This document discusses encouraging ethnic and linguistic diversity in the Scottish teaching profession. It notes that nearly 10,000 Scottish pupils do not speak English as their first language and there has been an increase in immigrant and asylum seeking pupils who do not speak English well. However, only a small percentage of teachers are from minority ethnic backgrounds. The document examines initiatives to recruit more ethnically and linguistically diverse teachers, barriers these teachers face, and recommendations to better support multilingual teachers and pupils in Scotland.

1. Encouraging Ethnic and Linguistic
Diversity in the Teaching Profession
Geri Smyth, University of Strathclyde
g.smyth@strath.ac.uk

2. Summary
• Teacher and pupil demographics in Scotland
• Gaelic Medium Education
• Recruitment of Ethnic Minorities Into Teaching
• Refugees Into Teaching in Scotland
• Barriers to increasing linguistic and cultural
diversity in the teaching profession
• Ways forward

7. English is second language for
10,000 pupils in Scotland
 Almost 10,000 pupils in Scottish schools do not speak
English as a first language, according to figures which
have prompted calls for extra support in the classroom.
The Scottish Executive report for the 2006 school year
show there were 9486 pupils speaking 137 different first
languages in Scotland, including
Punjabi, Urdu, Cantonese, Polish and Arabic.
Glasgow Herald ANDREW DENHOLM, Education
Correspondent February 28 2007

8. 3500 pupils can’t speak English
 Scottish teachers are having to cope with
unprecedented numbers of pupils who have
difficulty speaking English following a sharp
increase in immigrants and asylum seekers.
Glasgow Herald ANDREW DENHOLM, Education
Correspondent February 27 2008

9. Scotland's Minority Ethnic
Population
• 1991: 60000 1.2%
• 2001:100000 2%
• Total population increase 1.3%
• Total ME population increase 62.3%
• 2005: 3.80% of pupils from minority ethnic
groups, where ethnic group was known/
disclosed.
• Pakistani (1.27%) Black Caribbean (0.02%)
• 2005: 0.5% of all primary teachers BME
• secondary school teachers 1.1% BME

10. Changing Linguistic makeup of Scotland
since 1980s
• Urdu, Punjabi, Cantonese – 2nd/3rd generation: inner
city; community shift – suburbs
• Far East inward investment: new towns
• Postgraduate students: African; Pacific; Malay; Arabic
– housing schemes
• East Europe political changes – coastal areas
• Immigration Act – asylum seekers’ dispersal: Africa; E.
Europe – housing schemes
• Expansion of EU – throughout Scotland

11. Pupils' linguistic diversity
I’m Nilofar. I I’m Nabiha.
speak Farsi and I speak
English. Somali and
English.
I’m Landrine. I’m
I speak Narinder.
French and How many
English. languages
do you
speak?

12. Bilingual teaching in Scotland

13. A new need?
• Rampton Report ( 1981) expressed concern about the under-
representation of ethnic minorities in the teaching population
• Commission for Racial Equality ( 1995) urged the British government
to take steps ‘to ensure that people from the ethnic minorities will be
recruited for teacher training without unlawful discrimination’
• As long as the socioculturally marginalised are identified as ‘the
other’ by the dominant group in society, then they will be subjected to
cultural imperialism (Cummins, 1996).
• The Carrington (1999) report recommended that there be more
flexibility in the consideration of qualifications from outwith the
European Union.
• When the dominant ethnicity of the teaching workforce is white, it is
difficult for cultural difference to be truly recognised, represented and
respected in school (Lynch and Lodge, 2002)

14. Gaelic medium education
• Gaelic spoken by 1.2 per cent of the Scottish
population.
• Gaelic (Scotland) Act, 2005 gave language 'equal
respect' with English
• 2004: 334 teachers report able to teach through
Gaelic. 241 currently teaching Gaelic.
• Glasgow Gaelic School, 2006: 75 primary 1
pupils
• Johnstone (1999) indicated those pupils
educated bilingually in Gaelic and English are
performing better than monolingual peers in
National Tests in English, by the age of 11.

15. REMIT
• Recruitment of Ethnic Minorities into
Teaching (REMIT) funded by the
West of Scotland Wider Access Forum
January 2006 – July 2008.
• Make a Difference: Teach
• Recruiting video
• School and community work

16. RITeS: Refugees Into Teaching in
Scotland
• Based in Dept of Childhood and Primary
Studies, University of Strathclyde.
Funded by Scottish Government
• Consortium of colleges, universities, local
authorities, third sector agencies
including Refugee Council and General
Teaching Council for Scotland
• Casework based – support, advice, liaison
–www.strath.ac.uk/cps/rites

17. RITeS research
• Research Officers: Henry Kum (replaced
Heather Davison)
• Funded by West Forum
• Investigation of past and present and hopes for
future
• Comparison of experience
• Lessons for best practice
• 232 teachers (September 2008)
• 40 languages (November 2007)
• 34 countries (November 2007)

18. Differences in education systems
• Mixed ability classes
• Class size
• Respect for teachers
• Discipline
• Parental involvement
• Availability of resources
• Use of more than one language

19. Personal barriers to teaching in
Scotland
• Lack of equivalence of qualifications
• Limited proficiency in English
• Limited knowledge of Scottish education
system

20. Cultural barriers to teaching in
Scotland
• The teachers should accept integration. They should value people and be
objective. The regular teachers should also take part in the induction.
They should be told how to behave towards foreigners and the term
refugee needs to be dropped. It creates prejudice and success is impaired
by such prejudice. It plays in evaluation, inspection and reports. When
teachers hear you are a refugee, a black for that matter, it looks like they
want you to go for cleaning jobs. That is where they think you belong.
They see your efforts to teach as straying into an area that is their domain
and where you do not belong to. It is ignorance, it is racism and it is not
healthy for a multicultural community where my children belong. You
accept my kids, you want to teach them but you don’t accept me and you
don’t want me to teach them and others. It’s such a shame.
Female, Burundi, maths teacher

21. Structural barriers to teaching in
Scotland
The restriction on the 3 year stay here to benefit for
funding and assistance is unfair and should be scrapped.
You have to wait to get refugee status before you can
train or teach. Your skills keep fading away because of
lack of practice. Then when they give you leave to
remain, you are discriminated for not having lived here
for 3 years. When you have been accepted in a society,
you need to be part of that society, not half of the
society. That is a huge limitation to the retraining of
refugee teachers.
Male primary teacher, Zimbabwe

22. Recommendations
• Recruitment of teachers who have access to teaching in more than
the majority language, English, is essential to ensure that the
linguistic capital of pupils in Scotland is built on and given status.
• Bilingual skills of such teachers must be recognised.
• Figures must be collected regarding teachers’ knowledge and
use of the other languages spoken on a daily basis in
Scotland.
• Teacher education providers need to work in partnerships in
local minority communities
• Efficient and effective systems must be in place to provide
immediate support in the event of any racial harassment
• Provision of modules designed to enable bilingual teachers to
use their skills to support the growing numbers of bilingual
pupils in Scotland.

23. Conclusions
• Slowly increasing number of
multilingual, multiqualified, multiexperienced
teachers entering the Scottish teaching profession –
impact on teacher identity?
• Develop a genuinely representative teaching
workforce, appropriate to a contemporary democracy
• As Gaelic Medium Education strengthens it is
important to align the debates.
• Truly bilingual teaching in Scotlandin more than one
languageother than Gaelic in 10 years?
• Reeal use of the linguistic capital of Scotland's children

24. Bilingual teaching
Maktabad

25. Confident Bilingual Teaching in
Scotland tomorrow?
She doesn’t know
English yet but she
knows French.
I did Lingala
because it’s her best
language.