The Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2002) requires every school to have a policy about valuing diversity and challenging racism. Developing an inclusive curriculum is also a statutory requirement of the national curriculum. The inclusion statement in the national curriculum for England describes schools' responsibility to provide a curriculum that meets the specific needs of individuals and groups of pupils.

All children and young people, regardless of their cultural heritage, should have learning opportunities that enable them to value cultural diversity and be equipped with the knowledge and skills to challenge misinformation and racist assumptions about newly arrived pupils and the communities they come from.

Schools that are developing a culturally diverse and inclusive curriculum and that celebrate the different cultures of their existing pupils will be well placed to affirm the languages and cultures of newly arrived pupils. Broadening the curriculum to include learning about all migrants can help promote race equality and a cohesive school community.

[Back to top]

School ethos and curriculum provision

Ofsted’s report The education of asylum-seeker pupils found that schools had developed, through the curriculum, a range of opportunities to celebrate diversity. These included:

• using assemblies, religious and cultural festivals and the creative arts to enhance awareness
• drawing attention, through display, to the linguistic diversity of the school
• teachers ensuring that pupils’ home languages were an integral part of their everyday teaching
• using events such as Refugee Week to deepen awareness and understanding of the experiences of asylum seekers and refugees. In the most effective schools, events such as Refugee Week were seen as high-profile occasions in a curriculum that reinforced the values and aspirations of the school
• providing opportunities for parents to be involved in schoolwork and participate in extracurricular activities.

Curriculum planning: some suggestions

Curriculum planning in all schools should take into account the needs, cultural backgrounds and languages of newly arrived pupils. These needs can be addressed by:

• developing an awareness of the backgrounds and cultures of new arrivals. The 'Country information' part of this site provides further guidance
• drawing on initial assessment data and assessment for learning information to assist curriculum planning. The 'Initial assessment' and 'Assessment for learning' sections provide further guidance
• identifying ways of harnessing newly arrived pupils’ prior knowledge
• auditing all areas of the curriculum to ensure that there are opportunities to include the experiences of pupils who are newly arrived
• providing opportunities for pupils to develop skills to critically discuss prejudice, bias, stereotyping and racism
• providing opportunities for all pupils to explore how our society and culture have been enriched by immigration, past and present
• using events such as Refugee Week as whole-school curricular opportunities to promote race equality and raise awareness of the needs of newly arrived pupils.

Case study

‘In our shoes’ workshops in schools

‘In our shoes’ is an innovative project developed by Eastside Arts in Whitechapel, East London. It consists of a series of written- and spoken-word workshops in schools looking at refugee experiences, and culminates in a collective spoken word performance with young people and professional artists.

[Back to top]

Useful weblinks

Please note: QCA is not responsible for the content of external sites

Britkid
A website for young people about race, racism and life as seen through the eyes of the Britkids. The site is based around nine imaginary characters in their mid-teens, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. Users are invited to hang out with one of these characters. The characters show us their homes, introduce us to some members of their families, and tell us something about themselves and their lives. The characters discuss harassment, relationships, the words and 'jokes' they like and don't like, public attitudes about race, racism in football, crime and discrimination.

CBBC Newsround
The CBBC Newsround archive can be searched for stories and information about migration, refugees and asylum seekers.

CoastKid
CoastKid is an anti-bullying website developed in Brighton and Hove. Children and young people can enter the site and hang out with one of the Coastkids and learn about their lives and some of the hassles they experience. One of the characters featured is Hussain, a refugee child who has recently arrived from Congo (Zaire).

DfES: Key stage 3 national strategy
This website contains many useful publications.

EMA online
A website developed by Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester LEAs with the help of the DfES to provide resources and support to enable all pupils to fulfil their potential. The site has a facility to search for teaching and learning materials, including resources on black achievement and multilingual activities.

Moving here: 200 years of migration to England
This site is a database of digitised photographs, maps, objects, documents and audio items from 30 local and national archives, museums and libraries which record migration experiences of the last 200 years. Teachers can use this resource flexibly to support work in several national curriculum programmes of study including history, geography, PSHE and citizenship. The site will be invaluable for teachers developing schemes of work on migration and the development of ethnically diverse communities in Britain.

QCA: Respect for all
This QCA website provides guidance and teaching resources for challenging racism and valuing diversity in each national curriculum subject and PSHE and RE.

Refugee Week
Refugee Week is an annual event that celebrates the enormous contribution of refugees to the UK and promotes understanding about the reasons why people seek sanctuary. This is done through arts, cultural and educational events that take place across the UK. The Refugee Week website provides information on running successful events in schools. There are also free curriculum resources to download.

The National Archives Learning Curve
This is an online teaching resource, structured to tie in with the history national curriculum. The site contains a varied range of original sources including documents, photographs, film and sound recordings. A range of resources related to migration and diversity are available.

The Runnymede Trust: Real Histories Directory
The Real Histories Directory has been created as a resource tool for teachers, parents, pupils and the wider community to support them in their teaching and learning about cultural diversity in the UK.

This website will help you locate resources that already exist in LEAs, for example storytellers, dual-language books or culturally diverse toys.

UNHCR in the UK: Teaching tools
The website of the UK office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provides a wide range of teaching resources that can support learning about refugees in several subjects including history, geography, mathematics, English, modern languages, art and design, religious education and citizenship. The resources include teachers’ guides, videos, lesson plans and posters.

[Back to top]

Further resources

Refugee Council
The Refugee Council produces a range of resources. These include:

Kosovan Journeys: refugee children tell their stories, 2001
Two refugee children tell their stories in this colourful A3 book for literacy hour reading and activities.

Refugees: A resource book for primary schools,1998
A resource book for 5- to 11-year-olds containing activities, personal imonies and background information for teachers wishing to cover refugee issues as part of citizenship, English, history, geography, religious education and other subjects. Comes with a Journey to Safety game.

Refugees: we left because we had to, 2003
The third edition of this best-selling text for 14- to 18-year-olds complements the national curriculum key stage 3 and 4 citizenship and history courses, post-16 citizenship and general studies, and non-statutory religious education. It contains photographs, drawings, maps and games to bring the subject alive in the classroom.

The Refuge Project
The project was based in schools in the UK, in areas where pupils were able to meet people from their community who came to Britain as refugees. Using audiovisual history techniques, refugees were interviewed about their experiences and edited versions of their stories were published.

Refuge: learning about refugees with refugees: a citizenship education project, The Aegis Institute, 2003
This teachers’ resource pack is the result of a project in the UK which paired nine refugees with nine schools for a six-month period.

The pack covers the key skills in the key stages 3 and 4 citizenship curriculum, and the key stage 4 guidance on migration to Britain in the 'Respect for all' area. It also includes many opportunities for cross-curricular links. It can be used as a modular programme or as separate individual units. The video and DVD resources are suitable for year 9 upwards, while the written materials are targeted at year 10 students.

Colours of hope – a little book by Roma refugee children for everybody, Roma Support Group, 2003
A book written and illustrated by a group of Roma refugee children in London. In the book they write about their feelings, hopes and aspirations.

One day we had to run, Wilkes, S, Oxfam Educational, 2000
This book tells the story of children who were forced to become refugees. They fled from Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia, leaving their families and homes, and faced many dangers before they reached the safety of the refugee camps.

Refugee boy, Zephaniah, B, Bloomsbury, 2001
Alem, the child of an Ethiopian father and Eritrean mother, is left alone in London, his fate resting in the hands of the Refugee Council and the British justice system. This story charts Alem's fate as he is moved from children's home to foster family, and in and out of court hearings.

The colour of home, Hoffman, M, Frances Lincoln Ltd, 2003
A picture book suitable for key stages 1 and 2. A young boy, Hassan, has come from Somalia as a refugee and joined a school. Hassan paints a picture to communicate his feelings and the lovely colours of home are smudged with the reds and oranges of war. This story tells of life through Hassan's eyes and explains why his family fled from Somalia to come to England.

The other side of truth, Naidoo, B, Puffin Books, 2000
Sade and her brother Femi are the children of an outspoken Nigerian journalist. When an assassination attempt on their father's life leaves their mother slain instead, their world is understandably turned upside down. The family must flee the country to survive.

[Back to top]