AQW 7928/22-27


Mr Nick Mathison
Alliance Party
Strangford


Tabled Date: 01/03/2024
Answered On Date: 08/03/2024
Priority Written: No


Question:
To ask the Minister of Education for his assessment of the 2023 Council of Europe Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities recommendation that the NI Executive take measures to tackle racist bullying in schools, including through adding ethnic identifiers on recording of racist bullying incidents


Answer:
The Department has taken a number of measures in recent years to address bullying and the factors that contribute to it.
The Addressing Bullying in Schools Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 (the Act), came into effect in 2021. The Act introduced statutory duties which require schools to record incidents or alleged incidents of bullying type behaviour, their motivation and their outcome. Each school’s Board of Governors has responsibility to oversee the implementation of the Act in their school. While the motivation recorded for incidents can include race, there is not currently any requirement record under legislation to record ethnic identifiers. The legislation does not include the requirement for schools to share the data that they record with the Department.
The Department established the Addressing Bullying in Schools Implementation Team (ABSIT) in the Education Authority (EA) in 2022. ABSIT provides support for schools, educational settings and young people to help them understand the requirements of the Act and embed cultures that help eradicate bullying. The work of the team also includes providing programmes of direct support for those who experience all types of bullying.
ABSIT assist with complex cases and, where appropriate, will engage with the EA’s Intercultural Education Service (IES). IES helps schools and EA services to meet the additional educational needs of asylum-seeking, refugee, Traveller, Roma and other newcomer pupils, many of whom are from ethnic minority communities. IES has also contributed to the to the intercultural content for Initial Teacher Education courses delivered by the Higher Education Institutions in Northern Ireland and co-delivers an intercultural education course in partnership with Queen’s University Belfast.
The curriculum in both primary and post-primary school contributes to promoting good relations and is closely aligned with my Department’s Community Relations, Equality and Diversity in Education Policy. Schools and teachers can choose to deliver sensitive and important aspects of the curriculum at a time when they are the subject of national debate and when young people can make explicit connections between what they are learning in school and what is happening in the wider world. This includes issues around racism and other forms of discrimination.