Earlier this year, the Community Voices Group (CVG) started a series of discussions around the issue of racism in schools. Building on that, a workshop for parents and carers of children or young people from minoritised groups who have experienced racism at school was held in June. The workshop was led by Bridging Change alongside Brighton and Hove City Council’s (BHCC) Anti-Racism Education Strategy team. The aim was to start working together with parents and carers to build a better way of reporting racist incidents at schools in Brighton and Hove.
SIS works in partnership with Bridging Change to run the CVG project. A SIS Bilingual Community Researcher contacted people from the Brazilian community locally who have school aged children to invite them to take part in the workshop. Portuguese is in the top 5 languages apart from English that is spoken as a first or preferred language in Brighton and Hove. The SIS linguist was able to explain the purpose of the meeting and encourage Portuguese speaking SIS Service Users (SUs) to attend, letting them know how to access the event, and reassure them that the linguist would be there with them to interpret. Without these steps, due to their language support needs, the SUs would not have known that the workshop was taking place, nor been able to participate in it.
The SIS linguist who supported the SUs to attend and take part gave a summary of the workshop from their perspective:
The workshop went very well. The SUs we invited had a lot to contribute and ask, and were very keen on participating. The main issues raised by the other tables were around micro aggressions, misrepresentation, and lack of accountability, support and understanding by the schools. I interpreted for my group of SUs and encouraged them to share their experiences. What they shared were very similar to what the other groups did, but with the added difficulty of not being able to communicate due to language barriers, feeling like they are often dismissed by the schools for being “outsiders”, not knowing the social norms when problem solving. For example, in Brazil they would approach other parents directly when incidents of bullying or fights occur, while in the UK it would be more appropriate to let the school deal with them.
Another common problem is navigating the system, as the school system is very different, so are the roles and responsibilities of the staff; as parents they don’t know who is the right member of staff to address each issue, and it’s not as clear as it seems. I added that I had this problem when my eldest started in primary school, despite having lived here for over 15 years and being able to communicate in English, I still found the school system a minefield!
There were some positive aspects too. Some pupils experienced racist incidents and the schools acted appropriately, supporting the child and going the extra mile to boost their confidence and self esteem.
A member of the BHCC team sat with us for a while and heard about some of the difficulties the parents experienced, asked questions and took a real interest in the details raised by the SUs.
The Service Users who attended said:
We are glad this issue is being addressed and that we have the opportunity to share some of our experiences. During the session, we were pleased to see there was someone from the council that was interested in our concerns and were happy to share our views and experiences. We thought it was a great opportunity to speak out with the support of a linguist, since we feel silenced by the school system, due to culture and language barriers. Being able to ask questions directly to the council representative through an interpreter was so important, we would never been able to access some of this information otherwise.
The next steps being taken by BHCC is to draft a guidance document for both parents and schools about reporting of racist incidents in schools. They are also in the process of setting up parent forums in schools, as well as a city-wide parent forum. SIS will continue to support SUs to feed their input into the ongoing work and discussions.
Community Voices Group (CVG) is for Brighton and Hove residents who identify as Black, brown, Asian or from another language, ethnic or migrant community. Members of the group talk to people in their community about what’s important to them and bring this information to meetings. The group discuss the issues and then present their findings directly to representatives from Brighton & Hove City Council and NHS Sussex about what can be done to improve the situation. SIS is one of the partner organisations that convenes the group, along with Bridging Change. If you would like to take part in the group, please contact us.
