This month sees EMTAS celebrating that Ellen Tout has been part of the team for a year as the GRTS advisor.
From the beginning Ellen has been eager to raise awareness for the Traveller cultures through her training package, which is informative, interactive and valuable to any school. She has also written various articles and held competitions to raise the profile of the Traveller communities. This year Ellen also launched the Future Focus workshops. These are a great fully funded opportunity for schools who have Traveller children to provide a workshop looking at aspirations – with the aim to encourage children to remain in school.
Ellen works tirelessly to support families, not only with their children’s education needs, but also a wider context – taking a holistic approach to supporting children.
She is a huge asset to the team and if you need any GRTS support, please don’t hesitate to contact her: Ellen.Tout@devon.gov.uk
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27 February 2025
Be seen: Embedding EDI culture in schools and settings
Join us for next year’s EMTAS Conference for brilliant presenters! The conference will include stimulating presentations on a combination of research-based best practices and approaches, as well as opportunities for discussions and networking.
Do an extra GCSE in your home language!
This year, we will be running preparation classes for our bilingual children in Arabic, Polish and Russian. All children will need to be enrolled for the GCSE through their schools. The deadline for enrolment in our classes is 31 January 2024.
If you are interested, please complete the GCSE Speaking Entry form 2024 and email it to: Dora.Totorean@devon.gov.uk.
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Please see the below link to a newly developed One minute guide for parents/carers on Early Years funding.
This resource will be translated into several languages soon!
Since November over 45 secondary Ukrainian children have been accessing our Maths intervention programme. We have covered a wide range of topics and Mathematics vocabulary, including written methods, factors/multiples and even Circle Theorems.
The intervention programme is coming to an end for these secondary children and we want to congratulate them for their hard work and contribution to the sessions.
In a few weeks 45 primary Ukrainian children will begin their intervention programme and we wish them the best of luck and look forward to meeting them.
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Bullying, prejudice and racism incident (BPRI) audit 2022-2023
The Ethnic minority and Traveller achievement service (EMTAS) have published an audit for bullying, prejudice and racism incidents that were reported to the Local Authority (LA) for the academic year 2022-2023. Research shows that these incidents can impact a child’s attainment, attendance and well-being. Studies show that children who have experienced pro-longed bullying receive on average 2 grades lower in their GSCEs.
Last year saw the launch of the online BPRI reporting system, dedicated web pages and the updated BPRI resource. Reporting an incident to the LA now takes less than 3 minutes and you are provided with resources, guidance and suggestions on how to manage the incident straight away. The year also saw EMTAS delivering Equality, diversity and inclusion pupil forums to gain a deeper understanding of what equality, respect, belonging and safety looks like to our Devon children and how they see it in their schools. We also now have various training packages and have delivered many bespoke intervention sessions to targets and assailants.
This improved support saw over a 300% increase in the number of incidents being reported. Of which, we have carefully mapped with previous years and we can confirm that this increase is more about schools reporting more efficiently and effectively. The BPRI audit also highlights that there is a significant amount of racism in our schools, with 50% (535) of incidents being reported being of a racist nature.
We have also seen that throughout the year, year 8s are instigators of significantly more incidents, especially hate crime, hate incidents and extremism and this only starts to change when the year 7s become the highest instigators in the Summer term. This shows us that there is still significant work to be done on our curriculum to raise children’s awareness of identity, equality and respect in these crucial years.
60% of sexism and sexual harassment incidents were of a physical nature and many schools report the increase in Misogyny as a concern. There strong prejudice towards Jewish and Muslim communities, accounting for 87% of religion/belief prejudice. Over 15% of incidents were targeting children and staff around their/perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
In response to this audit, EMTAS has launched its BPRI clinic, which is free to all schools who report incidents to the Local Authority. This clinic provides you with the opportunity to discuss and seek advice regarding an incident and/or discuss your equality, diversity and inclusion provision.
To support schools further we have published various free resources:
EMTAS will continue to raise awareness and the importance to report, create resources, including workshops for children and guidance around hate incidents and crimes, so do keep an eye on the newsletter so you don’t miss out on these valuable resources.
Cultural exchange
World Religion Day - 21 January
World Religion Day takes place each January, aiming to promote understanding and peace between all religions as well as mutual understanding and tolerance between peoples from different backgrounds.
Holocaust Memorial Day - 27 January
'That is when the trouble started for the Jews. Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees'. – Anne Frank, diary entry, Saturday 20 June, 1942 – reflecting back on May 1940 when the Germans arrived in the Netherlands
The theme this year is 'Fragility of Freedom' and explores what freedom really means.
Roma Gypsies - the forgotten victims of the Holocaust
On the morning of 27 January 1945 the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps still held some 7,000 prisoners. Over a million people deported to Auschwitz perished there. It is estimated that six million Jews were exterminated in the death camps. The genocide of over 500,000 Gypsy people during the Holocaust still remains a relatively unknown fact.
Despite the genocide committed against Roma and Sinti people by the Nazi regime, their experiences were only fully recognised by the West German Government in 1981 and the genocide is only now becoming more widely known. There is no provision in the curriculum to specify this is taught in school as part of Holocaust education and yet Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people have been part of British history for centuries.
Links and resources: Roma Gypsies - the forgotten victims of the Holocaust - Support for schools and settings (devon.gov.uk)
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Friends, Families & Travellers, November 2023
The report highlighted the following key issues in the inequalities faced by GRTS children in education.
- Gypsies, Roma and Travellers have the lowest educational attainment, at all key stages up to and including KS4, out of any ethnic groups in the UK.
- In the 2021 to 2022 school year only 15% of Gypsy/Roma children and 16% of Irish Traveller children met the expected standard in KS2 reading, writing and maths combined for 10 to 11 year olds (compared to 59% of all).
- In the 2021 to 2022 school year, only 8.5% of Gypsy/Roma children got a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and Maths, and 14.4% of Irish Travellers (compared to 49.8% for all).
- Gypsy/Roma (67%) and Irish Traveller (72%) children were the least likely to stay in education after GCSEs.
- Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children have amongst the highest rate of exclusions of all ethnic groups in the UK.
Some of the recommendations from the report to help tackle and eliminate these inequalities are listed below:
- The Government should re-introduce ring-fenced targeted funding for local authorities across the country to ensure Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children can be supported to access and maintain education (as formerly existed through a network of Traveller Education Services).
- The Government should implement the Council of Europe’s recommendation of July 2020 that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller histories and cultures, including the Romani Genocide, is on the school curriculum.
- The Government should support schools to celebrate Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month in June.
- Schools should sign up to the ‘Pledge for Schools’ which commits schools to creating a warm, welcoming, inclusive and celebratory environment for Gypsy, Roma, Traveller, Boater and Showmen children.
- Schools should explicitly name Gypsies, Roma and Travellers in their anti-bullying policies, and ensure there is zero tolerance of bullying and racism towards Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children.
- Teachers should receive training on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller cultures and histories
- Ofsted should ask specific questions about the attainment of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children in their inspections.
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