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

Attendees and apologies

 

• Support and Wellbeing Unit, Scottish Government (Chair)
• Enable Scotland
• Time for Inclusive Education (TIE)
• Dumfries & Galloway
• Zero Tolerance
• Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES)
• National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC)
• Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)
• NASUWT
• Independent anti-racism consultant 
• School Leaders Scotland (SLS)
• Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER)
• respectme
• Support and Wellbeing Unit, Scottish Government (Secretariat)

Apologies

• PhD student
• Equality Network
• Rape Crisis Scotland

Items and actions

Welcome, apologies and note of previous meeting (paper 1)

The Chair welcomed the meeting and apologies were made.

The Chair confirmed the actions from the previous meeting had been actioned and invited comments on the previous minutes.

respectme highlighted a typing error in the previous minutes. Members were otherwise content.

Action: SG to correct typing error in previous minutes.

Prejudice-based bullying changes (paper 2)

The Chair advised that changes had made to the guidance based on comments received at the previous meeting, via email and from the main Respect for All Working Group which were reflected in paper 2.

Members were invited to provide feedback on the updated text. Points included:

• Confirm wording on gypsy travellers to ensure correct terminology is used.
• In the first paragraph, when referring to ‘racism, sexism…’, make clear there are many others forms of prejudice this can include. Link to appendix.
• Internalised and intergroup prejudice should be separated out.
• A lot of this will be new information to a lot of practitioners. Would be helpful to have examples in these instances.
• Acknowledgment that flow of section and structure needs reviewed.
• A visual or flowchart would be helpful to present the differences and overlaps between bullying and discrimination.
• Potential to separate out protected characteristics from non-protected characteristics in appendix.
• Consistency is required in appendix – currently inconsistent use of harassment, discrimination, bullying, indirect bullying etc. Potential to include a glossary to explain terms.
• Ensure cross-referencing to the Racism and Racist Incidents and Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood guidance.

Action: SG to follow up with independent anti-racism consultant and SCES about wording for first paragraph and religion and belief sections.

Action: Create a visual to present the differences and overlaps between bullying and discrimination. TIE offered to support this once wording in section had been agreed.

Action: Members agreed to send comments in on the draft via email.

Online bullying (paper 3)

The Chair reiterated that it is important not to limit this group’s involvement and input to only the prejudice-based bullying sections. It’s important that the whole document is considered through an equality lens.

The SG shared a paper setting out early thinking in terms of the online bullying section within Respect for All and a number of points were made.

Respect for All thought piece (paper 4)

The Chair highlighted that paper 4 is a thought piece respectme helpfully prepared last year to inform this work which covers a lot of the similar themes arising from this group.

Following the meeting respectme shared the following link from the World Anti-Bullying Forum’s Youth Panel on Online Safety: (1) WABF 2023 Youth Panel: Ask us! Online Safety - YouTube

AOB

Zero Tolerance asked if it would be possible to share a timeline of the work for the Respect for All Review. SG agreed to share.

Action: SG to share timeline of work with members.

The Chair highlighted that the next Respect for All main working group was on 9 May. The chair advised another meeting of this subgroup would be arranged and other sections of the guidance would be brought to members then.