Equality and diversity framework 2021 to 2025

The CounciI is committed to increasing the life chances of all young people, reducing the attainment gap and ensuring that the learning experience is high quality, supportive and inclusive.

The Council will build on the learning and innovation from the response to the Covid pandemic which highlighted the significant challenges faced by families from certain groups including single parent families, BAME families and families living in poverty. Challenges included not having access to a device to allow them to take part in online classes and learning, and a lack of access to safe outdoor areas.

The actions are structured around effectively meeting the learning and development needs of all children and young people and to ensure a supportive culture in schools. Specific actions are underway to support children with disabilities, families living in poverty and people from a BAME background.

The priority outcome for the first year is: children and young people have improved health and wellbeing because there is a reduction in bullying and prejudice-based incidents.

The general duties progressed through these actions are: eliminate discrimination, advance equality and foster good relations.

Mainstream actions

Key actions planned or underway by the Education Authority, outlined in strategies including Edinburgh Learns for Life, aim to help every learner reach their potential in school and their local community. This includes pupils with additional support needs, looked after children, children whose first language is not English and families who are vulnerable.

Actions include:

• addressing safety in the public realm, Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) is a peer education programme that supports young people to explore and challenge the attitudes, beliefs and cultural norms that underpin gender-based violence, bullying and other forms of violence. It is delivered in school and community settings by trained mentors from S5-S6 using scenarios and issue-based discussion. The topics covered are domestic abuse, sexting- coercion, sexting - images, shaming, transgender bullying, sexual harassment in school and online abuse. To date, the programme has been delivered in almost all high schools in Edinburgh, supported by Lifelong Learning staff. A new programme in Edinburgh will begin after the summer, with the aim of making MVP available to all 23 high schools.
• embedding a cultural shift that includes and supports every learner, particularly those with protected characteristics.

continuing to provide good quality of care and support for looked after children and young people, working with partners as corporate parents to improve how we collectively fulfil our statutory duties to our looked after children and unaccompanied minors, and delivering the recommendations from The Promise outlined by the Independent Care Review:

• creating a truly inclusive education system through a programme of modernising our services for children with additional support needs and by designing our schools for the future to accommodate the needs of all children irrespective of disability or additional support requirements
• expanding early years provision and continuing to deliver a range of adult and family learning opportunities, supporting child development as well as enabling parents to work
• making better use of digital learning
• poverty-proofing the school day through the One in Five – Raising Awareness of Child Poverty programme
• increasing participation in universal youth work provision
• increasing diversity in school and youth workforce.

Actions to support the priority outcome

The priority outcome for the first year is that children and young people have improved health and wellbeing because there is a reduction in bullying and prejudice-based incidents.
While a recent inquiry into allegations that a culture of racism existed within certain schools in the city found that there was no evidence that a culture of racism existed in Edinburgh’s schools, there were learning and development recommendations which the authority will work hard to take on board. Improvements identified are:

• setting out clear processes to report racist incidents
• managing racist incidents sensitively and ensuring follow up actions are taken
• reviewing the curriculum to ensure it does not perpetuate and actively challenges racist or colonialist attitudes
• improving the culture to clearly show zero tolerance of racist conduct.

These improvements are underway and are included in the Equalities Action Plan.

Performance

Monitoring will use the following information:

• bullying and prejudice-based incidents data with details for each of the relevant protected characteristics
• pupil wellbeing questionnaire (primary) – 2021 and 2023
• pupil survey (secondary) – 2021 and 2023
• school attainment
• positive destinations.