Equality and Social Justice Committee

Welcome back to the Equality and Social Justice Committee's inquiry into the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', and we now have new witnesses: Yusuf Ibrahim from ColegauCymru, based at Cardiff and Vale College; Dean Pymble from Show Racism the Red Card, both of whom are joined—. Sorry. And then Sue James, who's a lecturer at University of Wales Trinity St David, representing BAMEed Wales—I hope I've pronounced—. BAMEed Wales, beg your pardon. And Harriet Barnes from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

So, I'm going to just start off the questioning. There are four of you in the room, so you don't all need to answer the question. Please do come in if you want to add to what somebody else has said, but you don't need to repeat and say if that's exactly your view as well. So, starting off, what's the Welsh Government doing to lead by example? What further actions would you like to see the Welsh Government taking to ensure that the vision of an anti-racist Wales is achieved? Who would like to start?

I'm happy to start.

Yusuf.

Diolch. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today. So, in terms of leading by example, one of the things I often do is juxtapose the position of being privileged to live in Wales, the only country that has a mission statement at a national level to become anti-racist by a certain date; I think it has been an example of where policy does drive practice, having lived in a world without that commitment, and comparing that to a world that does have that commitment. So, having that forthright certainly allows us to have something to aim towards. It is indeed a lofty goal.

I would also say from the further education context—and I'm here on behalf of ColegauCymru—there has been resource put in to try and facilitate this, where there are a couple of things that I think are important. Where resource is deployed properly, you can progress this agenda, but it requires understanding how to deploy the resource, what is the best way of interacting with communities to make sure their lived experience is authentically fed through any implementation of a resource, and also having some key measurable outcomes so that we can assess whether that initiative or that resource has made a difference.

So, if I can give the example of the FE curriculum project that I led on last year, I led a team of 60 people, which was a result of a £1 million investment from Welsh Government to create a blended learning set of resources for the 13 colleges in Wales. One of the contentions is that it is difficult to find talent that comes from a global majority of black and minority ethnic communities. Of the 60 people, 42 of them came from black and minority ethnic communities, from academic institutions from across the UK, internationally as well, people who are highly skilled and highly professional, and that represents 75 per cent of people coming from black and minority ethnic backgrounds to a highly skilled project. So, the money certainly was invested, and the challenge then was to deploy a resource that’s worth while, and that’s being implemented this year. But I think in terms of leading by example, that is one area where I’d say that has had some fruition. The other area within the FE context is the affiliation of the 13 colleges to create their own FE anti-racism action plan, and they have affiliated with the Black Leadership Group, who also were a contributor to the overall anti-racism action plan for Wales.

Where there are challenges, and where there are further considerations, resources of—. You’re going to be told about resource all the time, aren’t you, in terms of that coming forward? But if I may give one anecdote, one of the founders of the Black Leadership Group, Stella Mbubaegbu, says that anti-racism is the rising tide that can lift us all; that if we’re able to tackle the sharp edge of inequality—which is racism, because it’s your race plus any other intersectionality plus any other sort of trauma that you may have undergone—then you are dealing with the most profound of problems. If you can tackle that problem and understand how to resource that, which isn’t just about the amount, but also the mechanism, then you will, by default, lift up other characteristics.

It's all right. We'll come to resources later. Harriet Barnes.

Thank you. I’d like to turn first to a parallel perspective from the higher education sector. Certainly, from HEFCW’s perspective, we think the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' is a very positive step—I think what Yusuf has just said. It’s clear, it’s public, it’s setting actions that are short term, encouraging action at pace. We’ve also been very pleased to see that we have been the recipients of cross-governmental joined-up thinking on this, in that our remit letter from the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language has requested HEFCW to support the higher education sector to take actions in this space since 2021, i.e. pre-dating the plan itself, and showing that there is cross-governmental support for that.

I think, as a funder and a regulator, HEFCW has limited powers in this space because the regulatory responsibility sits with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but we’ve been able to use some of our funding and our influencing powers to require universities in Wales to increase the pace at which they’re tackling racial inequality, and to support their work to achieve an anti-racist Wales. And I think we can also say there is a point of contrast here between the commitment we see the Welsh Government making in this area compared to what we see with some of our fellow regulators in other parts of the UK, and the approach they are required to take to keep aligned with their governmental priorities.

Certainly, from a HEFCW perspective, we’re committed to ensuring that higher education is inclusive for everyone, regardless of their characteristics and their background, and the fact that all institutions in Wales have committed to gaining the race equality charter by 2025 is a huge step forward in that direction. The actions that they need to take to achieve that cannot be underestimated, hence why we’ve provided funding to support them in that endeavour, but the fact that all nine universities have committed to that is a really big step forward, I think.

Okay, thank you. Those are positive remarks from HE and FE. The picture is less rosy, I think, in schools, based on your written paper, Sue James, which we've obviously all read. You're talking about many schools simply not having adjusted their school improvement plans to take in the importance of tackling systematic racism. And we also know that there's a recruitment issue in terms of having teachers who look like the pupils that they are serving. So, I wondered if you could tell us why you think the plan for education, certainly in schools, is not clear enough, and what evidence you've got to support this claim.

The reason that I say this is because my encounters with teachers across Wales generally receive a negative when I ask if they are aware of the 'Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities, Contributions and Cynefin in the New Curriculum Working Group' report by Charlotte Williams and the action plan. Having done a number of sessions with schools where they're wanting to do workshops on anti-racism, et cetera, as part of their professional learning suite of activities, I've discovered that the people who had signed up to coming to the anti-racism workshop—this is a recent event—none of them had ever heard of the action plan, had no idea that it existed, or that this was the ambition of Wales. They certainly hadn't read Charlotte's report and understood that they were mandated to do something to ensure that black Welsh histories are taught, and that is tragic.

And I would like to ask many of you to go into schools and ask if teachers are aware of this commitment. I think you'll find, along with many of us, that that is a negative, that they don't know about it. This is not to say that I don't admire or respect the ambition. I'm glad to be part of this country and that this is our ambition. However, in terms of making it known in schools, I would say that that is pretty thin on the ground. And when you're working with people who've signed up to come to a workshop on anti-racism and they don't know about the legislation in Wales, one wonders what the other teachers who didn't sign up for this are thinking, or know.

When I do speak, as I say, to quite a lot of teachers in a range of different schools, I am constantly met with this blank when I mention the anti-racist action plan. Certainly there are very few schools that are actually putting anything in their action plans or school development plans in relation to what they will be doing in the future towards this. Most schools seem to think that they've met their obligations in relation to this when they talk about their policies on equality, and that they've revised these. But the tragic news is that most schools, I would say, are unaware of their obligations or the legislation that Wales has committed to.

It's unlikely they're going to be changing the curriculum to make sure it's not delivering racist stereotypes in the way they're teaching pupils as well.

I would say that most teachers wouldn't be in any way aiming to do that and that the majority of teachers would act in a non-racist way, at least. Some would definitely be anti-racist, but I would not expect to find that we're having incidents of teachers actively teaching things that are racist, but in terms of recognising that we are aiming towards this really brilliant goal of 2030, most of them aren't working towards that.

I could see Dean's hand there because Dean and I work in schools.

Okay. Let's hear from Dean before we move on. Dean.

Brilliant. Thank you very much. We're currently doing a small piece of research where we've had around 200 teachers or educators take part so far, and 26 per cent of them are aware of the Williams report. So, only 26 per cent, and then of those—I think there are around 205 at the moment—only 15 per cent of those educators are confident about how they understand that anti-racism will fit into the curriculum. So that's an extremely small number that are actually confident and have read Professor Charlotte Williams's report.

Again, we see varied accounts. So, some schools are doing absolutely amazing work, some schools are doing very little and some are doing nothing at all, so it's very piecemeal. And, when we look at anti-racism training, it's will they dedicate their time to it. There's a lot of amazing work going on through the diversity and anti-racist professional learning project and raising awareness, and some leadership—you know, across Estyn, across WJEC, the consortia, they're all doing lots of fantastic work now with DARPL, but it's how that is translating down to teachers and educators in the schools who aren't necessarily on the journey already. I know that there's been a lot of hard work with leadership to make sure that they're on board with the journey and understand how they can support schools, but it's looking at those unengaged schools and how they're actually engaging and understanding the mandate that they have to include this.

We work with universities delivering initial teacher education around anti-racism, funded through the National Education Union, and some of the ITE leads haven't read the Professor Charlotte Williams report. So, again, there are some fantastic universities doing some really in-depth work, so, you're looking at things like—. Cardiff Met and Swansea University have done some fantastic work, and then there are others that aren't anywhere close to starting that journey. And some are saying that it's optional, the anti-racism professional learning for their student teachers, which then, obviously, means that not every single teacher on the course is actually going to be involved in that education. And then other people are saying, 'Yes, it is actually mandated; they have to take part in it and we're delivering that course to them.' But I think it's really important to understand that there is a big difference across different universities and different schools in what's going on and understanding how that relates to their work. Are they on the same page of understanding that it's mandatory or are they thinking, 'Well, this is optional, we can do it if we want, or if we don't want to—'? And some are saying that, with the condensed PGCE course, there's not enough time to deliver it, whereas others have integrated it into their PGCE courses. So, again, it's not translated across to all universities, the importance of this piece of work, which we think it is.

Okay. Thank you for setting the scene, all of you. We'll now move on to some of the detail. Sarah Murphy.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, all, for being here today. I'm going to ask some questions now about intersectionality and meeting strategic equality objectives. So, it'd be great to hear from you what your organisation is doing to address the issues around intersectionality and to align to various equality-related strategies, but, specifically, do you require any further support to ensure that the needs of different groups—? Are there any groups in particular that you're struggling to reflect in your plans?

Who wants to go first?

I'm happy to.

Okay, Yusuf.

I think it's a very important question around addressing intersectionality. I think there is a sensitive issue that comes with this that we need to be very mindful of, which is to what extent intersectionality becomes a reason to not be anti-racist, because we want to focus on the intersectionality as opposed to the core issue of racism itself. If I give an example, there are, where you look at intersections, some real deep challenges. There are ethnic groups and religious groups who sometimes struggle with some of the intersections that present themselves in a modern liberal society. And what I would suggest is that if we want to authentically work on intersectionality positively, then we need to understand some of the barriers that are there and that is by being anti-racist. And this is about understanding cultural norms from other parts of the world, where we now live in a multicultural, multigenerational society where the generations now are very different to the generations of forefathers who preceded them.

So, when it comes to intersectionality, I think it's important that a nuanced approach is taken that sensibly looks at where different cultures are and where you can start to have conversations around different characteristics. If I give an example from an educational perspective, I know of a case within the education sector where a Muslim person came forward to a Muslim male teacher within the organisation to disclose that they were gay. Now, they disclosed that because of the familiarity around the culture, as opposed to the familiarity around the sexuality. So, I think it's very important that we understand the tensions, the sensitivities and also, then, the opportunities of trying to ensure that we're meeting people's needs, because, ultimately, we're looking at communities who will probably, with great validity, say to us, 'You'll put anything in the way of actually tackling racism.' This could be another example if we're not careful about how to deliver that.

So, how do you do it? It goes back to my point that I made at the start, which is whereby we're looking at things holistically, and if we understand that racism is the sharp end of the wedge then it means, simply, once we start moving across, we can then begin to understand the lived experiences and the challenges that people have and that manifest themselves deep within communities. I think there are a number of elephants in the room, and we won't be able to talk about all of them, but one of them, for example, is, absolutely, there will be communities that have a greater challenge in dealing with different sectionalities, if you like. Therefore, we have to be open about that, and we have to understand what that looks like. Therefore, the question is how do we start to build a process of trust where people can begin to share the lived experiences that relate to the base of race, but also whatever the sectionality presents itself as as well. Thank you.

I guess I'm struggling with your question purely because, as an organisation, we're not funded, and so it's not something that we are doing as a point of, 'This is a mission.' However, our commitment to promoting an understanding of race and race issues is top of our agenda, and making sure that we support educators to feel that they are able to be resilient within the workforce when they find themselves in a minority position in order to encourage more people to enter into education. When we are looking at things, we are looking at them in terms of how can we offer support and encouragement to other educators to survive the racism that they encounter on a daily basis as educators. But when we're looking at intersectionality that might provide us with yet another complexity, as Yusuf has said, because that crosses into the other aspects of racism, which are culture and that whole thing of faith and commitment to particular stances. Sometimes, that creates some tensions within a community, and often can be seen as a way of deflecting from the issue, which is racism for us as a group, and I make no apologies for that being our focus.

Recently, we did host a zone in a mastering diversity conference, and, during that, we were asked to consider making sure that there was a reflection on intersectionality, so what we did was we hosted a panel. During that, we looked at the crossover of the difficulties to do with sexuality, to do with disability and those elements of race that relate to matters of faith and position. That was probably one of most powerful things that I've experienced, working with a range of people where we addressed issues that intersected and how debilitating, to some extent, any kind of prejudice is, and how important it is that we have the conversations, that we have those discussions, that schools are aware that those are the important spaces in which we learn from each other.

So, for us as an organisation, our focus is primarily on looking at the race issues for us as educators and how we best address those, but, in terms of intersectionality, I think that experience in September was quite a powerful one for us, and recognising that we do need to have more conversations, because there are so many issues that affect all of us when we are othered and placed in a different space, and those issues need to be addressed as part of a whole, and not simply isolated, because they're not isolated; they are intertwined inextricably.

But, in terms of what's our policy, we don't particularly have one in relation to that, but our commitment is to eradicate racism as far as we can.

Yes. Harriet, can I just ask a follow-up question of you as well, before you come in, just to expand on it maybe a little bit? It sounds to me like obviously there are the different strategies, the equality strategies that you've got: the race action plan, and you've got the LGBTQ+, for example. What I'm sort of hearing, and what we heard in the previous panel, is that because they're separate, and they're released at separate times with separate targets, do you think it is difficult to intertwine them, especially when it sounds to me like a lot of this is still being discussed within the communities as well?

Thank you. That was actually one of the points I was going to make, that it's a very complex, challenging area, the need to balance both the focus on specific issues affecting specific characteristics alongside the importance of intersectionality and recognising how those intertwine. So, yes, I think there is more opportunity to ensure that even if plans focused on different characteristics can't all come out at the same time—you can't have just one huge plan; that's simply not feasible—making sure there is no contradiction, that they complement, rather than contradict in that respect.

We have taken an approach of trying to stress an overall achievement of safe and inclusive higher education, which reflects that there are different challenges for the different groups. One that hasn't been mentioned, for example, is violence against women; it's another area where there's an intersection. But keeping that high-level focus on safe and inclusive higher education enables us to perhaps take a lens on different parts as they come through.

And one other area of challenge I'm just going to mention very briefly is that we try to be evidence informed and data led, and, when you get down to questions of intersectionality, the numbers become very small sometimes, and that makes it extremely difficult to have that data-informed approach.

That's a really good point. Thank you very much. And just to mention, another group is the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller community. The plan does include an action to co-design and publish the statutory Gypsy, Roma and Travellers guidance for schools. It has been pointed out, though, by Swansea Council that there are no lead and partners identified, and that the target is probably about a year behind at the moment. So, I was just wondering, from your experience with working to try to complete this target, do you think it is behind? Do you think maybe the target from Welsh Government was unrealistic, and why do you think that is? What are the issues around this, do you think?

I'm happy to go again, just to follow up.

Okay, briefly.

Very briefly. So, within the anti-racism FE materials project, we did have a section that we wanted to explicitly focus on the Traveller community, and we have found it challenging to engage the community, and that's on us, trying to make sure that we have better ways of engaging. That being said, the engagement was positive. We got to the point of a resource being produced and a video being produced. Unfortunately, the person who produced the resource wanted to retract it at the end, because they weren't comfortable with it being a product of the community. There are lots of sensitivities around it. We'd engaged with the community, we'd moved forward, and we had a resource produced, but, ultimately, they weren't comfortable. So, you know, we have to try and think about how we return to that.

Thank you. Dean, you wanted to come in.

Yes. I think, when we talk about race and racism, a lot of the time, the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities get left out and forgotten about, and probably some of the most normalised racism comes towards those communities, and I think it's from not including them in a lot of these conversations and having their lived experiences shared. And though there is some work with DARPL, which we're part of, working with, I think it's Travelling Ahead, so Tom Tom and Rhiannon, who do some fantastic work, so it's making sure that during every session, during every policy, that we are making sure that their lived experiences are included. And then that, when we're doing education, we touch on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller education and some of their experiences, but I think it's having more people with that lived experience being able to share it in a sensitive way. How we do that is very difficult, because we want to make sure that they're comfortable sharing their lived experience, and that's not always the case. But I think it comes down to just making sure that they're included when we talk about racism and that it's explicit that they'll be included within that, because I think some people, when they look at racism, are looking at black and brown faces rather than looking at racism towards Jewish people as well, which is not always considered when we look at racism.

Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you, all. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Sioned Williams.

Thank you, Chair. I'm going to be asking questions in Welsh, so if those in the room want to wear their headphones. I just want to ask some things about how the action plan is being implemented and the process of implementing the plan. I wanted to ask how your organisations are working across policy areas and sectors to deliver the plan. Is there any evidence from what you've seen of a cross-governmental, cross-sectoral approach to implementing the plan? And is there also an opportunity to share good practice across sectors?

Dean.

I was unmuted anyway, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to go. I think there's not enough sharing across sectors. I think, within education, where we're heavily based, being Show Racism the Red Card, the DARPL collaboration, where there are lots of different organisations with both lived and professional experience of racism and anti-racism coming together, is really the way to go. And I think, across different sectors, they could use that model as best practice, where the individuals involved within education, individuals involved not in education but with professional experience, all come together with different skill sets; it's really impactful and it has seen a massive drive of education moving forward with the plan. That being said, there are strong people within Welsh Government, like Kevin Palmer, for example, who are really driving the message forward, and Jeremy Miles. Every time they're talking and they're mentioning the plan, it's improving that understanding that it's there. But using a similar model to the DARPL model across sectors I think would be really useful, and I haven't seen that happening so far.

Thank you. Harriet.

Diolch, Sioned. I'd like to just pick up on the example of the interplay between further and higher education. We obviously have the new commission for tertiary education and research due to become operational on 1 April 2024, but we're already taking steps across the HE and FE sectors to look at where we can share practice. HEFCW ran a seminar about a year ago, in fact, which looked at sharing good practice in anti-racist practices across the sectors, and we are increasingly trying to ensure that we have cross membership of various advisory groups. At the moment, those groups are sectors, single sectors, but by cross membership across them, we can start that process. And we think there is a huge opportunity through the new commission to strengthen that and learn lessons. And obviously it's not just further education, but it also reaches into adult education and the apprenticeship sector, which are areas that we perhaps don't talk enough about and we probably should in this space.

As a network, I would say that we are fortunate in having people from a range of different aspects of education that come to the group, but, as I've mentioned, ours is more about offering support and then beginning to look at what issues we've identified from our own lived experience that need some kind of addressing in order to move this agenda forward. I would concur with the rest of the group that there are pockets of this happening, but it's not consistent enough for it to have sufficient an impact. I think it's that joining of dots and making sure that we are communicating with one another to know what's going on. Because I had no idea about the work that Yusuf's doing; I'm aware of Dean's work because I work closely with people from DARPL. However, there are lots of singular bits of things happening across the sector, so there needs to be something that drives this forward and makes sure that it is unified.

In terms of the cross-sector collaboration in order to make policy drive forward, I think you have to have somebody that's leading the way on this and drawing those groups together, because this is one of the first encounters I've had of us talking about what's happening in a range of different sectors. I've attended the conferences, but they're so costly that I'm sure not everybody who is doing something in relation to this is attending. Certainly, there wasn't much in the way of opportunity for us to cross-pollinate or to talk about the work that we were doing. So, I think that there needs to be somebody that's driving this in order to get us together to find out what's happening and where we can support each other, rather than duplicating work.

One of the things that we've seen from the written evidence that we've received is that a number of organisations mention that there are unequal opportunities, for example, in terms of being part of different forums or taking part in different courses, due to the different roles people have, or due to the fact that they can't be released from their jobs to go on courses. So thank you for that point; it's very important for us to consider.

In terms of thinking generally about your organisation and also the organisations that you get experience of through your work, do you think that we're on track to achieve the actions that are set out in the plan? And I would also like to invite you here—. We've mentioned already some barriers, but are there any particular barriers? You've mentioned there the cross-pollination. Are there any barriers that you see that it would be important to address in order to ensure that action is taken?

Ultimately, I would say making sure that all schools recognise and know their responsibilities in order to help move this agenda forward. That possibly needs to happen via local authorities maybe having action plans or being expected to identify what they as a school will be doing in order to achieve this goal. Schools are expected to account for their actions in order to achieve the 2050 goal of a million Welsh speakers. I can't see why they're not asked to do the same in relation to the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'. What are they actually doing? At least then, we could be sure that they would do something. And people often will go, 'Oh, it's only tokenistic'. Well, a token is better than nothing, in my mind. And if we start on the journey and they begin to realise what they can do, well, that, I think, would make a massive difference—if schools were looking at, 'What can we do to make this happen? How can we realise this?' So, I think that would be a positive way forward, getting schools to consider how they would action part of this plan.

Fine. Dean, you wanted to come in.

I think when we look at even the simple things, like the logging of racist incidents, it's not consistent across all local authorities. Some local authorities are logging it a certain way, others are logging it on MyConcern, but not having a standardised system across the whole of Wales doesn't allow you to compare and contrast different local authorities. And the understanding with teachers of what a racist incident is depends on whether they are going to log it or not. So, again, it comes back to that education and understanding around racist incidents and what racism looks like. That starter of a very basic understanding of what racism is needs to be broadcast across all teachers. But as we touched on earlier, people not being released from their positions or professional learning not being included into their working time makes it difficult for everybody to be on board with that mission, so I have got sympathy with teachers. They've got massive workloads already, and having this as an add-on isn't good enough; it needs to be included within their working day. So, that's very difficult as well. And how can you collect that data if schools aren't happy to give that data out that actually there's been a racist incident? And having a racist incident doesn't mean that they're a racist institution; it means that they're recognising that there has been a racist incident. So, it's really important to understand that messaging that comes with them. That's part of a bigger, wider scale kind of issue that we don't see those incidents being reported because teachers aren't recognising them, they haven't got the confidence there, but also the systems across local authorities are very different. So, it's that understanding. It's the same with exclusions based on ethnicity. Is that being recorded across different local authorities? It's not being recorded in the same way, so that can lead to inequalities across the data, where we can't have a true picture of what is actually going on across Wales.

That leads us neatly on to monitoring and measuring progress. Altaf.

Thank you very much. In their written evidence, Estyn said that they do not feel that the progress and monitoring arrangements of the plan for education are clear enough. How effective are current monitoring arrangements, and what further support could help organisations evidence and record progress?

Dean's point about training is a massive thing in terms of supporting teachers in understanding when a racist incident occurs. The whole thing of microaggressions, for example, muddies the waters a lot of the time, and children and adults are gaslit by being told that they didn't mean it like that, it wasn't a racist incident. And yet, when you meet with other people from an ethnic background, we know the frequency with which some of these occur and the commonality of some of the microaggressions. We know that those are racist incidents. However, in the light of day, it looks as if it was just being rude or misspeaking. So, training is a really important aspect of this. If we are to monitor what's going on, we need to understand what we're looking at. I think a lot of the time for teachers, they're not sure what they're looking at. You'll hear things like, 'Well, it's bullying but we can't say that it was racially motivated' and yet the child is black, they're saying it's racism, and that is often counteracted with, 'It wasn't meant the way that you interpreted it'. So, I think that training is a crucial part if we are to monitor and to see change in schools.

Is there anything else—

Harriet was putting her hand up.

Thank you. I think, from a higher education point of view, we are quite fortunate in having a good body of data, which has been collected over many years, which only allows us, obviously, to get at the concrete characteristics. It doesn't capture incidents such as the ones that have just been talked about. But we have been monitoring that data on characteristics and numbers of students and staff from various minority ethnic backgrounds. We're shortly going to publish our first annual report, and that was an expectation on HEFCW in the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', so I think that's helpful, recognising the importance of that monitoring and the data. We're seeing that in some places the data is improving and we are seeing gaps narrowing, but in other places that data is not improving, for example the number of staff from black backgrounds in senior levels in universities. That gap is definitely not shrinking. But we'll have to recognise this is a cultural change that will take time, so continuing to monitor that data is really important and we can't just do one report and think we've done it; we've got to keep doing it and keep following it through. And that is what we're committed to doing in the higher education space.

I was coming to that report. Is there anything else we need to know, or can you update us on any further progress about that report?

Do you mean the report that HEFCW will be publishing on data?

Yes, the one you're going to publish.

It will be published very shortly. We now have the final version and we're just going through the translation process. The data, as I say, shows that the number and proportion of applicants and students entering higher education from black and other minority ethnic backgrounds has increased. There is a challenge in the offer rate, that, while the number of applicants has increased, the proportion receiving offers has not increased as quickly. So, while we are seeing more students come into higher education from those backgrounds, it's perhaps not as quickly as they are showing engagement with higher education.

I've mentioned that, for staff, the key aspect is the representation at different grades, where the gap, particularly for staff from black, ethnic backgrounds, has not narrowed at those higher levels—they are over-represented at the lower grades and under-represented at the higher grades. And we have also seen—a positive story—the narrowing of the awarding gap. If you take a good degree as a 2:1 or a first, that awarding gap has narrowed for students across all minority ethnic backgrounds, but the proportion of black students receiving a first has increased—the gap there has increased. So, that is not the best, so there is still a lot of work to do within the higher education sector, and we can let the committee know when the report is published.

Thank you.

We'll look forward to that. Thank you very much. To Dean, really, what progress has been made to strengthen data on the reporting of racist incidents and harassment in schools and colleges?

Yes, again, this comes back to education, so providing education to teachers. There are something like 35,000 teachers in schools across Wales. Being able to provide all of them with the skills—. DARPL helps with that, with the online asynchronous and live versions of teacher training or educator training, but it's whether they've got time within their working days, as I go back to, to actually take part in the training and understanding what a racist incident is. And those are the ones that are actively wanting to take part and be on the journey. It's unengaged schools, or the leaders within the schools that unengage—because we have got those within Wales; not everybody's on this journey and agrees with the mission of an anti-racist Wales by 2030—and so it's how do we engage those to make sure that they are providing that time for educators within those schools.

So, I would say that there's a lot of teachers who have taken part in the training and have a better understanding, but there's a lot more teachers that need that training, and it's providing them with the time, but also holding schools accountable. And I know that's part of Estyn, but, with over 1,500 schools in Wales, Estyn is a small team to try and go around every single school with the new curriculum and inspect those schools. There needs to be more onus on accountability coming from consortia, all the way down, but also Estyn having that support to be able to get around, because it's not just holding them accountable, but also looking at what support they need, whether that is bespoke support for local authorities, with trends and looking at that data, or whether there are certain issues within certain local authorities where they need more support to achieve the goals. And I think it goes hand in hand—holding people accountable, but making sure the support's there to achieve what they need to is really key.

Thank you very much. And the last question: the Equality and Human Rights Commission has said that the public sector lacks confidence when collecting and submitting data on ethnicity. To what extent is this the case, and how could data collection be improved across the education sector?

I would say, again, it's a sensitive issue, and I think it's common across all sectors that those who identify as 'unknown' are often larger than any of the other ethnic minority groups individually. I think it's a process of confidence and trust. People are very sceptical about why data is going to be used and for what purpose it's going to be used, so there is a trust issue there. And I think one of the benefits, or one of the outcomes that we should see is that number reducing—that more people are confident in declaring their ethnicity.

To draw your attention to a report that was commissioned by the Welsh Government towards an anti-racist FE sector, which was published last month, that was a qualitative piece of research, with 135 staff and students interviewed, and it is that lack of confidence, touching on what Dean and what Sue have said, in terms of you reporting a racist incident, but it gets called anything but a racist incident. This was loud and clear from the findings. And so, if we carry that example through, what confidence am I going to have that my disclosing of my ethnicity is going to be handled in a way that's going to be beneficial to a process or to any sort of system, and to what extent is it going to be a detriment to me moving forward? And we know there are many studies that have looked at people having to change their names before being able to get a job. There are people who will therefore also, including myself—. I'm mixed race, and before I'd class myself as white to see if that got me any further anywhere else. So, there are reasons why people will make choices about accurately disclosing their information, as well as saying it's 'unknown'.

Thank you. Can I call Ken Skates now?

Thanks, Chair. First of all, I'm going to ask a question of Yusuf and Sue. In your evidence, you both raised concerns around resources and funding allocation. How will these issues impact on the implementation of the plan in both the short and long terms? And do you have any examples of where funding and resources are needed?

Initially, I would say we talk about training. The issue for most schools, with regard to training, is, when you have a course that's available for teachers to do, there are cost implications for the school, whether the course itself is free, because they need to cover that day’s teaching. Then, if there are other courses, other events, often they are quite costly. In this climate, there are problems in terms of where do you allocate funds. If you don't see this as an important issue, then this is not where you are going to direct your funds for your staff to have training. It requires some kind of mandation to actually get schools to commit to that, and if there's no requirement to do so, then funding is not ring-fenced for this, and, if it is ring-fenced, it may be for one member of staff to then disseminate the information. So, that's a little basic one—the cost for schools to get training for staff.

In terms of other resources, I'm particularly concerned that there are so few Welsh-language resources. I'm involved in writing some resource materials, researching histories of Welsh BAME people, and we are writing those, but that's still very limited in terms of Welsh resources to support teachers in Welsh schools to deliver this work. I'm trying to work with a lot of these Welsh schools in order to get those resources, but, when I look at the plan, it's not very clear who's taking a lead role in developing those resources. And, certainly, in lots of Welsh-language schools, there are few minority communities within the school, and that is something equally we want to work towards improving—the representation in Welsh schools from the black and Asian and minority ethnic communities. We need to see them in those schools.

In terms of the money that was noted in the action plan for the commitment to this project, it's quite small, shall we say, in relation—. I keep on coming back to the one million Welsh speakers. When I look at the money invested in training, in supporting the actioning of the 2050 goal, that's significantly more than the money that's being invested in this attitude change that we're asking for society to make—much, much more difficult to teach than teaching a language, to be quite frank. I can teach you the word for 'a chair'. Changing your mind about the person sat opposite you that you don't feel is the same is going to take a lot more work than simply me showing you pictures of chairs. There are lots of ways I can teach you the language. So, I feel that there's insufficient investment in terms of looking at, 'How do we help support teachers who are terrified about getting it wrong because they want to get it right? How do we support our children?'. And that's something that's beginning to concern me even more when I'm looking at the gaps—where do our children go, when they're the ones on the front line experiencing racism? Where do they go? As adults, we are talking about it, but it suddenly dawned on me, 'Who do they speak to if they're not allowed to speak to the teacher or the teacher doesn't want to speak to them?' They don't want to upset their parents because they don't want their parents to come rushing into the school and sorting it out. So, I think that we, in this action plan, have to look at what support is available for our children. What helplines do they have in this? So, I think we need to look at what investment in resources to support children experiencing racism we're doing at the moment too.

Thank you. Yusuf.

Thank you for the question. I'll try and build upon Sue's answer, which I completely agree with. I think one of the phrases I've taken away, which I use a lot for the anti-racism action plan, is 'a different approach'—that a different approach is required for us to be able to make progress with a problem that has haunted us for generations. If I may, I do agree that more finance is required, but I also think that it needs to be invested properly and strategically—that, actually, we waste a lot of money by not taking the time to look at how best to implement it. One example is with the anti-racism materials project. We had to deliver that within one financial year, and it was actually less than that by the time you get the wheels off the ground and get it rolling. This is a significant challenge. I think we need to look at the time frames in which we look for an investment to take place, and we should not be using the financial year as a constraint by which we're looking to make a project successful, because this puts a barrier—and an unnecessary barrier, in my opinion—on something being able to be used, and you can actually get much more efficiency by having established teams working for a slightly longer period of time.

The second thing is leaders need to be held to account for their leadership. We're already paying leaders good amounts of money, and they need to be held accountable for, 'What are they going to do?', 'How are they going to measure it?', and, 'How will we know that they are successful?' They've got all the stuff out there that they could look at, but how are we asking them those questions, and what are we doing about it if they're not getting it right? Because, for me, it's a privilege to be working in the public sector, being able to work with communities; it is not a right and it's not an entitlement, and, frankly, if people are not going to lead this well, then I think that we need to look at who's leading it across all sectors.

Then, I think it's about us looking at a sustained approach, and I've got a term here, 'anti-racism connectors'—who are the people who are connecting institutions to communities and who, for reciprocal mentoring, or through training, are standing the test of time by making sure that these organisations have that reflective mirror in front of them so that they know whether they're making progress or not in terms of getting into those communities, understanding their feelings, and understanding whether things are working or not? If we get to the end and, by 2030, we are anti-racist, we'll be living in the best country in the world by far. It will be economically the most prosperous country, because everyone from the global majority is going to want to come here and is going to want to work here. So, there are real reasons why. I'm not going to call it resource; this is an investment opportunity. This is the best investment opportunity that Welsh Government have to be able to allocate resources strategically, but they need to do it by consulting with people who are looking at things cross-sector.

Brilliant. Thank you. Just moving to Harriet, and just a couple of questions for Harriet. Your written submission says that you've been able to fund universities with £1 million annually, to make progress at pace in tackling racism, but how are you measuring the impact, and will that funding be available and needed over multiple years? And then also, the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' states that all universities need to achieve a race equality charter mark as a condition of funding. How is that going to actually operate in practice and what progress has been made so far?

Thank you, Ken. Those two questions are really quite interconnected. So, our funding—we have committed to that funding up until July 2025, as that is the timescale by which the universities are required to achieve their race equality charters. And the two things are linked together, which is not purely for work on the race equality charter, but is generally for the actions in the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', but the key one of those is the race equality charter, and we see that as an important part of delivering those actions.

In terms of monitoring progress, all nine universities in Wales signed up to achieving that charter in March 2022, and they're all committed to completing that achievement by July 2025. We as HEFCW then monitor their progress on an annual basis. We are shortly to receive the first full monitoring reports on that, and that will include the universities' plans for how they get from where they are now to what they need to have in order to meet that deadline of July 2025. We've highlighted to vice-chancellors just how much time and investment is needed to achieve that, and that if they haven't already got the plans in place, achieving that 2025 date is going to be a real challenge. It is a programme of sustained work over time that requires self-evaluation within institutions, groups that bring together those with lived experience to explore the position within each individual university, looking at the data, taking actions and moving forward. But even having said all that, the actual achievement of the charter is really just the first step and it's a longer term process that then enables you to put in place the actions that will move towards a more anti-racist institution in the longer term.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can we move to call in Jane Dodds?

Thank you, Chair. I know that time is running out, so I've just got one question for you all—the same question for you all, and it was the question that I asked the previous panel.

We know that the majority of the people who have leadership roles in the area of education or who are headteachers are white. Why is that happening? Things have happened over the decades, training and so forth. Why are we still in this situation? I know that Harriet has touched on this, so I'll ask the other three, and then come back to Harriet, if we have time. I don't know who wants to lead on this. Dean—go ahead.

Yes, thank you, Jane. I really appreciate that question. I think it comes back to experiences within school. So, the experience of black pupils within school has been a negative experience. They haven't seen any representation across the teaching workforce. 'You can't be what you can't see' is what we often hear, so they're not seeing that as a profession for them, and that is being reiterated around the rhetoric and the curriculum—that they don't see positive role models that look like them across any part of the curriculum, that they don't see, then, that that education and feed-in to become a teacher is a role that they're going to take part in or want to be involved in. If there's a lack of black teachers, we're going to have a lack of black senior leaders and headteachers, because there's no production line of getting these teachers through that process of becoming a headteacher.

That being said, there are snippets, and there are some teachers that are black. But, again, what are their experiences like of racist incidents? Are they being treated with respect, with professionalism, in school? And do they feel like those incidents are being treated well? That then feeds into thinking, 'Well, actually, I don't want to go into senior leadership.' Are they staying and are they retained in the education workforce, or are they leaving? I think that's how we get that—. It's an early stage of improving the recruitment of black and Asian teachers, and then we'll have a bigger pool of staff to pick from that become senior leaders. But in the short term, it's looking at what pipeline can we find and what can we put on now to provide the black and Asian teachers we have got with the skills to then become deputy headteachers, senior leaders, but then headteachers as well—that, I think, is really important. Because Betty Campbell was the last black headteacher in Wales—so, looking at that, that should not be the case still now in 2023.

Thank you very much. Could I ask the people in the room, please—Yusuf and Sue, do you have any opinion on that?

Do you want me to go first?

Yes.

So, having been a leader in a school, and returning to Wales, I came with that perspective that I started at the bottom again, which probably is quite sad now, on reflection—that, in schools in Wales, certainly, we don't have that pool of teachers that are there readily waiting in the wings for those jobs. However, when they are waiting in the wings, they're also struggling with some of the issues of the lived experience of racism for them. That mantra that we are often told, that you have to work twice as hard to get half as far as your colleagues, certainly rings quite true in this instance. However, what has shocked me, being back here in Wales, is the fact that, within the institutions, within the system, there are problems. So, when teachers are struggling with that isolation, and feeling that they have to represent a community, when you offer support, which they've asked the network to do, we are closed out, and schools will say that they will do it on their own. What they don't understand is that, sometimes, you actually need somebody that understands your lived experience, and this is not a condemnation or a criticism of the school, this is simply a recognition that there is a challenge at times when you're the only person representing your community. As a teacher, you are confronted not simply by the audience of the children in front of you—they are probably the easiest audience to be comfortable with—but their parents and their attitudes to your ethnicity. You also have your colleagues that you need to convince of the rightness of your position. And then, once you've done those things, and sometimes that's difficult, you need sometimes somebody to talk to about the challenges that you're facing, and, when you ask for help, the people that you feel could help you are closed out. That's a problem to me.

So, there needs to be an opportunity for people from minority communities who find themselves represented in a school to be able to draw on additional support, if they require it, because it is hard. Moving into those senior positions—that seems to be very problematic because, often, the criteria to go on training programmes for senior management require you to be in management of some sort within the school, and if you don't find yourself in those positions, then you can't go on the training, therefore can't make the progress. And as has been mentioned, sometimes you just give up because it's too much like hard work. I think that there is clearly a problem with some of the systems in place in order to offer support to teachers. And I'm not always an advocate of positive discrimination, but I think that there needs to be some positive efforts made in order to support people to progress to those positions. If you've got the qualifications to get you into the job, hopefully you'll begin to demonstrate that you have the skills and that you don't need, necessarily, somebody to teach you skills—you just need opportunities to make that progress.

Thank you very much, and just quickly, Yusuf, do you have anything that you'd like to add? I know that we've nearly reached the end.

I'll be brief. I'll completely echo what has been said. I'll give a personal example. I'm an English migrant. I moved from London where I was in the school sector as an assistant headteacher looking to become a headteacher. I sent 17 applications to schools in Wales at assistant headteacher level, and I got two interviews and two rejections. I then decided to go slightly more east and sent three applications to Bristol. I got three interviews and got offered a job, same position—assistant principal—in a school. This is why I ended up working in a college. So, I think there is a real systemic challenge, and the only way you'll deal with that, going back to the point on leadership, is by how you're going to hold people to account for not sourcing the talent effectively enough, and there being a mechanism to hold them to account to do that. When you look at ethnic minority communities, they have high levels of innovation, high levels of entrepreneurship, high levels of grit, determination, drive, want to work hard, want to do well. And therefore, the only obvious solution to me is to ensure that the system demands that that talent is nurtured and recognised so that we don't fall prey to some of the challenges that Sue outlined.

Thank you very much, Chair. I think we've run out of time now, but thank you. Back to you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, all of you, for your participation. We'll send you a transcript of what you've said, and you'll have the opportunity to correct it if we've got it wrong. But it's been a very interesting session, and we thank you for your time.

I'd just like to ask committee members if you are happy to accept three papers to note before we move into private session. Okay. Thank you very much.

Under Standing Order 17.42, I'd now ask you to recommend that we exclude the public for the remainder of today's meeting. Thank you.