A lack of diversity in Scotland’s teaching profession is damaging pupils’ attainment and life chances, an education union’s annual conference will hear.
Members are “shocked to note the limited progress made towards equality and diversity across the teaching profession”, according to a motion to the NASUWT Scotland gathering.
It follows a Tes Scotland report on research that identified widespread concern about the lack of promotion opportunities for black and minority ethnic (BME) teachers in Scotland.
The motion from NASUWT Scotland’s Fife branch warns that BME teachers are being “systematically denied the opportunity to progress and lead, across all sectors of the teaching profession and most acutely in management positions”.
It also highlights that female teachers are “significantly under-represented” in physics and technical subjects, with male teachers under-represented in subjects such as English, French and biology, as well as in the primary and special sectors.
The motion, which will go to the union’s annual conference in Glasgow this Friday and Saturday, says that “the lack of equality and diversity in teaching has a detrimental impact on the educational attainment and life chances of young people”.
An NASUWT spokeswoman told Tes Scotland that a more diverse teaching workforce would provide a greater range of role models and, if teachers have a similar background to pupils, they were arguably “more attuned to the challenges and issues pupils may face”.
Delegates will be asked to back a call for research into the scale of under-representation within each sector and subject, by ethnic origin and gender, as well as a campaign to encourage more people into teaching under-represented groups.
Last Friday, Tes Scotland reported on Glasgow City Council research, which found that teachers categorised as “white Scottish/white other” were twice as likely as BME colleagues to have been appointed to a promoted post. BME teachers were also “much less likely” to have been encouraged by their manager to apply for promotion.
The report, Ethnic Diversity in the Teaching Profession: a Glasgow perspective, found that three-quarters of BME teachers felt that promoted posts were difficult to obtain for teachers from minority ethnic backgrounds, compared with less than 10 per cent of white teachers.
Professor Rowena Arshad, head of the University of Edinburgh’s school of education, said the Glasgow research would help shape a Scottish government short-term working group she is chairing, designed to increase the number of teachers from underrepresented groups. She warned that education had to “stop sliding away” from confronting racism.
Education secretary John Swinney, responding to the Glasgow survey, said that while “teacher recruitment is a matter for local authorities, we want to encourage action to address this issue”, and that Professor Arshad’s group would make recommendations “in the coming months”.
