Equalities and Human Rights Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, June 21, 2018

Official Report 773KB pdf

---

Bullying and Harassment of Children and Young People in Schools

Welcome back to the meeting. I welcome the Speaker of the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, Ms Joy Burch MLA, and the clerk of the Assembly, Tom Duncan, who have been observing the meeting from the public gallery.

Agenda item 2 is a follow-up round-table discussion on the bullying and harassment of children and young people in schools. Last year, we produced a report entitled “It is not Cool to be Cruel: Prejudice-based bullying and harassment of children and young people in schools”. We have undertaken work in co-ordination with the Education and Skills Committee and have carried out inquiries into the matter. The Education and Skills Committee has also carried out an inquiry into personal and social education, as those things work together. I understand that that committee is keeping a watching brief on the Scottish Government’s review of personal and social education and that the Deputy First Minister wrote to it last month to update it on the review’s timetable. That will be of interest in the context of the work that we are doing.

We have around the table representatives of many of the organisations that we have spoken to in our inquiry. I ask people around the table to briefly say who they are.

I am the vice-president of the Educational Institute of Scotland. I have just finished 10 years as the convener of its equality committee.

I am the MSP for Coatbridge and Chryston.

I am the senior policy officer for the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights.

I am a West Scotland MSP.

I am a lecturer in human geography at Edinburgh Napier University.

I am a lecturer in education and social justice at the University of Strathclyde.

I am a Glasgow MSP.

I am a communications manager at Girlguiding Scotland.

I am the member of the Scottish Parliament for Dumfriesshire.

I am the policy and public affairs officer at Inclusion Scotland, which is the national disabled people’s organisation.

I am the senior programmes and influencing manager at LGBT Youth Scotland.

I am the service director at respectme, which is Scotland’s national anti-bullying service.

I am the member of the Scottish Parliament for Caithness, Sutherland and Ross.

Good morning. I am Her Majesty’s inspector of education and the senior education officer for inclusion and equalities at Education Scotland.

Hello, everyone. I am the Lib Dem MSP for Edinburgh Western and the deputy convener of the committee.

I am the convener of the committee.

I thank all of you who have come back to see us; it is good to see you again. I welcome Katherine Botterill and Daniela Sime, as it is their first time at the committee. They have looked at prejudice-based bullying of minorities and other issues that are of interest to the committee.

We will immediately go to opening questions, as our time is limited and I want to get the best out of everyone. Many of you have taken part in a round-table discussion before. If you catch my eye, I will put you on the list and call you to speak. If you have a supplementary question, you can make a wee sign to say that you want in on the back of the question. If you let me know that you want to speak, we can make the conversation as free flowing as possible.

What improvements have you seen in your particular sectors on the back of the committee’s anti-bullying report, which fed into the Scottish Government’s anti-bullying strategy?

One of the main advances so far has been made in the national policy context. Since the launch of the inquiry report, “Respect for All: The National Approach to Anti-bullying for Scotland’s Children and Young People” has been published. It has a strong commitment to addressing prejudice-based bullying and a clear expectation that that commitment will be translated into practice for children and young people through school and community organisation policies. Since then, the recording and monitoring supplementary guidance has been published, which also contains clear guidance that we need to ensure better recording of prejudice-based incidents.

There has been a real strengthening of the national policy framework; the issue is in translating that into practice for children and young people.

It is a bit early to make any judgment on what changes have been made, because we have just received the national guidance. We will wait to see how that plays into the local education authorities’ guidance and school guidance, and how that develops.

I agree with what has just been said about the emphasis on prejudice-based bullying in the guidance, which is very helpful. Again, we will have to see how that develops.

We have seen good practice in schools in areas such as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, but I am not sure about other areas of prejudice—for example, disability, which is the area of particular concern to Inclusion Scotland. It would be interesting to know how the inspectorate and others will examine that. How will they judge what success means?

I think that the improved recording and monitoring will come in later this year. If we see an increase in the recording of prejudice-based bullying, will that be considered a success or a failure? The hate crime statistics that came out this week show that there has been a significant increase in the number of recorded incidents of hate crime against disabled people, but does that mean that there is more hate crime against disabled people or just that more incidents are being reported and dealt with? We must not put disincentives into the system whereby recording more incidents makes it look as though the situation is getting worse, when, in fact, we might just be picking up and starting to address a problem that has been there all along.

I apologise to Cara Spence for spilling water all over her papers.

Is that a watershed moment for you?

I want to follow up on Iain Smith’s and Katie Ferguson’s points about recording. We made it very clear in our report that there should be mandatory recording of all incidents of bullying. When we took evidence, teachers told us how they monitored and recorded incidents, and there was significant unease about recording incidents because of what teachers thought would be the knock-on impact on how their school would be regarded. We made it absolutely clear that every single incident should be recorded to ensure that the proper steps are taken.

Both of you have used phrases such as “better recording” and “improved recording”. Will you clarify what you mean by that? Does the improved and updated guidance say that you should record more or that every single incident should be recorded? We have made it clear that every single incident must be recorded.

My understanding of the guidance is that every single incident should be recorded, but I do not know how that will play out in schools. There may be a tendency to deal with an incident and not record it. That probably happens in most classrooms on most days. Small things happen that are dealt with and not recorded.

One of the big concerns that we expressed in our evidence to the original inquiry was that prejudiced-based bullying against disabled people is not being recorded and picked up. We would like that sort of thing to be picked up so that we can see whether there is a pattern of that happening in particular schools or across schools. That can then be addressed as systemic behaviour rather than as individual incidents.

Katie Ferguson wanted to come back in. I know about the work that she has been doing in schools in the past year.

We are not seeing enough reporting, and the consistency of reporting is not good enough. There was a real consensus that the status quo is not good enough and needs to change. The guidance will go some way to addressing those issues, which is why it has been really valuable. It is clear that we need to report and investigate all bullying incidents. The guidance will also help us to improve consistency, which touches on what Iain Smith said about what we are recording. We need to record whether prejudiced attitudes or views have played a role, and we need to record the nature of those views.

Mary Fee touched on the need for a culture shift, which is a hugely important part of this. A lot of softer work needs to happen alongside the guidance—for example, training and discussions with schools and teachers about how to implement the guidance and create a consistent approach.

We must also recognise the need for a culture shift among children and young people. If they come forward and talk about bullying incidents that are affecting them, we can set about addressing those issues. Young people need to feel safe in disclosing when bullying is happening, although we recognise that professionals will often notice issues and address them proactively. It is important to acknowledge that the data collection that will happen will inform preventative strategies on bullying and prejudice-based bullying as well as enabling incidents to be responded to reactively.

10:15  

I will bring in Carol Young and Cara Spence, after which we will return to Mary Fee’s substantive question.

CRER was involved in the working group that helped to develop the new guidance on the recording and monitoring of bullying, and we definitely welcomed the opportunity to input into that. The result of that process is a much more concise and straightforward monitoring form, although there are still issues that need to be addressed. For example, there is no way for people to record racist incidents that are not bullying in that system, and we are concerned that the recording of such incidents might end up getting lost from practice entirely. That has still to be tackled.

Overall, we are pretty disappointed that the committee’s recommendation that there should be mandatory recording was not taken up by the Scottish Government. Over the years, the Scottish Government has provided fairly consistent advice on the need for recording, and respectme has done loads of good work to convince education authorities and schools of the importance of recording. However, thus far, those efforts have been unsuccessful. We are about to launch some research that we did to provide a baseline before the launch of the respect for all approach. We looked at the statistics that we managed to get through freedom of information requests on the levels of racist incidents and prejudice-based bullying incidents in schools in Scotland. To be frank, that information is not worth the paper that it is written on, as it is at a very low level.

If the new guidance is successful, we would expect there to be a dramatic rise in incident recording. That would be reflective of better practice and would enable schools to be aware of what is going on so that they can deal with it appropriately, which makes sense. For us, the recording of a greater number of incidents would be a good thing. However, further down the line, we would like the approach to recording to be robustly evaluated by the Scottish Government. If it is found that voluntary approaches are still not working, there should be a move towards mandatory recording of bullying.

I agree with Katie Ferguson: the changes in the policy context are the main thing that we can comment on at the moment. We were pleased by the launch of the national approach and felt that it was good that it dealt robustly with prejudice-based bullying. It was also good that the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people were taken into account. We worked closely with the Scottish Government on that.

However, we also felt that more detailed practical advice was needed for teachers on how to respond to incidents, so we produced guidance alongside the national approach to anti-bullying, which was supported by the learning directorate. That guidance was distributed to every school in Scotland, and we have started to see the impact of that play out in school policies. Through our LGBT charter work and our work with schools, we review schools’ policies, and I am starting to see a trickle-down effect from the national approach and our guidance. I would say that there has certainly been an impact, but, at this stage, it is difficult to comment on what the effect has been on the whole-school environment and culture.

When it comes to monitoring and recording, the system will always be slightly flawed unless the information comes directly from children and young people. Teachers will be the conduit for the recording of that information, and there will be fears about that. In the meantime, it is important that we get the messages right for teachers and schools and that we let them know that the recording of a high number of incidents is actually a good thing. I imagine that, initially, numbers will be low. It will take time for us to encourage teachers and schools to report incidents. Moving forward, I advocate the finding of anonymous ways for young people to report incidents, because not all young people have strong relationships with their teachers or feel able to come forward. If young people could report incidents electronically or as they occur, much more accurate statistics would be obtained.

I echo what Cara Spence has just said. The evidence that we heard from young people at the previous committee meeting was incredibly powerful. A lot of it focused on their ability to speak up about incidents and the fact that they did not feel that teachers understood what they meant and whether an incident was bullying. Without robust training to ensure that teachers are aware of what counts and what does not, no amount of recording will make any difference. I do not think that we have seen that yet, and the young people that we brought forward said that they need to feel that they are being listened to about those incidents at the time.

I was not at the previous meeting, so perhaps this is a good moment to bring in some new evidence. We carried out research with more than 1,000 young people who were born in central and eastern Europe but came to Scotland and the rest of the rest of the United Kingdom. The survey showed that 77 per cent of them have experienced racism and xenophobic attacks, and the vast majority of those incidents happened at school.

Of the 1,100 young people who completed the survey, 565 described incidents of racism, xenophobia and bullying that happened predominantly in schools. The incidents ranged from verbal attacks—such as being called a terrorist or an illegal, being told that they arrived on a boat, being called a prostitute and being mocked for their accent, the way they look or the way they speak—to very serious physical attacks on them, their property and their families.

Echoing points that were made earlier, 20 per cent of respondents said that they did not and do not report because those incidents happen every day and such behaviour is normalised. Teachers hear these incidents, and sometimes they were also accused of being perpetrators of some of the attacks. Half of the respondents said that they had seen an increase in racism and xenophobia since Brexit, and that extended to other groups. However, for this particular group, the number of incidents has gone up since the Brexit referendum.

The issue of teachers not being able to manage or deal with such incidents was raised by several of the respondents, and quite a lot of them said that they were not taken seriously because they are white—97 per cent of them identified as being white and said that they were not taken seriously. The issue of teachers not being prepared for, or knowledgeable in dealing with, incidents was also mentioned by many respondents.

We were quite interested to see whether Scotland is different from the rest of the UK, but we had no statistically significant data to suggest that there is a difference. The fact that we are talking about these issues is encouraging, but there is definitely a gap in teacher training as well as in policy and practice at the school level.

Katherine Botterill has also done some complementary work and up-to-date research on this.

It is not that up to date, so I cannot comment on the progress that has been made. My research is a qualitative study throughout Scotland involving young people from different ethnic and religious minority backgrounds. We engaged with 382 young people across urban, suburban and rural Scotland in around 2014-15, and some of the themes that we found very much resonate with what I am hearing from some people around the table—in particular, they back up what Daniela Sime said about the perception of prejudice-based bullying. It can be difficult for young people and teachers to identify it. In the research, we found cases of people talking about racism as just banter. Whether that is recognised as an issue by the young people themselves and how it plays out in relationships are complex matters.

The other point that I want to make is about misrecognition of young central and eastern European people. People are often misrecognised as being of a different nationality or as being from a religious minority. Also, lots of young Sikh, Hindu and south Asian young people talk about being misrecognised as Muslim and experiencing Islamophobia. There is quite a lot of complexity in the perception of that. It is still religious bullying but, because the victims are misrecognised, there is a lot of complexity around it. It should be included in the training and continuing professional development materials on how we might perceive racist and religious bullying.

The report said that the protected characteristics will be covered in the CPD training, but nationality is not a protected characteristic and, for lots of central and eastern European young people, their nationality and their migrant status is potentially a source of stigmatisation. That additional factor should be talked about in the training on protected characteristics, otherwise we might have people being put into boxes and, if someone does not quite fit into a protected characteristic box, it will not be perceived as bullying.

Provided that the resources covering the protected characteristics are developed properly, they will include nationality, because ethnic or national origin is part of the protected characteristic of race. However, it is true that the vast majority of people working in education will not recognise that, so significant support is needed to make sure that people understand and tackle such issues on the ground.

I will comment briefly on the impact of such bullying on young people. We asked them how they deal with those incidents and what they do, and there are all sorts of things that young people do in such situations. Sometimes, they give a different nationality because they think that that will protect them—they hide their nationality or ethnic identity. Particular groups who are vulnerable include the Roma migrant groups. Several characteristics—including being migrants, Roma or from a poorer background—can make people more vulnerable, and they will quite often try to hide those characteristics.

Since the Brexit referendum, young people talk about trying to hide their identity in public spaces by not using their home language in school or on public transport because of fears of being attacked. Some of them have suffered such incidents, and that has had a direct impact on their mental health. In the sample, 16 per cent of respondents reported mental ill health, which is a higher rate than the rate among the overall population.

Their attainment is also suffering. Polish young people are doing less well in schools than white Scottish young people and all the other ethnic minority groups. Schools report higher rates of school abandonment by young people who suffer racism and xenophobia in school, and there are lower rates of service use among them, so there is a spiralling effect on their ability to participate in social activities.

Young people cope with such bullying in schools by trying to blend in as much as possible, because they do not want to stand out, and that is affecting their attainment. There is a direct impact on their attainment as well as on their mental health and wellbeing.

I want to focus on three things. The first is training. Teachers need time to train, and there are challenges there, including what their perceptions are in relation to their professional development. Employers need to signpost that this training is valuable for their professional development. It is about culture—we do not need to unpack the results of employers saying that some types of training are more valuable than others.

The second thing is recording, which was mentioned earlier. At our headteachers network last week, I told some of the headteachers that I was to give evidence this morning. One of them made the same point that Iain Smith made. To cut a long story short, having put a lot of effort into recording incidents, some time later they were on the front page of a tabloid—because they had done their job well. They had done a really good job, but they ended up on the front page of a tabloid, in a pejorative story. That is a huge problem.

That leads us to the third thing, which is the media issue. Daniela Sime makes a fair point about reporting in schools. The problem is that a journalist can pick up on what is being reported and run with another narrative.

Those are the sorts of challenges that we face. Training and how things are filtered by the media are really important. We really welcome the work and the discourse that are going on, because they have to happen. As we have seen in the past week, it is not going to get any better.

10:30  

In February 2018, LGBT Youth Scotland published research based on a sample of almost 700 LGBT young people that showed that 71 per cent of LGBT young people experienced bullying in schools on the ground of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. There was a significant impact on their mental health and, for the first time, we got really strong evidence that there was an impact on their attainment and their ability to attend school. We found that 20 per cent of LGBT young people left school as a direct result of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying.

I will not go into lots of detail, because I know that we have looked at a lot of research in the past. There is something about the long-term approach to research and how the Scottish Government might take that forward. I suggest that we ensure that the “Behaviour in Scottish Schools” surveys collect specific information on prejudice-based bullying and that we unpick some aspects of the protected characteristics so that we can dig a little deeper. Individual organisations carrying out research is one thing, but a long-term approach that looks at trends over time would be really useful.

We have heard a few points this morning about how we collect data, how it is used in inspections and the impact on attainment, which I am sure is of interest to Mary Berrill, given the work that she does. Our inquiry last year recommended looking at how inspections are done, the data that they collect and the health and wellbeing aspects of the inspection regime. Will you give us an update on what is happening with that, Mary?

As has been said, work is being done on the personal and social education thematic inspection. That work is nearing the end of phase 2 and the report is in draft form; it has not yet been quality assured. Fifty-five schools across Scotland, including early years centres and special schools, have been involved. The information that that work will produce will allow fruitful discussions to take place. You should bear in mind the fact that in primary schools the focus is on health and wellbeing, rather than PSE—there have been previous discussions on that. Unfortunately, I cannot share any more information about that work at the moment, but it will be of great interest to the committee going forward.

Since the committee’s work was done and the publication of “Respect for All”, Education Scotland has done a lot of work. Inspections were one of the first aspects mentioned by Iain Smith. We have updated our guidance on safeguarding for inspectors. We said previously that safeguarding is one of the quality indicators that is common to all inspections—we think that that is extremely important. We updated that guidance in December 2017. We have also shared with all inspectors information on respectme, so they are fully equipped when they go out to do inspections. We have heard from many people that consistency of approach is so important.

With your indulgence, I will read out a few sentences from the guidance. It states:

“Wider safeguarding issues such as bullying will also be evaluated. This will involve, for example, looking at the overall number of incidents, trends or patterns over time, social media-related incidents and effectiveness of approaches. The guidance ‘Respect for All’”—

to which there is a hyperlink—

“provides useful information as to how schools should prevent bullying and record and monitor incidents.”

It goes on to talk about information from “Included, Engaged and Involved Part 2”, which was also updated just before Christmas.

There is more text, but that is the guidance that is issued to inspectors, which came out in December 2017, so there is progress.

There are other aspects of the work that we are doing. We are supporting a number of the workstreams in committees. We work closely with most of the people in this room. We called on the different agencies to help us update the information that we have on our national improvement hub, and the information is now fresh and has been updated.

We track all the protected characteristics to ensure that there are no gaps. We know that we need to improve in some areas and we are looking at gathering more information. We want the hub to be a quality destination for teachers that they can access easily. To build on what Katie Ferguson said, what is important is the cultural shift. There is not one single resolution; the resolution will come from all of us working together.

We support the recording and monitoring working group and the LGBTI inclusive education working group. We are involved in many aspects of supporting such work.

I will pick up on a number of the comments made by Cara Spence and other panellists about homophobic abuse in schools. During our inquiry and through my association—and that of others—with the time for inclusive education campaign, I have been struck by how much we still have to do to address such abuse, not least because a vicious homophobic attack recently took place in a school in my constituency.

Thirty years ago, section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988—or section 2A—was passed to prohibit any discussion of homosexuality in the school environment. Thankfully, the section was repealed 12 years later, but the shadow of that provision looms large over our education establishment. It is true to say that some teachers are still anxious about what they are allowed to talk about in respect of homosexuality, particularly in faith schools. What can we do to foster a better environment for our teachers—one in which they are more confident about talking in schools about homosexuality, bisexuality and transgender issues as a normal part of the human condition, can support young people who are thinking about their identity and can address the bullying that is still very much at large in our schools?

Lots can be done. Training is needed to build teachers’ confidence. Teachers get a lot of negative feedback, but we need to celebrate success. We need to find ways to showcase the great work that is happening in schools and allow teachers to realise what they can do.

Some teachers will resist doing such work, which is partly a legacy of section 28. We are really strong on the point that we need to find a way to create consistency and say that teachers must do such work. Without that, progress will be slow, because of the legislation in the past.

I am pleased that Mary Berrill talked about the inspection frameworks, which provide one way of creating consistency and telling schools that they must do such work. However, we might want to look at legislation, too. I am aware that we will go through an education reform process with the forthcoming education bill. Has the committee thought about how measures to address prejudice-based bullying could be embedded in that bill? Is this committee connecting with the Education and Skills Committee? If we want this to happen and are taking it seriously, do we need to legislate? We legislated when section 28 was passed—that is all that I am saying.

My question is exactly about whether legislation is required to move things forward. We are a year on from the publication of this committee’s report and it is fair to say that progress has been slow. I am not blaming anyone for that, but would legislation focus people’s minds on moving issues forward?

Does Bill Ramsay want to give a teacher’s perspective?

The institute does not have a position on the question that Oliver Mundell asked, but the discussion has shown that actions are needed after the words. Training is needed—to an extent, I am repeating what I have said.

We are seeing a change in culture. As the historical example of section 28 moves further into the past, its effect lessens. A good example is what Tom Devine has said about sectarianism—that it is starting to wither to some extent. I am not trying to say that it is exactly the same, but there is a generational change in the demographic of the profession, and that will have a positive impact.

We do not have a position on the legislation. However, we know that an act is one thing but, at the end of the day, it is resources and training that change culture. A piece of legislation is crucial and words are really important, but it is training and time to train that will change the culture.

Does Katie Ferguson want to talk about some of the work that she is doing in schools to address some of those points?

Yes. I also have a quick point on the back of that discussion about legislation. When we consider legislating, it is really important to look at the legislation that we already have in place and how well it is being implemented. We have the Equality Act 2010, the General Teaching Council for Scotland regulations and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, but how are those policy and legislative frameworks making a difference on the ground for young people? What other levers could we be using to create real change? We could be using the curriculum, inspection and training to create that attitudinal shift as well. It is a complex area and we really need to look at all those issues.

On our work, I can give you an update in terms of local authorities. There is a clear expectation that local authorities will have an anti-bullying policy that is in line with the respect for all approach, and that that is then translated into consistent anti-bullying policies in schools and other community-based organisations that support young people.

It is safe to say that respect for all has certainly placed fresh impetus on this work. We are working with eight local authorities that are carrying out reviews of their anti-bullying policies. I preface this by saying that it is always a fluid area in terms of where authorities are with this work, but 14 authorities have anti-bullying policies that are up to date and in step with the newer shifts in respect for all, and we have identified 10 authorities that need to review their policies and are due to do that. We will be working with them; we have written to them to put forward our offer of support with policy development, training and resources.

Respectme was set up 10 years ago, and we have worked with all 32 local authorities during that period. Our focus is now to make sure that some of the newer shifts in the current respect for all guidance—a focus on prevention, the explicit commitment to tackling prejudice-based bullying and some other nuances and shifts—are fully reflected and embedded in those policies.

That work continues, and we will find it really important to work in partnership with Education Scotland and other organisations round the committee table to see that change and shift around Scotland.

I have a quick point that picks up on what Katie said about embedding the approach in the curriculum. I am not an expert in curriculum design, so perhaps this is already taking place, but it seems that embedding in the curriculum ideas around accepting difference is important. In the report, there was an emphasis on commonality, as in not pitting people against one another, which I really welcome. However, if we do too much of that, we have to be cautious about flattening out difference. People do not have to be scared about talking about different identities, and it does not have to be a problem. There must be a way to do that by embedding such histories—in terms of different identities—around the history of our country, as has been said. For example, decolonising the curriculum might be how you would talk about race. Talking about LGBT histories is really important. Some of the young people we interviewed were sometimes worried or apprehensive about talking about race, because they felt that they would get put in a particular box, so perhaps making space for that is also important.

You make a good point. The Government’s inclusive education working group has been doing a lot of work on that.

10:45  

Embedding the respect for all approach in the curriculum should not be about levelling out; it should be about celebrating difference. It is a case of developing equalities and human rights-based approaches throughout the curriculum. Some of the best practices in schools in relation to a rights-based approach have been pupil led—I am thinking of the LGBTI-straight alliances in some schools and the peer support groups that address bullying issues.

One of the issues for people who are subjected to prejudice-based bullying is that they might not want to report it to an adult or to anyone else because they do not want their difference to be known. We need to look at ways of providing them with support. Peer support organisations and anonymous reporting are ways of doing that. There is a lot of good practice out there.

We need to be careful that we do not accidentally do perverse things through legislation. Bill Ramsay mentioned that if schools properly record bullying, they will end up with more bullying in their school stats, which might lead to bad newspaper stories. If we legislate to devolve more responsibility to headteachers, they will become more responsible for what happens in their school and they might not want the bullying that takes place to be reported, because that might reflect on them and their school in a negative way in the media. We must make sure that when we make changes to legislation, we do not accidentally do things that have a negative effect. If more responsibility is devolved to the school level, how do we ensure that a consistent approach is taken across all schools at all levels?

That is a good point.

I have two points, the first of which is about the curriculum. We definitely need to engage with the Education and Skills Committee and encourage it to take a look at the curriculum, because it needs to be refreshed. Many young people say that they do not recognise themselves in the curriculum or in the curricular materials. An LGBT young person or a young person who has a disability or who is from a migrant background will not see themselves in the materials that are covered in the curriculum.

Mention has been made of the need to celebrate diversity. Young people have multiple identities that they rely on at different points in their lives. Someone is not just a migrant, disabled or LGBT; they are a whole range of things. They are a certain age, for example. We need to think about how we capture that intersectional dimension of people’s lives in the curriculum. We should not just talk about one dimension at a time. How we get teachers to think about that is extremely important.

My second point is about teacher training. As somebody who has been involved in initial teacher training for the past 15 years, I can definitely see a shift in the type of teacher training that we provide. Bullying and harassment now form part of the initial teacher training programmes. We talk a lot more about how new teachers should tackle those issues. However, we have a very limited amount of time with students on the course, so local authorities need to buy into the fact that CPD is necessary. Trainee teachers have 10 weeks at university, after which they go into schools and then come back for 10 weeks. Someone who does a professional graduate diploma in education will finish their training in the space of a year, which is a very short period of time for them to get conversant with issues of equality, children’s rights, human rights and so on. We need local authorities to make those issues a priority for CPD training.

I certainly agree that the formalised curriculum is very much about a transfer of knowledge and the development of new skills in the classroom setting. High-quality resources are very important for teachers, and teachers always value them. We are working with CRER and BEMIS to look at the resources that are available on race. We want to quality assure what is there and to look at some of the gaps. That is important, because teachers are very busy and they just want to be able to access high-quality resources. It is a way of ensuring that there is a consistent message.

On teaching equality and diversity, the more important context for the curriculum is the ethos, culture and relationships that exist in a school, because it is very much about feeling valued. Equality and feeling valued certainly co-exist, and they come from the school recognising and valuing all, and having a culture in which success is celebrated. That pulls it all together.

Other important contexts for the curriculum on that type of work are the policies and staff modelling strong positive relationships, and the development of the key adult and the caring role. Teaching equality and diversity for a couple of periods a week is always less important than experiencing it.

The point about the culture in schools is really important. One of the features of going into a school is that we pick up the intangible culture of the place in the first 10 to 15 minutes; I had a discussion about that with Mary Berrill earlier. I am not being very specific here, but the culture is vital. When issues such as those that we are trying to deal with emerge, they jar with that culture and get picked up. When the culture is welcoming and people feel safe, it is noticeable when something unsafe happens. I am sorry that my contribution over the past few seconds has been intangible, but the cultural aspect is really important.

The point about the teacher education institutions is that the picture is mixed. That is the nature of life, but there are some TEIs in which the practice is better. Some TEIs could learn from others, but I will not name names.

Last week, I went with Katie Ferguson to St John Ogilvie high school in my constituency—one of the pupils is in the public gallery today—where respectme launched its new anti-bullying strategy, which it had worked on very closely since hearing of the committee’s work last year. When I walked into the school, a pupil-led presentation on the equally safe strategy was going on. As the co-convener of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on men’s violence against women and children, I thought that it was really good to hear teenagers lead a session on aspects such as equally safe. I got that feeling the minute that I walked through the door and, if you get that, you can see a culture change. That school realised that it had a problem and it has worked closely with organisations to change it. You are right about the cultural aspect. Where we see that tangible change, we need to be able to bottle it and give it to other schools.

I will touch quickly on the issue of young people and mental health, which is discussed regularly in the Parliament and in various forums. In particular, I want to talk about people who are at a stage at which they do not need support from child and adolescent mental health services, but they need some support. I want to bring that into the context of bullying. We have heard today that victims of bullying at school might have mental health issues, as might children who are doing the bullying. There could also be questions around whether people are bullied because of their mental health problem, in line with prejudice-based bullying. What can schools do to identify those issues earlier in the context of bullying, and to offer support to young people who might be experiencing bullying?

Mental health was a clear recurring theme in the survey that Cara Spence did. I know that Inclusion Scotland has done work on that, too, but can you give us an answer?

The majority of the work that we do with LGBT young people is about their mental health and confidence. At the moment, their experience of CAMHS is particularly difficult—that is well known. Waiting lists are often very long and, when they get an appointment, they might not have the best experience. For example, if a transgender young person gets a referral, the service might not have the understanding, confidence and skills to give the young person the correct support, so they often report having a worse experience and they come back to us.

CAMHS is viewed as something that will fix a young person, but a lot of young people are in the middle ground. They do not necessarily need a diagnosis, but they need someone to talk to and to get some support. We need to think about how we can create and resource ways in which young people can talk to somebody about how they feel. That is what makes the difference, and there is a range of ways to do that. I had a conversation with a colleague yesterday about whether putting counsellors in schools was the way to go. That might be a way forward, but if we invest in it we need to do it properly. It would not be about having only one counsellor for an entire school or a geographical area.

We need to think about how children and young people can have someone to talk to from the early years onwards and about how we invest in youth services. A lot of children and young people do not necessarily want to talk to their teachers; they would much rather go to an external service. They do not want those moments when they have to come out of the classroom to go and speak to a counsellor. Going somewhere else is sometimes the best option for them.

I have heard about examples that include pupil peer-support networks, which can be very helpful, and safe spaces that people can go to when they feel under threat or have low-level concerns about a mental health issue. However, we must be wary of creating places where people are excluded from the rest of the school, rather than included as part of it; we must be careful to do it in a way that is inclusive. I agree that school counselling services are probably a vital part of providing a solution on mental health, but early access to mental health services such as CAMHS when required is also important.

Part of your question was about children who display bullying behaviour and what is going on for them. It is really important to ask that question. One of the ways in which our national approach in Scotland is quite progressive is that we talk about children who display bullying behaviour and experience that behaviour. We have stepped away from labelling children as bullies, because that suggests that there is something inherent in their identity or character that is leading to the behaviour.

An important approach is to focus on the behaviour and think about it as communicating what is going on for a child or young person, which encourages practitioners to engage with that and help the child or young person to understand what feelings, needs or attitudes are leading to their behaviour and then to address them. That is important in order to change and reduce bullying behaviour, which will have a huge impact on improving mental health outcomes for children and young people.

We are talking about what happens in schools, but there are aspects that spill out of schools into other organisations. Girlguiding Scotland gave us some very compelling evidence last year and I know that it is doing on-going work. The citizen girl project, which was highlighted very successfully in Parliament a few weeks ago, is a great example of that. Can you give us some insights into where you have seen any progress?

First, I want to touch very quickly on peer-to-peer support. We see that as especially important in the context of gender-based bullying. A lot of that comes from the fact that girls have a single-gender space to discuss issues, one of which is obviously mental health. Mental health is hugely connected to gender-based bullying; we see it impacting on confidence, the ability to speak out and attainment. We offer peer-to-peer support in a girl guiding context, but it is often not modelled in schools in a single-gender way, which is where we feel that the most can be got out of it.

Moving on to your question about progress, convener, we have heard a lot about reporting and we are happy to see that. Across the whole of society, with #MeToo and other campaigns, we see that sexism is an endemic problem in Scotland and beyond. Until it is tackled at a societal level we will not see that fully filtering down into schools. We have done some research that we will be delighted to share with the committee once it is released, but it echoes the problem that we highlighted last year; in fact, it sees it getting worse. There is still a lot to do and I am sorry that I did not come with a more positive message, but there has not been a lot of progress in the past year.

We need to hear that.

11:00  

I want to make a point about the huge stigma around mental health in schools, despite efforts to address it and to enable teachers to talk about it in schools; the stigma can lead to children being bullied because of their mental ill health, as was mentioned. Mental health is one of a range of issues that teachers may be worried to talk about because they might say the wrong thing or address the issues in the wrong way; other issues include sexual orientation and sexual education in general. Our research showed that teachers also do not want to talk about Brexit and politics because they might say the wrong thing or upset children—the teachers think that those issues are too political.

Those points relate to the need to create a culture in which teachers have support from one another. If they do not know how to address an issue, they could say, “How do I do this, as a newly qualified teacher?” It is about having a culture in which mental health is not stigmatised by schools, pupils and, sometimes, staff. The stigma can be very subtle; teachers can give non-verbal messages by excluding children, who pick up on it and say, “It’s probably because of my mental health issues or behaviour.”

Leadership with regard to culture was not mentioned earlier, but the report mentioned how important it is to have a headteacher who makes those issues a priority. They say, “We’re going to talk about this in an open way,” and teachers find the language to talk about the sensitive issues that young people grapple with.

The PSE thematic inspection has just finished and we looked at mental health counselling as well as the more universal entitlements with regard to mental health. From personal experience of inspecting, I know that schools are increasingly aware of and much more focused on mental health. I acknowledge Daniela Sime’s comment that that has come from leadership identifying the issue. Without pre-empting the report, I saw a number of effective interventions, such as resilience training and restorative attachment, which are a new lexicon for a lot of teachers. They are popular, and people use them in classrooms to help children to develop strategies that will be lifelong for them. Children talk about the learning pit, when they fall into a pit and think, “I can’t do it”, and they will then tell you that, “I can do it, I just have to keep going. I’ve got to climb out of the pit.” That is the emotional intelligence and the language of emotional literacy that children are developing in many schools. The targeted interventions for mental health are much more enduring, and they link to the additional support that is needed and additional support for learning legislation. Those points also apply to mental health counselling, which a number of schools have, and community link workers and family link workers, who all play important roles.

I understand the point about the intangible culture that is felt on walking into a school, and I have more of a comment than a question about Daniela Sime’s point that, for a lot of teachers, setting time in the curriculum for formal sessions makes it easier for people to talk about difficult issues. Those sessions create a space and dedicate time to pupils, so that they feel that they are not overstepping the mark. Pupil-led initiatives are important, but there is also something important in seeing someone who is in a position of relative authority stand up and say that it is okay to feel that way and to talk about those issues in a public place.

On the back of Fulton MacGregor’s question and the discussions about mental health, we have spoken a lot about teacher training for inclusiveness and all the rest of it. If there are mental health issues, teachers are not always able to identify that or to deal with the issues.

It is important for headteachers to be committed to delivering inclusiveness and supporting their pupils’ mental health. I went into a school in Glasgow that does peer-to-peer work; the pupils who are involved all wear purple hoodies, and the teachers wear purple lanyards. Pupils can speak to those people about anything, but the headteacher had made a point of getting mental health first aid training for her teachers and pupils. If we can see that happening in some schools—Bill Ramsay talked about walking into a school and feeling the culture—why are we still talking about the subject? Why are some schools still not where they should be?

That is a good question.

Important conversations in someone’s professional journey as a teacher happen when they sit and talk to colleagues and managers about attainment, and we all get that. One wonders what status is given to a conversation about health and wellbeing. Does a discourse about health and wellbeing have as much professional value as a conversation about attainment?

The language of society at large and its expectations are really important. When people refer to attainment, that is fine, but the health and wellbeing part of the curriculum for excellence is still to be fully developed, although it has been there for some time. Some sort of professional reward—not necessarily a monetary reward—is needed for leaders who talk about the health and wellbeing of everybody in schools.

Including teachers.

Exactly. That needs to be unpacked. The four capacities of the curriculum for excellence apply to everybody in a school—from the jannie to the staff and the weans.

That includes teachers, because higher rates of mental ill health among teachers were recently reported. Teachers have added pressures in coping with their work with fewer resources. We have not mentioned austerity, but it has had an impact on teachers’ workload and on access to mental health support for pupils and staff.

That is about having a healthy school.

What we know works is not necessarily one thing. A whole-school approach must involve policies, teacher training, pupil engagement and leadership—pupil engagement without leadership does not work. I completely agree with Daniela Sime’s point that, realistically, if we want teachers to be able to support young people effectively, we must think about teachers’ wellbeing.

I talk a lot about LGBT young people’s experience of poor mental health and about my expectations of teachers, but I continually meet teachers who are under a lot of pressure, which has come to my attention more recently. To address the issue, we need to think about how we support teachers effectively.

That is a holistic approach.

Inclusion Scotland is concerned that the pressures on education authority budgets and school budgets mean that there is less support for children with additional support needs—their basic needs in the classroom might be supported, but their need to be a full part of a school might not be supported, because of cuts to additional support services.

I appreciate that we are running out of time, but I go back to the culture and the importance of language—of how people talk about issues. We would like more effective equalities and disabilities awareness training in schools, so that people are aware of the right language to use when referring to people with disabilities—for a start, we should refer not to people with disabilities but to disabled people, because they are disabled by barriers in society, which may be physical, emotional or social. It is important for teachers and pupils to recognise those issues. Another point is that many people are not visibly disabled, but they still have a condition that requires to be taken into account. We would like work to be done with disabled people to develop better disabilities and equalities awareness training in schools.

Those are great points.

I have a brief question for Cara Spence. I am grateful for the written submission that you provided us with. In it, you say that the “Supporting Transgender Young People” guidance document, which you launched in November, was endorsed by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland and 17 local authorities. Is that the up-to-date figure? If it is, why are the other 15 not signing up to it?

First, to give the councils their due, we asked them only at the last minute whether they would like to sign up. Because we had existing relationships with 17 local authorities, those ones did so very quickly. Our second stage is in November, when we will do a call-out to the other local authorities. I suspect that more will come forward, but I doubt that all of them will. We are not a statutory body so, unfortunately, we cannot make local authorities do things, but we will try our hardest.

Again, it comes back to the question of consistency. I suspect that some local authorities do lots of work in terms of improving young people’s health and wellbeing, and that others are not as consistent in that regard. We might need to look at that.

We have been talking a lot, rightly, about victims of bullying in school, but I have been reflecting on bullies themselves, because bullying behaviour can often be a response to trauma—for example, a young person might not know how to process the toxic and powerful emotions around attachment trauma or loss, which might manifest itself in a need to lash out. Does the panel agree that we need to instil within our teaching staff an understanding of trauma so that they can work with perpetrators of bullying from a trauma-informed perspective?

We do not have the time to unpack that. A young person is often struck dumb by trauma, so it takes time and training to identify that that is an issue. People think of trauma as something loud and visible. However, there is an aspect of it that is almost subterranean, deep sea or whatever. That creates real challenges. I am sure that that is what Alex Cole-Hamilton is referring to—the various manifestations of trauma. Again, it comes back to the need to be able to identify and pick up on the signs of trauma, which can be extraordinarily subtle and can be picked up on only by people with sensitivity and training.

I do not know whether there is enough research on bullies’ behaviour and whether they have been affected by trauma—some have; some have not. The young perpetrators of xenophobic bullying are not always victims of trauma, but can simply be replicating the anti-immigration, hostile-environment language that they hear in the news, and see in the tabloid press and at home—“Immigrants go home” and so on. The group of young people with whom I am working just now are EU nationals who are at risk of becoming illegal, in a sense, if their status is not confirmed. If that happens, that sort of attitude will increase.

We need to think about the issue on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, there might be scope to think about the research on how adverse childhood experiences affect young people in that way, but in other cases, the bullies could come from stable families and communities and simply have some wrong views on people’s status or on issues around disability and sexual preference.

Before I bring in Katie Ferguson, I will just say that, before we close the meeting, I will ask you all to suggest something that you would like us to focus on in the work that we do. I say that now to give you a chance to think of something.

11:15  

The issue that Alex Cole-Hamilton raises is an important one that we should focus on if we are serious about changing behaviour and reducing bullying behaviour. We need to support children who display bullying behaviour.

I agree that we should deal with the issue on a case-by-case basis and take a strongly child-centred approach that involves consideration of what is going on in the child’s life. There are a number of reasons why the child might display that behaviour, one of which is their thinking that, in the culture that they are in, they need to act that way so that they are not bullied.

There have been a number of advances in our understanding of how adverse childhood experiences, trauma and so on can impact on children. There is absolutely a place for acknowledging and using that information as best we can. From inspections and use of other resources, Education Scotland has shown that addressing bullying behaviour through nurturing approaches, restorative solutions and solutions-oriented approaches can be successful. There is a lot to learn from that.

We also need to remember that such matters are complex: they take a lot of time to deal with, and teachers often feel that they do not have sufficient time to give the quality of support that is required. We need to think about other types of support in terms of professionals and practitioners who could be used to create a whole-school approach that will result in positive outcomes.

We are almost out of time, so I ask everyone to be brief in their responses to this question. If there was only one thing that you would like us to focus on, what would it be?

You should continue doing what you are doing. This sort of discourse is the sort of thing that we do with our equality representatives. Literally, the quality and the range of this discourse is what we try to replicate.

I agree with Bill Ramsay that it would be valuable if the committee could continue to consider the issue, and if you could revisit it after a period to see what progress has been made.

From our written submission, you will see that we are aware of progress in some areas. However, people’s reflections around the table today—which tally with our experience—suggest that there is a lot of work to be done to improve the capacity of schools and teachers to take preventative and reactive measures against bullying, and particularly against specific forms of prejudice-based bullying. That has real resource implications that will not be easy to get around. However, it is important to continue to try to understand what the barriers are and to gather good practice and find ways of rolling it out.

At the end of the day, our main concern is the experience of children in schools. Although some great stuff is happening, it is not good enough that that is not the experience of all children.

Thank you for inviting me today—this has been my first appearance before a committee and it has been a really positive experience to see how much passion there is for the issues. It seems that there is a lot more work to be done, but what I will take away is that a good way forward involves the ethos of the school and a wider focus—a whole-school approach and an approach that involves communities.

Some of the work that I do involves examining how politics and geopolitics affect people’s everyday lives and encounters with others, and it has shown that building healthy relationships from an early age and how people relate and value each other are important. We should not lose sight of the wider political context. As Daniela Sime said, the narrative around migration and otherness affects and validates the language that young people use. We have to be careful about that.

I am glad that you enjoyed your first visit to the committee; let us hope that it is not your last.

I echo Katherine Botterill’s comments about being part of this group. I, too, have found it to be an enjoyable experience, so I thank you for that.

There are two issues that I want to raise. One involves young people’s voice—we need to do more in that regard. What surprised me in my research is how many young people took time to share their deeply personal experiences. We had not met most of the people face to face, but they took a great deal of time to explain their experiences of racism and xenophobia. We need to find ways of bringing young people into the debates that are going on and into the great work that the committee, the Government and others are doing.

The second issue concerns the need to continue to work with teachers and find better ways of supporting them, because they are doing a lot of good work in difficult circumstances. The vast majority of teachers want to do the best they can for their schools and their children, but perhaps do not have the necessary language or skills. We need to support them in that difficult job, which has become more difficult in recent times.

I hope that you will come back to the committee, too.

The first plea that I would make is this: could we please take gender forward and truly embed it in all aspects of policy? Particularly around bullying, gender is often forgotten, but women are 51 per cent of the population and we are still hearing from girls that there are corridors in schools that they are unable to go down, which is completely unacceptable.

My second plea is that this committee and your education colleagues should ensure that young people are really involved in creating policies. Echoing what has been said, there are young people who are shouting out to be listened to and to be part of policy making, particularly around personal, social, health and economic education. They have strong views and they want to tell you what is right. However, I do not think that they are being listened to at the moment.

There is a strange bit on page 18 of the “Respect for All” guidance. It says:

“Policies that address bullying based on the protected characteristics will, where appropriate, require completion of an Impact Assessment”.

I would have thought that all policies can have an impact on equalities and that they should therefore all be subject to an equality impact assessment.

Related to that is the need to get the national policy to trickle down to all schools, and the issue of how we monitor its implementation in schools. The key issue is how the policy actually works in terms of improving practice in schools and having an impact on prejudice-based bullying.

You would be interested in the work that the committee is doing on human rights and Parliament becoming the human rights guarantor. That includes human rights assessments of policies.

On human rights, I would ask for incorporation of the UNCRC into Scots law. I believe that, if we can get children’s rights right, that will make a massive difference in terms of prejudice-based bullying. In the areas in which we have to intervene or advocate on behalf of LGBT young people, it is because their rights have been ignored—for example, their privacy is ignored when they are outed. They are not listened to, but it is important to listen. When I engage with teachers, I ask them whether they have asked the young person what they want to happen. When they do that, they get it right.

I echo all the suggestions that have been made. However, with regard to the work of your committee, I make a plea for you to consider children and young people across all your business. Sometimes, we silo adults’ issues and children and young people’s issues and we forget that there are huge opportunities for early intervention and learning when we think about wider issues such as sexual harassment, hate crime and human rights. We must ensure that those messages filter down to children and young people.

It is commendable that the committee has put a clear focus on such an important issue.

You provide an overview on all the protected characteristics; my plea is that you include poverty among them, although it is not a statutory one. There is nothing in legislation that stops us adding protected characteristics; I think that including poverty would help to close the circle. Partly from listening to Bill Ramsay and hearing about the work that goes on around promoting health and wellbeing in relation to the Scottish attainment challenge, I feel that that might be an interesting bit of work.

I thank everyone for their participation this morning. You will be interested to know that we will have the cabinet secretary before us in the autumn, probably, for an update from the Government on progress on the issue. We are engaged in on-going work on this issue. The committee gave a commitment to incorporate reporting mechanisms in the work that we do, so we will track progress regularly in order to learn from what has been done and so that we can secure the change that we all want.

Thank you all for your written and oral evidence. I make my usual plea for witnesses to let us know if it occurs to you that you have forgotten to tell us something. We are keen to hear about any ideas or solutions that you have.

11:25 Meeting continued in private until 11:33.