Black & Minority Ethnic (BME) Equality Newsletter
Welcome
Welcome to the inaugural newsletter of the EIS BME members.
Over the past few years, the focus of EIS activity in the Anti-Racist sub-committee has been to highlight race equality issues and to encourage BME members to participate fully at all levels of the Institute. Increasing BME recruitment, on-going review of structures and procedures, sharing best practice and challenging racism in education remain our key objectives. A critical part of this is the need to strengthen representation of the views of our BME members.
Addressing Issues That Are Important To You
To ensure that we are being representative of BME views, we would appreciate your participation in a very short survey which can be accessed here. Thank you for taking the time to complete the survey.
The EIS and BME Issues
The Equality Committee is a committee of Council, the decision-making body of the EIS. The function of the Equality Committee is to promote equality of opportunity for all teachers and lecturers in Scotland regardless of race, gender, sexuality and disability and to make appropriate recommendations on equality issues to the Council.
The Equality Committee has convened a sub-committee to deal, specifically with anti-racist and BME issues. The Anti-Racist sub-committee consists of five members of Council and four members who do not need to be members of the Council.
Work this session
The work of the Anti-Racist sub-committee this session includes;
- Examining the issues surrounding the increasing influence of far-right and fascist organisations within schools by looking at the advice offered by the NUT.
- Looked at the issues surrounding bilingual learners.
- Highlighting the CPD opportunities provided by Show Racism the Red Card.
- Determining the format and content of Show Racism the Red Card's contribution to the Equality Representative Training Day (24 March 2012).
- Contributed prizes for Show Racism the Red Card's Creative competition.
- Revising anti-racist policy in light of the new Equality Act legislation.
- Revising anti-racist advice documents on Challenging Racism and Gypsy Travellers in light of the new Equality Act legislation.
- Attendance at Scottish Refugee Council AGM.
- Attendance at the ‘No Racism!' St. Andrew's Day March.
- Arranging for contributors to ‘Listening to Black/minority ethnic Teachers: Learning for Tomorrow' Seminar.
- Participation in the STUC Black Workers' Conference.
- Highlighting the advice and ‘good practice' contained within TUC Workbook – ‘Tackling Racism'
- Discussions on the viability, content and format of a regular BME e-bulletin.
Becoming More Involved
If you are interested in becoming part of EIS committees, locally or nationally, you should seek advice from your EIS representative or local association secretary.