ESRC Seminar Series: Diverse Teachers for Diverse Learners Scotland Briefing Notes Prepared by Geri Smyth [email protected]
Access to teaching Background to Country and Education System Scotland is one of the jursidictions of the UK and has had its own parliament since 1999, with devolved responsibility including that for education. The Scottish education system is quite distinct from the education systems of the rest of the United Kingdom. It has its own legislative framework, curriculum framework and qualifications system. Under the Scotland Act 1998, the Scottish Parliament has responsibility for the entire education system.
Demography The population of Scotland in the 2001 census was 5,062,011 The size of the minority ethnic population was just over 100,000 in 2001 or 2% of the total population of Scotland and this will have considerably increased by the 2011 census this year due to increased immigration to Scotland. This immigration is a result of a complex range of political and economic factors including the dispersal of asylum seekers to Glasgow since 2000 and the accession of new countries to the European Union. The size of the minority ethnic population has increased since the 1991 Census. Whilst the total population increase between 1991 and 2001 was 1.3%, the minority ethnic population increased by 62.3%. For both males and females, ethnic minority groups have a younger age distribution than the White groups; with the exception of the Caribbean group, more than 20% of the population for all other groups is less than 16 years old. In 2001 Pakistanis were the largest minority ethnic group, followed by Chinese, Indians and those of Mixed ethnic backgrounds. Over 70% of the total ethnic minority population were Asian in 2001: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese or other South Asian. Over 12% of the minority ethnic population described their ethnic group as Mixed in the 2001 census. The method of collecting this demographic data has been criticised. Most ethnic monitoring in teaching has used the classification of ethnicity devised by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS). These descriptors (White; Black-Caribbean; Black-African; Black – Other; Asian- Indian; Asian-Pakistani; Asian-Bangladeshi; Asian-Chinese; Asian – Other and Other) have been criticised as ambiguous, anachronistic and discrepant with commonly held subjective definitions, and is likely to have had a distorting effect on responses to forms used for the purposes of ethnic monitoring. This classification take no account of people who view themselves in hyphenated British terms, eg British-Pakistani or of people of mixed parentage for example. In a study of teaching students from minority ethnic backgrounds carried out by Carrington et al. (1999), almost half of the students reported that they were unhappy with the classifications offered and preferred an alternative description of ethnicity.
1 School Pupils In 2010 there were 673,138 pupils in publicly funded schools in Scotland. The number has fallen from 676,740 in 2009. The latest projections suggest that pupil numbers in publicly funded schools are projected to decrease steadily to 662 thousand in 2015, then rise until peaking at 684 thousand in 2022. 2010: Of the 656,108 pupils whose ethnic background was known, 92.0 per cent were recorded as being White- UK. The other largest ethnic backgrounds include White-Other (2.7 per cent), Asian Pakistan (1.6 per cent) and Mixed (1.1 per cent). Further details are in Table 1 below, sourced from the Scottish Government website: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/12/01091355/11 Table 1: Pupil characteristics: ethnicity and English as an additional language by gender, 2010
Ethnicity Female Male Total
White - UK 296,710 307,094 603,804
White - Other 8,548 9,015 17,563
Mixed 3,513 3,584 7,097
Asian - Indian 1,494 1,634 3,128
Asian - Pakistani 5,048 5,329 10,377
Asian - Bangladeshi 297 298 595
Asian - Chinese 1,188 1,102 2,290
Asian - Other 1,589 1,619 3,208
Black - Caribbean 66 69 135
Black - African 1,647 1,729 3,376
Black - Other 238 280 518
Occupational Traveller 105 101 206
Gypsy / Traveller 277 271 548
Other Traveller 28 32 60
Other 1,517 1,686 3,203
Not known / not disclosed 7,832 8,935 16,767
English as an Additional Language 10,787 11,953 22,740
Language in schools
2 The data gathered by the Scottish Government in November 2009 identified there were around 21,200 pupils identified as having English as an additional language (note increase in Table 1 above) and there were 138 different languages spoken as the main home language, with Polish being second to English, followed by Punjabi and Urdu. The spread of languages spoken by pupils in Scottish schools is shown in Table 2 below.
Table 2: No. of pupils whose home language is neither English, Gaelic, Scots, Doric nor Sign Language http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/11/05112711/70
Pupils whose main home language is neither English, Gaelic, Number of Main three languages Local Authority Scots, Doric nor Sign Language languages after English
Aberdeen City 2,024 77 Polish, Arabic, Bengali
Polish, Lithuanian, Aberdeenshire 845 53 Latvian
Angus 262 37 Polish, Urdu, Tagalog
Argyll & Bute 176 30 Polish, Gaelic, French
Clackmannanshire 149 20 Polish, Urdu, Punjabi
Dumfries & Polish, Cantonese, 318 43 Galloway Punjabi
Dundee City 1,013 57 Punjabi, Urdu, Polish
Cantonese, Polish, East Ayrshire 161 33 Urdu
East Punjabi, Cantonese, 519 46 Dunbartonshire Urdu
Polish, Punjabi, East Lothian 207 37 Bosnian
Urdu, Punjabi, East Renfrewshire 1,168 38 Cantonese
Edinburgh City 4,300 90 Polish, Urdu, Punjabi
Eilean Siar 46 19 Gaelic, -
Falkirk 489 39 Punjabi, Urdu, Polish
Fife 927 54 Polish, Punjabi, Urdu
Glasgow City 8,984 105 Punjabi, Urdu, Arabic
Highland 799 50 Polish, Gaelic, Tagalog
Cantonese, Sign Inverclyde 84 21 Language, Punjabi
Midlothian 222 40 Polish, Urdu, Punjabi
Polish, Portuguese, Moray 294 38 Scots
3 Cantonese, Punjabi, North Ayrshire 187 25 Polish
North Lanarkshire 1,238 55 Polish, Punjabi, Urdu
Orkney Islands 25 9 -
Perth & Kinross 534 45 Polish, Scots, Tagalog
Renfrewshire 605 51 Punjabi, Polish, Urdu
Polish, Portuguese, Scottish Borders 317 33 Scots
Shetland Islands 72 21 Polish, -
Polish, Cantonese, South Ayrshire 201 33 Punjabi
Punjabi, Urdu, South Lanarkshire 858 47 Cantonese
Stirling 248 38 Polish, Punjabi, Urdu
West 200 35 Polish, Punjabi, Urdu Dunbartonshire
West Lothian 701 50 Polish, Urdu, Punjabi
All local authorities 28,173 138 Polish, Punjabi, Urdu
The spread of languages is shown in Table 3 below http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2009/11/05112711/21 Table 3 Main home language in publicly funded schools, 2009
Language Number Language Number Language Number
Number of languages 138 Malayalam 449 Tamil 238
Tagalog/Filipino 443 Swahili/Kiswahili 212
Number of pupils(1) Russian 430 Hungarian/Magyar 166
English 647,292 Turkish 379 Pashto 165
Polish 5,460 Chinese (Mandarin) 375 Sign Language 163
Punjabi 4,531 Lithuanian 353 Romanian 153
Urdu 4,345 Slovak 345 Dutch 152
Arabic 1,662 Portuguese 300 Shona 151
Cantonese 1,494 Hindi 296 Kurdish 149
French 801 Italian 270 Thai 138
Gaelic (Scottish) 626 Scots 268 Not known/ not disclosed 2,198 Bengali/Bangala 572 Latvian 265
4 German 511 Farsi/Iranian/Persian 260
Spanish 473 Somali 258 Other (1) 2,384
(1) Languages in the 'Other'category are: Afrikaans, Akan/Twi, Albanian, Algerian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Bajuni, Belorussian, Bemba, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Cebuano/Visayan, Chechen, Coorge, Creole, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dari, Doric, Duri, Edo/Bini, Estonian, Ewe, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, Flemish, Frisian, Gaelic (Irish), Georgian, Greek, Gujarati, Gurani, Hakka, Hausa, Hebrew, Herero, Hokkien, Ibo/Igbo, Icelandic, Isekiri, Japanese, Jola, Jula, Kagoro, Kannada, Kashmiri, Katchi/Kutchi, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Konkani, Korean, Lingala, Luganda, Malagasy, Maltese, Mandinka, Marathi, Memmoni, Mirpuri, Moldavian, Mongolian, Ndebele, Nepalese, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Nyanja/Chichewa/Chewa, Romany, Rugika, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian, Setswana, Shanghainese, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Slovene, Soninke, Sourashtra, Swati, Swedish, Telugu, Tibetan, Tigrinya, Tiv, Tonga, Tswana, Turkmani, Ukrainian, Urhobo, Uzbek, Vietnamese, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yoruba, Zulu. The scale of the linguistic diversity in Scottish schools goes largely unrecognised in the field of education however, with the vast majority of the curriculum being delivered through the medium of English, with the notable exceptions of Gaelic-medium education and the teaching of ‘Modern Languages’ as subjects. The support for bilingual pupils in Scotland focuses mainly on their integration into mainstream education through the acquisition of English, with their home languages being virtually ignored in their education. Teaching and Teachers in Scotland Teachers in Scottish pre-schools, primary schools and secondary schools must hold a Teaching Qualification (TQ) and be registered with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS). All teachers must hold a degree level qualification in addition to the TQ. Those teachers who have trained outwith Scotland must apply through the Exceptional Admissions Register to register with the GTCS. This gives an indication of those teachers who have come from countries other than Scotland, although of course, many bilingual teachers are born in and/or qualify in Scotland so this does not present an accurate picture but adds to the information available. Although there has been an increase in applicants to the GTCS from Ghana and Poland, the majority of candidates applying for exceptional admission are actually from England and the teaching profession in Scotland is predominantly white and for the most part Scottish. The Scottish Government now collects data related to teachers’ ethnicity (Table 4 below). Where ethnic background data was given (in 97per cent of cases), 2 per cent of teachers were from non- UK white backgrounds, and 2 per cent from other minority ethnic groups.
Table 4 Ethnicity of teachers in Scotland http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2010/12/01091355/8
Ethnicity
White - UK .. 95 92 92 74 93
White - Other .. 2 3 3 4 2
Minority Ethnic Group .. 1 2 3 3 2
Not Disclosed .. 2 3 1 19 3
Although there are no general statistics available concerning the fluency of teachers in Scotland in languages other than English, the latest figures from the Scottish Government (2010) do offer data
5 concerning use of the Gaelic language among teachers. In 2009 278 Primary teachers were able to teach through Gaelic and 137 secondary teachers were able to teach through Gaelic. No figures are centrally collected regarding the first languages of teachers in Scotland, with the exception of Gaelic. A small number of bilingual teachers employed to explicitly provide bilingual support to bilingual pupils whose first language is not English.
The Scottish Government has noted with dismay the falling population of Scotland and the coinciding skills shortages. Funding from the Scottish Government to meet the needs of refugee teachers since 2006 has helped to increase the number of minority ethnic teachers in the profession in Scotland. The RITeS (Refugees Into teaching in Scotland) project has established a database of refugee1 teachers in Scotland with over 350 teachers as of February 2011. This pool of teachers provides a wealth of linguistic and cultural capital which could be usefully harnessed by the Scottish education system to increase the diversity of the teaching profession and enhance the learning experience of our pupils. A total of 40 languages spoken by refugee teachers in Scotland as of November 2007 when the linguistic data was last collated. Many of the teachers are multilingual. The teachers are experienced and/or qualified to teach a wide range of subjects across the age range of education in Scotland (3 – 18 years). However despite this availability of refugee teachers, there remain significant difficulties as these teachers find barriers to integrating into teaching in Scotland due to lack of equivalence of qualifications and limited proficiency in English (Smyth and Kum, 2010; Menter, Kum and Smyth, 2010). Many of the teachers in the RITeS group will require continuing and intensive support to access the teaching profession in Scotland.
Smyth, Geri and Kum, Henry (2010) ‘Professionals, de-professionalisation and re-professionalisation: the case of refugee teachers in Scotland’ Journal of Refugee Studies special issue on Refugee Integration
Kum, H., Menter, I. And Smyth, G. (2010) ‘Changing the face of the Scottish teaching profession?– the experiences of refugee teachers’ Irish Educational Studies special issue on Race in Education
1 While the legal status of refugee is only applied in the UK to those who have successfully achieved the case for refugee status, this article does not differentiate between those who have refugee status and those who are in the process of seeking this status. Until refugee status is achieved there is no legal right to paid employment so many of the RITeS teachers are excluded from teaching because of their legal status.
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