Last updated: 17 Apr 2009

Early years settings need to comply with Race Relations Legislation. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000) obliges LAs and maintained early years settings to ‘eliminate unlawful racial discrimination and promote equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different racial groups'.

The Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000) also obliges maintained nursery schools and schools to have a race equality policy that is linked to an action plan.

Ofsted inspects all nurseries and other childcare settings, including childminders.

Ensuring race equality: some suggestions

Both the general and specific duties of the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 should ensure early years settings plan effectively for the access and inclusion of children newly arrived from overseas. Issues you might consider when planning include:

• developing a new arrivals policy linked to race equality policy and action planning
• regularly reviewing policy to consider its impact
• monitoring the take-up of early years services among different ethnic groups, using detailed ethnicity categories that reflect local communities
• ensuring equality of access to early years provision. The Promoting access to early years provision area of this site gives further information on how this can be achieved
• examining the recruitment, retention and career progression of early years practitioners from ethnic minority groups
• training all staff on race equality issues, including issues related to international new arrivals
• examining teaching resources such as books, toys and artefacts to see if they represent positively all sectors of society
• ensuring that you challenge racism and promote positive attitudes to cultural diversity.