Teachers have been told to challenge children as young as 3 on their attitudes towards immigration amid a reported rise in racism among young people.

The guidance is aimed at busting racist “myths” in the wake of the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as US president.

It calls on the preschool sector to explore views such as “we have loads of immigrants in the UK” and “people come [here] because we’re a soft touch”, and to provide a welcoming culture for migrants that may not exist elsewhere.

The country’s biggest teaching union, the EIS, has prepared specific advice for staff in nurseries and early primary, as well as two other guides (one for P3 upwards, the other for secondary and further education), all entitled Myths of Immigration.

The early years guidance states: “Often racist ideas take root if children do not have the chance to have open discussions about difference and diversity when they are very young.”

EIS president Margaret Smith, who worked in nurseries for nearly 30 years, told TESS: “At a time of Brexit and Trump, when there is serious talk about building walls, we should be talking about building communities from the earliest age, and advice like this is timeous.”

While preschool children tended to get along with each other regardless of ethnic or cultural differences, Ms Smith said, they still echoed language and attitudes they may have heard at home or in their community.

She recalled, for example, nursery children using racist terms to describe local shopkeepers, and talking about people of a different colour as if they were an amorphous group, rather than a collection of individuals.

‘Embedded in the curriculum’

Teachers were skilled in challenging such attitudes and an early start was crucial, “even if children are not seeing any differences” between themselves and peers, Ms Smith said. She added: “If we check these attitudes early on, get this embedded in the curriculum, we can bust the myths and change the misunderstandings.”

Suggested activities for children in nursery to P2 include asking them three things they would pack if they had to leave home, or using puppets to ask what they think about people moving into their community.

Nursery staff are advised to put up multilingual and anti-racist posters, and to ask migrant parents to talk to children about what has made them feel welcome or unwelcome in their new country.

It’s critical that young people of all ages are equipped with the facts

The guidance states: “Schools and nurseries which provide a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere can play an important role in countering some of the prejudice that migrants can encounter elsewhere.”

Nicola Hay, campaign manager for the Show Racism the Red Card, said the charity’s education workers had noticed an increase in reported instances of racism among young people that appeared to be motivated by anti-immigration feelings.

She told TESS: “A considerable amount of research has demonstrated that children at a very early age are aware of physical and cultural differences among people. For example, research by [anthropologist] Mary Goodman indicated that 25 per cent of children in her sample were expressing deeply entrenched race-related values by age 4.”

Ms Hay added that the new guidance would be “vital” in challenging attitudes “before they become more fixed and shape young people’s world views”.

No room for ‘complacency’

John Wilkes, chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council, said: “We know that attitudes to refugees and immigration more generally are more positive in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK. However we cannot be complacent and we must combat racism and xenophobia wherever it exists.

“Children can pick up misinformation, attitudes and prejudice from adults, so it is critical that young people of all ages are equipped with the facts.”

Meanwhile, Ms Smith has found that older pupils tend to go to a single source for information in immigration - often a tabloid newspaper - so the advice for teachers of this age group includes a recommendation to analyse language used in news coverage of migration.

She would also like to see more explicit work on anti-racism education incorporated into teacher training.