanked members for attending and noted apologies.

A member requested updated wording in the minutes on racism within ethnic groups. Members were content to approve the minutes once the change had been made.

Action: SG to update minutes with suggested change and publish on the webpage.

Respect for All updates

The chair highlighted that paper 2 outlined the changes that had been made to the prejudice-based bullying sections of Respect for All following the previous meeting.

Comments from the group included:

• Change ‘adversely racialised communities’ to ‘children from minority ethnic groups who are at risk of experiencing racism’.
• Body image section needs to be updated to include things like excessive female body/facial hair, facial deformities and scars (potentially from war/torture).
• The marriage and civil partnership section is legally incorrect. Could include something about family situation (blended families or single parents, for example) under the non-protected characteristics section.
• Zero Tolerance provided updated wording around the sex, sexual harassment and misogyny section.
• Could potentially link to the Fairer Scotland Duty which applies to schools. SG to consider.
• Use ‘care experienced’ rather than ‘looked after’.
• Disability section requires more information. Suggestion to use the disability definition from the Equality Act. Pull out more about diversity in the disability community.
• Starting the disability paragraph on vulnerability doesn’t feel right, suggest flipping it.
• Policy and practice section needs to take account of children and young people’s additional support needs in terms of actions being followed up and communicated clearly in a way that works for them following an incident.
• Mental health to be included – children and young people can be bullied for that.
• Section could flow better. SG to look at section as a whole.
• Bullying sometimes taking place in another language/culture which can be harder for school staff to identify and address.
• Some children and young people who are neurodiverse or have an additional support need don’t realise the behaviour happening to them is bullying. Would be helpful to set out that staff need to recognise these behaviours and how to address them without the responsibility being on the young person.
• As per the definition, bullying is both behaviour and impact so the young person doesn’t need to be impacted for it be bullying. Staff are also able to report bullying incidents on SEEMiS.
• Look at language throughout guidance – can we change ‘may wish to’ and ‘could’ to ‘should’ while acknowledging legal boundaries.
• Need a section on prejudice-based incidents that aren’t directed at anyone – singing a song or racist graffiti, for example – and how teachers could address these.  
• If you set out what racism means legally then it will allow for a clearer explanation on how other groups experience racism (gypsy travellers and asylum seekers, for example).
• Move gypsy travellers section under protected characteristics section.
• Hate crime definition needs to be clearer. CRER agreed to help with wording.
• Add section on misrecognition of religion which can have a racial undertone.

The chair confirmed that the first part of Respect for All is information, the second part focusses on policy and practice. The chair confirmed that Education Scotland have carried out a thematic inspection on good practice which will inform the policy and practice section. The group will have the opportunity to feed into that.

The chair confirmed that SG would update the document based on comments received and circulate an updated version for comment.

Action: SG to update guidance and circulate an updated version for comment.

AOB

No other business was raised.