The Diversity and Equality SPG is a collaboration between Newcastle University Primary PGCE staff, local schools, and local minority ethnic achievement services. It aims to support ITE students in appropriating the QTS standards relating to diversity, develop an awareness of the issues involved in mentoring students’ appropriation of these standards within the local context, whilst also sharing good practice and evidence from research in the inclusion of black/minority ethnic and bilingual pupils in local schools. In brief, the SPG is a reciprocal agreement between the University and local schools and services which benefits both, and hence crucially, also benefits the pupils and families in our region from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. The issues surrounding the inclusion of pupils with EAL, and those from BME backgrounds is particularly important in the local context given the school population demographics.
Although there are currently around 80 different languages spoken by school children in Newcastle, most schools across Gateshead and Newcastle have very few black/minority ethnic or bilingual pupils. In contrast there are also a few schools, most typically in the West-end area of Newcastle, which have a school population predominantly bilingual. In some of these schools the majority of pupils share the same home language, whereas in others many different languages are spoken. A few of these schools also have very transient pupil populations. Such local demographics create the likelihood that the majority of PGCE students will experience classrooms with few or indeed no black/minority ethnic pupils or pupils learning English as an additional language during their school placements, whilst a few experience very diverse classrooms. Given that the overwhelming majority of Primary PGCE students at Newcastle University are ‘white’ and monolingual, and that many also report having had very limited experience of linguistically and/or culturally diverse classrooms prior to the course, the Primary PGCE team began to question the extent to which students were likely to engage with and value issues of diversity and inclusion as relevant to their everyday practice. Local teachers with expertise in teaching bilingual pupils report the same issues amongst practising teachers. The Diversity and Equality SPG therefore aims to: