RACIST heads and pupils in Scottish schools are keeping black teachers out of the profession north of the border, according to a new report.
The Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights claims black and ethnic minority (BME) teachers regularly experienced “casual racist remarks” and behaviour.
Only 1% of primary school teachers and 2% of secondary teachers are BME even though the group makes up 4% of the Scottish population.
But a submission by the Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights (CRER) to the Scottish Parliament says the situation is so bad that almost 60% of BME teachers want to leave the workforce.
The findings have been corroborated by leading academics, who say their is an “unwillingness” among senior managers to tackle racism in schools.
“Some BME teachers reported experiencing ‘micro-aggressions’ and ‘casual’ racist remarks from other members of staff.”
It added that BME teachers experienced “structural and systematic racist barriers to progression, such as assumptions about capabilities based on racial/ethnic stereotypes.”
Speaking about the findings, CRER director Jatin Haria said that “something happens at that interview stage” which prevents BME teachers getting jobs, which could be down to outright racism or “benign racism”.
Expanding on CRER’s findings, University of the West of Scotland education lecturer Khadija Mohammed said: “There appears to be an unwillingness of senior management teams, perhaps due to complacency, nervousness, or the school culture, to act in instances where BME teachers are subjected to racist treatment by pupils and staff.”
CRER point to the fact that in Glasgow, where 12% of the population are BME, only 2.4% of teachers and 1.7% of principal teachers were from minority groups.
Whilst in Aberdeen, where 8% of the population are, only 0.7% of the education workforce has a BME background.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: “We want BME groups to be better represented in teaching and recently met the Scottish Association of Minority Ethnic Educators, Bemis and other groups to get their views on how to make that happen.
“We are also setting up a working group, which will make recommendations around the factors that impact on under-representation in teaching.”
The shocking state of racism in Scottish primary schools was reported last week.
It was revealed that a child told another “all people with black skin should be called n*ers” in one of hundreds of incidents of racism in Scottish primary schools since 2013.
The data also revealed that children as young as eight in Scottish schools were using slurs such as “n***er” and “bla**o.”
