The County Council’s Policy Statement on Race Equality in Education states:

• Suffolk County Coucil values the diversity of the people who make up our society. Its policy is to provide services to all sections of the Suffolk community and its aim is to avoid discriminating against any individual or group.

• Education has a key role to play in contributing to a fair and just society which appreciates diversity, promotes respect and understanding and is free from prejudice and racism. Suffolk LEA is committed to these values and promoting them through the services it provides directly and through the support and advice it offers to schools and other educational establishments.

• The LEA aims to work with its partners in the education service (including parents and the local black and minority ethnic communities) to provide a high quality of education which is committed to the raising of standards and aspirations for all children and young people in Suffolk, irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious identity.

Further to this, in Suffolk’s Strategy for Learning, the County Council is committed to developing standards for all learners: ‘We recognise the importance of high expectations for all and a flexible approach to the curriculum and its delivery, so that young people fully engage in an appropriate learning environment with barriers to learning removed’.

This statement links to the key objectives of the Minority Ethnic and Traveller Achievement Team which are to work in close partnership with schools and parents to:
– raise achievement
– combat racism
– promote cultural diversity.

A support and advice service is provided to schools to help meet these objectives.
The Ofsted report (2001) for Suffolk LEA said:

‘Good support is provided overall for children of minority ethnic groups, including Travellers, by the multicultural education service and the Traveller education service*.’ (*Now renamed as the Minority Ethnic and Traveller Achievement Team, or METAT.)

The report also recognised the support given to minority ethnic groups and strategies to counter racism as strengths of the LEA. The report concluded that support for minority ethnic pupils, including Travellers, and strategies to counter racism were strengths of the LEA. An HMI Thematic Survey in November 2004 confirmed that there was much good work within the LEA and its schools on strategies to counter racism.

Our achievements to date include the highly successful biannual anti-racist ‘Mingle’ conferences to high schools, delivered in conjunction with the Racial Harassment Initiative and Community Education, and the popular anti-racist poster and poetry competitions held in collaboration with Show Racism the Red Card and Ipswich Town Football Club. Both of these ventures helped the Suffolk County Council to win the Equalities Award in 2002 from the East of England Regional Council for Local Government Services.

Two new projects have been developed (as pilots in 2004/05) to counter racism for Y5/6 pupils. One project involves members of local minority ethnic groups in running workshops to counter racism, and the other is a puppet performance that challenges racism and prejudice.

Raising the achievement of Black (Caribbean), Black British and Mixed White and Black pupils has been the target of a two-year project in Ipswich schools. The project is a strand of the Public Service Agreement of Suffolk County Council, in which challenging targets are set in relation to achievement at Key stage 2 and GCSE. A successful element has been the appointment of Black mentors to work with targeted pupils to tackle issues that are perceived to be a barrier to achievement. As a result of this project, specific support for African-Caribbean pupils will be provided through EMAG funding for 2005/06.