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Mark Walker made this Freedom of Information request to Reading Borough Council
The request was successful.
From: Mark Walker
21 December 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
By letter of 30 September 2009, The Secretary of State Ed Balls
appointed Maurice Smith to enquire into the "promotion of racism in
schools". Part of the review is aimed at determining whether
members of the British National Party (BNP) should be allowed to
work as teachers or in the wider school workforce.
At present there are a number of measures and safeguards in place
in place to protect children and young people in schools from
racially motivated discrimination and the promotion of political
doctrines that advocate discrimination and promote racist views.
These are:
• The requirement on schools to have equal opportunity policies
• The duty upon schools to promote racial equality
• Their duty to promote community cohesion
• The duty on governing bodies, headteachers and local authorities
to forbid the teaching of partisan political activities in schools
• The powers of the GTC (England) regarding suitability of
registration and where teacher conduct could bring the profession
into disrepute
I would like you to provide me with evidence of how effective these
measures are including whether they are sufficient to maintain
trust in the profession and protect children and young people.
Please provide the following information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.
1) What evidence is there that schools’ equal opportunity policies
are effective in combating racism?
2) What are schools in your area doing to promote racial equality
and promote community cohesion? Examples of measures deemed to be
good practice and recognised as being successful would be useful.
3) Can you provide me with any evidence that the measures listed
above have been effective (if this has not already been done)?
4) Are further measures required to either maintain trust in the
teaching profession or protect children and young people?
Yours sincerely
Mark Walker
Solidarity Trade Union
www.solidaritytradeunion.org
From: Smith, Sarah (Legal)
Reading Borough Council
21 December 2009
I am currently out of the office and will return on Tuesday 22nd
December. Please redirect your email to Hannah Miles,
[Reading Borough Council request email].
The information in this e-mail is confidential to the intended recipient
to whom it has been addressed and may be covered by legal professional
privilege and protected by law.
Reading Borough Council does not accept responsibility for any
unauthorised amendment made to the contents of this e-mail following its
dispatch.
Reading Borough Council has scanned for viruses. However, it is your
responsibility to scan the e-mail and attachments (if any) for viruses.
If received in error, you must not retain the message or disclose its
contents to anyone.
Please contact the sender of the email or
mailto:[email address] or call Customer Services
on 0800 626540 or if international (+44) 118 939 0900, quoting the name of
the sender and the addressee and then delete the e-mail
From: Tarry, Martyn (Civic)
Reading Borough Council
15 January 2010
Dear Mr Walker,
Thank you for your recent request for information under the terms of the
Freedom of Information Act (2000).
The Act places a duty on public authorities to provide information held by
them, and not to provide explanations or to undertake analysis. That said
we have recently (11.12.09) submitted a response to the national review
led by Maurice Smith which examines the effectiveness of measures to
promote equality and prevent racism in schools. This outlines RBC position
and the evidence we have collected of the effectiveness of current
measures locally. We hope this will answer your questions. As you will
note from our enclosed response we feel that membership of the BNP is
incompatible with teaching duties. However, affiliation to the BNP is not
currently proscribed for teachers by the General Teaching Council for
England (GTCE) and we do not therefore maintain information on this. The
Maurice Smith review is due to report by the end of this month and is
expected to either support or deny proscribing membership of the BNP for
teachers depending on the evidence submitted by respondents.
I hope this is helpful in answer to your query but should you have any
further questions please contact us.
You are free to use any information supplied to you for your own personal
purposes or for non-commercial research, private study or news reporting.
However, you do not have the right to re-use the information in a way
which infringes copyright, for example, by distributing, making copies of
or publishing the information, without the permission of the copyright
holder, which in most cases will be Reading Borough Council. If you wish
to obtain permission for such use, please contact Mr C Brooks, Head of
Legal Services, at Reading Borough Council.
If you are unhappy with this response to your request for information
under the Freedom of Information Act then you may ask for an internal
review under the Council's complaints procedure. Please make a request in
writing to Mr C Brooks, Head of Legal Services, at Reading Borough
Council. If you request such a review and are not content with its
outcome, then you have a right to apply directly to the Information
Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be
contacted at:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Regards
Martyn Tarry
Business Manager
Education & Children's Services
Internal: 72565 External: 0118 937 2565
[mobile number] Mobex: 88309
E-mail: [email address]
P Be Green and Save a Tree. Please don't print this e-mail unless you
really need to
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