Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Prynhawn da. Welcome to the Equality and Social Justice Committee. We have all Members present today, so I have no apologies. I just wanted to ask Members if they've got any declarations of interest in relation to the subjects we're discussing. Thank you very much.

Today, we're starting our inquiry into the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', and the first of two sessions this afternoon is on health and social care. I'm delighted to welcome Ceri Harris, who's head of equality at Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, but is appearing on behalf of the NHS Confederation; David Pritchard from Social Care Wales, which are responsible for workforce development in both social care and child care; Professor Pushpinder Mangat from the Health Education and Improvement Wales organisation; and Abyd Quinn-Aziz from BASW Cymru, the organisation of social workers. Welcome to all of you appearing online.

I'm going to start off the questioning. To start off, thank you for HEIW's written evidence, and also from Social Care Wales. There's quite a lot of question marks, particularly in the HEIW evidence, because there's clearly a bit of a tension here between the ambition of the plan and the pace at which we're going to be able to proceed with something that's obviously a really, really important issue. So, I just wondered if HEIW—. Professor Mangat, I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about the level of ambition the Welsh Government is expressing and the demands on health boards to all have made demonstrable progress on driving anti-racism. How are we going to move forward on this?

Thank you, Chair. From HEIW's point of view, I think, first of all, if I just mention that HEIW is a fairly unique organisation within the NHS in Wales. We commission undergraduate training for many of our professions and some postgraduate training for medicine, dentistry, optometry and pharmacy, and it's in those roles where we have an external-facing function. And we have already implemented—. And I know all the royal colleges in medicine are implementing and looking at their curricula to address many of the actions that are proposed in the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'. I think that the general issue that we felt was not the aim of the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'—which we absolutely fully support; we think it's a fantastic initiative for a country to proceed in this way—our concern is how we are going to implement it and how we're going to support the implementation with data.

The problem with data is that the very fact that people feel discriminated against from various different backgrounds makes them unwilling to always share their data within the electronic staff record and to give us the background data set that allows us to then see if we're getting better at things. I think that's a really big challenge. The real outcome from this would be that people do feel that they can share their data, share their background and don't feel that they are going to be disadvantaged in any way. So, I think that's really the theme that ran through our response. We are absolutely in support of it, we're absolutely engaging with it and embedding it into our own functions and our own strategic equality plan, but we did want to have more clarity on how we're going to monitor some of the actions that are proposed. I hope that's answered your question.

That's a very fair point. Clearly, there are huge challenges for all public services at the moment. There's a historic underfunding that's been present for some years, and, in addition to that, all the issues around COVID. But nevertheless, given the significant contributions of ethnic minorities at all levels of health services, why was this not already a priority?

Thank you. You're absolutely right. In Wales, we are over-reliant, compared with other countries, on doctors from overseas. If you look at the proportions of doctors who are from overseas in some of our health boards, it's close to 50 per cent of the permanent staff who are employed, so I completely agree that it is an important thing for us.

One of the difficulties is what I said before—having data. And we have data now, within the medical field, that has shown that doctors from overseas and doctors like me, who trained over here but are of a different ethnic background, have poorer results right the way through medical school, through training, through achievement in getting consultant posts, and referral rates to the General Medical Council. So, all of that differential treatment, we now have data for.

We're very fortunate that the GMC as our regulator has stated that it wants to be an anti-racist organisation by 2030, which is a similar timescale to the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'. They are working with us to look at the data amongst doctors here in Wales, so that we can start putting plans into place, having a dashboard that tells us what we're doing well in. But this is one field, and I think that the learning from this is something that in the future can have an impact.

This work does predate the race equality action plan that I was part of, and the current plans, and we are already in the process of doing some of this. But without hard data, it's very difficult to persuade many of our health colleagues that there is an issue. Everybody always thinks it's somebody else that's responsible for something else. I can tell you my own experiences, and I know that it's embedded across the NHS—mostly unconscious, but obviously still some examples of pretty poor practice, which we have to address and not tolerate. We're embedding all of our aims into our education processes, and particularly our educators, but there may be other actions that need to be done in the wider NHS—which is, I think, why Ceri's here—to see how our work and our strategic equality plan and our initiatives dovetail with the NHS more widely.

Ceri, can I just ask you to come in at this point, because you're obviously here to represent the front line in health boards? I was concerned to read about the level of bullying in the health service—which is a worry regardless of your ethnicity—and the fact that there's more bullying going on and racism amongst those who are of an ethnic minority. Clearly, given all the recruitment and retention problems that the NHS faces, that is a concern. I wondered what the NHS Confederation is doing about it.

First of all, Chair, thank you for inviting me to come along today. Bullying is a major concern, particularly when we talk about the global majority. Professor Mangat has touched on some of those points around trust. We do have 'Speaking up Safely' guardians across the health board, but often they're not representative of the diverse workforce that we have, so it's very difficult to have trust in actually raising a concern and that that concern will be taken forward. And also the time periods of raising any concerns around bullying have raised some concerns as well, as they're taking a very long time, with no case to answer, often, at the very end. So, for me, when you look at the bullying, it's around visibility; it's always around representation and ensuring that the infrastructure is in place. There are some aspects within the health boards across Wales where there has been best practice, and that's where our staff networks have supported 'Speaking up Safely' and raising concern processes. So, they become the conduit for someone to go to as the first port of call—someone from the global majority—so they will know that their situation will be responded to and listened to, and from that point, it will then be raised. Like I said, the problem is around trust. 

But the leadership needs to be there at board level and in terms of the people who are running the particular services. It shouldn't just be reliant on people who happen to come from the global majority.

No, I agree completely; it's about a framework of support—so, all of the training that has been picked up around the anti-racist training. We've been running an equality-based training and raced-based cultural competence training for a number of years. I think the problem is the inconsistency across NHS Wales, where you have some organisations that have resourced training, but others don't have the same. When we look at 'Treat Me Fairly', which is our electronic-based training system, that's 11 or 12 plus years old, yet that is the training that is mandated for our staff to go on. And every three years, they will simply repeat the same programme unless it's supported by additional training and awareness within each organisation. So, there is a resource implication as well around that training so that we change a culture. This has to be about changing a culture around bullying across all protected characteristics, including ethnicity.

Thank you for that. I want to open the discussion now and call Sarah Murphy in the first instance.

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all for being here today. I'm going to ask some more questions specifically about intersectionality. Thank you all so much for submitting written evidence, which we've all read. As a committee, we're looking at what you think is needed to ensure the needs of different groups—so, that's ethnic minorities, women, children, older people, disabled people and other protected groups—are reflected in your plans. But I wanted to come to you, Professor Mangat, first, if that's okay, because HEIW have submitted written evidence explaining that it's been a bit difficult to do this, and this joined-up working, because several of the actions were needed for December 2022, but the LGBTQ+ action plan wasn't published until February 2023. So, if you could just explain the issue that that has caused, but ultimately, what you think we need to do, going forward now, to make sure that this can be as joined up as it needs to be. Thank you.

Thank you, Sarah. Yes, you're right, we believe not just in equality in relation to race and ethnicity, but we also believe in equality in all other ways as well. So, we wanted to have a completely intersectional approach, and we weren't able—. Well, we were able to do it on our own bat, but we still wanted to know what the aims of the Welsh Government were as well. So, what we've done is we've refreshed our strategic equality plan in this year, and it's gone to our board and been approved in March of this year, to take into account all of the new plans that have come into place. We use that intersectional approach as part and parcel of everything we do within HEIW—so, our recruitment, our policies, all of our functions—and it dovetails really well with the duty of quality, which has also come into the legal requirement for all organisations. So, I think those two things are good for us. But that's largely inward looking and our own functioning. I understand, and I accept, that we have a big role to play outside, but we are embedding the internal functions first.

I know that we are working with some health boards to deal with an equality approach, and I know there's been some significant work done with Aneurin Bevan, where colleagues who work in HEIW are working with their equivalents in the health boards to duplicate our intersectional approach that we have started ourselves. And I think that is a really important part of our work—that, if that goes well, then that can be replicated elsewhere in Wales. Everywhere will have different requirements and different needs, so I think that we will learn from each organisation that we work with in that respect. 

Thank you very much, and, Ceri, I could you nodding along there as well. Did you have anything you wanted to add?

Just to say that we do have an equality leadership group, which is made up of representation from each of the equality leads and inclusion officers across Wales, and I chair that group. And for a number of years, we've had this intersectional approach. So, even in the previous strategic equality plans, the intersectional approach was the way taken because we recognise that, for someone of colour who also has a disability and impairment and may be a member of the LGBTQ+ community, their experience of those multiple barriers will impact on their everyday lives, whether it be as a patient or whether it be as part of our workforce. So, we have to take that approach, because it's about person-centred care. 

Absolutely—

Can we bring David Pritchard in? He's indicated. 

Yes, thanks, if that's possible. I think intersectionality is quite challenging in many ways, because the experiences of individuals are so unique, and it's very difficult to necessarily see what the best response is. And I think the point I wanted to make is it's not just about training or interventions. It's about how we as professionals carry out our work giving services to people in our communities. So, to give one example, strengths-based practice—which is a phrase we use to talk about where you put the person first and foremost and look at their needs and where their strengths are and what they want as opportunities—is about seeing an individual, and not seeing them as a potential recipient of a pre-arranged set of services. And I think delivering the ambitions of the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', and, indeed, the wider set of equality, diversion and inclusion, is not just about a set of initiatives, but it is about changing the way and the culture of professionals to see people in a slightly different way, perhaps, than they have done in the past. And that's—. I think we don't see intersectionality as necessarily a set of actions, but a different way of thinking. Thank you. 

Thank you very much, and my last question on this, really, is to build on what you've just said, David. To what extent, then, do you think further action is needed to ensure that everything that you all just highlighted is reflected in public bodies’ 2024 to 2028 strategic equality plans? Do you think that they'll be updated to reflect the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'? 

David, do you want to go first? 

If I may. I don't think that in itself will be the challenge. I think the challenge—and this is a real challenge—is that we very much support and welcome the approach of the Welsh Government in developing a range of action plans across protected characteristics, and that has genuinely been groundbreaking and welcome. Inevitably, the iterative nature of that work has meant that we haven't been able to see across the range of protected characteristics the ambitions that the Government has for the whole set. And it would really be helpful, I think, for us to have a wider understanding of things like gender and sex and disability and rights alongside LGBTQ+ and alongside racism and alongside the other protected characteristics so that we can build a wider understanding. Our strategic equality plan is built around the idea that it crosses over those, but it would be helpful, I think, to have that full suite in front of us. 

Thank you. That's really helpful. 

So, Abyd Quinn-Aziz, did you want to add anything to what David Pritchard has said at this point, and then we'll come to Professor Mangat? 

Yes, just—. I suppose I should start with I'm representing BASW Cymru, because we have a brand-new national director, and I'm an old member, but I've trained social workers. So, I'm at Cardiff University and I'm in organisations such as Race Alliance Wales, so I'm really trying to focus on a BASW view. And I think—. We've got lots of different bodies within BASW, and we have an equalities officer who is also on the anti-racist group, and she has a picture of the intersectionality, but those of us in the separate groups get individual pictures. And I suppose one of my concerns, having been a social worker for decades, is that 30 years ago, 40 years ago, social work understood that the outcomes for people using services, and for staff, were—[Inaudible.]

We've lost your sound, Abyd, so can we just try and restore that? Is it worth asking Abyd to speak? Could you just pick up where you left off, and we'll see whether we can hear you now? Abyd, can you say something and that will tell us whether or not we can hear you? 

I think we need to take a technical break. I apologise for this. We won't lose sight of the need to come back to Professor Mangat, but we need to establish the link with Mr Quinn-Aziz. 

We'll just go back into public session now. Thank you. Sorry about that technical problem. Abyd Quinn-Aziz, I wonder if you could just pick up what you were saying.

Okay, so social work recognising that the—[Inaudible.]

Yes, we've still got a problem, I'm afraid. I think if we could ask Mr Quinn-Aziz to go into a breakout room, and we'll continue the discussion with other members of the panel. 

Okay. So, Professor Mangat, I wonder if you could come in on this issue of intersectionality.

Thank you, Chair. I thought I'd responded to that, but I think there's more that I want to add to this. Because I think that you've got the right people in the room in terms of care today, with health, social care and the NHS more widely as well as ourselves, but I think there are a number of other parts of Wales that have a huge influence on not just intersectionality but discriminatory-type behaviour anyway in addition. I was thinking about our universities, I was thinking about our other functions in local authorities, I was thinking of the police, particularly, and safeguarding. Because at the moment we've just come back from recruiting doctors and other health professionals in Kerala in India, where they have a huge over-supply, which allows us to ethically recruit from those areas. And the concern for me is that we go to all these efforts to bring people here to do work that is vitally important for the Welsh public, and yet they may well be treated rather poorly by the people of the country. And the people of the country—we've got to go to the largest employers to start the process of educating them to understand that we are a multicultural society already, and we need to embrace that.

So, I think that there's—. If there's anything that I think that we need to do as a system, including Welsh Government that is, it's to start looking at the wider issues and the wider links. I know that there's one university that is acting on some results it found itself, which was that 50 per cent of its black students didn't complete their course. And that is quite a stunning stat. So, I think there are issues throughout our systems that we—. We have to have a multi-system approach, which includes health and social care.

Absolutely. What a stunning waste of resources there. Altaf Hussain wanted to just pick something up. 

Yes. Professor Mangat, it's nice to talk to you. As you were referring to getting the doctors from Kerala to come here, my point is: how well are they being prepared for this social environment here, which is entirely different from Kerala, or, for that matter, from India? So, are they well prepared? And then we are putting them here and you feel that there is no—there should not be then any—discrimination at all. Or if it comes to teaching them here, do they feel something that others are now being taught and they're being taught when they should not be?

You raise some really important points there and we have got experience over a number of years of recruiting doctors from overseas, from India, using the British Association of Physicians of Indian Origin as the intermediary. And we learnt a lot of important processes through that, and that is to have a really thorough induction, which isn't only about how you work within our hospitals and healthcare systems, but also how to get a bank account, how to register with a general practitioner, how to put people in contact with similar-minded cultural backgrounds or religions. And all of these things we've learnt over a period of time and we are implementing as part of this process. This is the first time we're recruiting from Kerala, by the way. So, we're going to use some of our experience to do some of the very things that you say. 

And we also have had quite a lot of experience in dealing with supporting doctors from overseas, because most of our specialty and associate specialist doctors, who provide huge volumes of care within our health services, are from overseas as well. So, we've been providing specific and bespoke support for those doctors, particularly those who've come from overseas, and doctors who come from overseas, to do the training programmes—the internal medicine training programmes—that the royal colleges run. So, we've got a fair amount of experience in dealing with doctors from overseas. But you are right, you can never do too much, and we're not complacent about it and I think that all of the things you've challenged us with there are real, genuine, bona fide issues that we're going to address head on. 

Okay. Thank you for that. We have a bit of a time problem so we need to be brief in our questions and in our answers. Ceri Harris wanted to make a contribution, and then I'll come back to you, Sarah. 

Thank you. So, it was just to add that it's not just about our doctors. When we talk about international staff, the whole of the health service is reliant on international staff to function. So, we've put together a guide for our staff that does talk about how to get a bank account, but also recognises around childcare and schools. Because when international staff come across, they don't come across individually. We have to recognise the needs as well of their families and look at how we can support them to maintain employment, to access schools and other services as well. So I just wanted to make the point that it's not just about the individual member of staff; it's also about recognising the needs of their family as well.

And when we look at cultural competence, it goes two ways. It's cultural competence for our staff to support ethnically diverse work colleagues, but also for work colleagues to understand the Welsh dimensions as well of cultural competence. So I just want to make that point. 

Okay. Thank you. 

Thank you very much, and thank you, Chair.

Sioned Williams, would you like to pick up—?

Obviously, we've heard some of that already from Ceri Harris. We don't need to repeat that, but are there other instances that you want to mention, either of you, or, indeed, Ceri. Ceri.

Sorry, if I can come in, in the NHS in Wales, we also work with our other public sector partners. So, for example, in north Wales, we have the north Wales public sector equality network. In south Wales, there was a group that was established as part of the previous strategic equality plan period, which included museums, it included the Arts Council of Wales, it included Sport Wales. So, again, it's about sharing best practice, because we knew that, when we work with universities, they may have done a lot of work in some areas and that best practice we could use. And because we don't have much resource, it's the sensible approach to sharing resources. So, if someone is putting on a recruitment drive, for example, or a recruitment workshop and inviting members of the community, then local authorities working with health, working with fire, working with the police et cetera, is a sensible approach. So, we do work in that way because we recognise we have to.

Yes. I just also wanted to provide reassurance, I suppose, about the links and the strengths between social care and health particularly. We are two sectors that you will appreciate have very close links but also have often the same kind of client base. The people will move between social care and health quite often. So, we're very keen to work together. We have a shared workforce strategy, which has been updated to reflect the learning of the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'. We work together in looking at the race equality standard in Wales to make sure those are aligned and we're learning from each other. And things like data are being shared together so that we can see what we're learning from each other. So, just to reassure members of the committee, there is a very strong and healthy link between health and social care particularly. Thank you.

Thank you. Sioned. 

David, you were indicating, is that right?

Yes. I wasn't going to talk about the health boards, if that's all right, but I can talk a little bit about social care. Social care has some challenges in terms of, actually, probably the opposite of what the inference was about the larger health boards. We have thousands of providers, often very small, private or voluntary sector providers, who are receiving public money but it can be difficult to work with them to develop new ways of working, to consider new ways of keeping records, or what have you. So, that really is a challenge. And you will be aware, and I think it has already been mentioned, of the extraordinary pressures that there have been in social care over recent times. But, I have to say that the COVID pandemic gave everyone in social care—I think this is absolutely true—a real demonstration of how important the issue of racism is and of what the unequal impact on people from minoritised groups actually is. 

In terms of barriers, in reality, the key problem or the key challenge, perhaps, is the longer term sustainability of the actions that we're putting in place. We're putting together some really quite, I think, innovative and exciting new ideas about making interventions, but they will not solve the problem of racism in a year. It's going to take continued investment and support for that, and I think that's a real challenge. We know where we are as a country in terms of the budgets et cetera, but maintaining a continued approach, where we invest in this, I think will be one of the real challenges, going forward.

Sorry, Sioned. If you don't mind—. Not really. Although, I think, we have to be honest, that there were often examples in the plan where we've had to interpret and shape to fit what is achievable and possible within the realities that we face. We've done that, hopefully, by listening to those with lived experience, but we have had to adapt a little bit. I can give examples, but we don't have time for that, but that is true. But, no, the plan is clear about what it's trying to achieve.

Thank you. Can we move on now to Altaf Hussain? 

Thank you very much. My question is on monitoring and measuring progress. How is your organisation monitoring and measuring your own progress against the actions? How effective are your current arrangements for monitoring, as we have self-assessment? Is that the right approach to monitoring your progress? And what could the Welsh Government do to help organisations evidence and record progress—whether they are aware of any national performance indicators that have been developed and if these would be beneficial? 

Thank you. Who'd like to go first? Professor Mangat, and then I'll come to Ceri. 

So, as I explained earlier, our function is to commission education and training in undergrad and postgrad arenas, as I described earlier. We have a specific role in looking at differential attainment, and we've appointed somebody to HEIW to look at fair training pathways not just in medicine, but across all of our organisations. So, from an undergraduate point of view, we've got the anti-racist Wales principles threaded through our commissioning process with our universities. So, we can ask the universities on a number of levels what backgrounds they're recruiting students from, what ethnic origin they are, what support they're getting and how and what their fill and attrition rates are, along those lines. In postgraduate education, we're creating a dashboard alongside the GMC, which can be replicated across other professions later, to look at the issues related particularly to differential attainment and differential treatment of our postgraduate doctors. So, that's what we've got in place and that's how we're hoping to measure it. It's fairly unique in the UK, but it's an attempt to start doing exactly what has been asked in the question. Thank you.

Thank you. Ceri Harris. 

Thank you. Each organisation across NHS Wales has their own system around reporting and monitoring. So, for example, within our own organisation, we have a number of anti-racist Wales action groups around implementation and around oversight. So, the approach we've taken is that we have an internal group that will look at the monitoring of the actions that we've identified within the action plan and we also have another group that has external stakeholders to hold us to account, so we are open and transparent with the progress that we're making across each of the actions. We've also established where there are risks on a risk register. So, if there are any particular areas that we feel we are not going to achieve, we've identified those as risks within our risk register. In addition, we also provide information to the Welsh Government twice a year, in April and in October. It used to be called 'advancing equality'—the framework that we'd respond to. More recently, it's focused around the SEP and responses to that, so we've just completed the October return to that. And each health board will be required to complete that and to report to the Welsh Government the progress that it's made across all of the protected characteristics in that area. So, there are ways there.

Now, when it comes to the measurement, I think there's still a lot of work that still needs to happen here around identifying the measurement. Because I do worry that, from the outside, for our global majority, whether it be our patients or whether it be our workforce, they may see lots of actions—. I almost want to think of it as the reverse of a swan—so, we talk about a swan gliding across the water and the legs paddling like fury. Here, for our stakeholders, they may feel that there's lots of talk, lots of flapping going on, but there's nothing happening under the water. So, it's important that we get that monitoring and measurement right, going forward, otherwise, in 2030, we'll be having the same conversations. And I've worked in equality for over 20 years and I feel that the same conversations have been happening time and time again, but we do believe that the anti-racist action plan is a solution. We are confident that, if we put our resources in and we challenge the culture, it is something that will work. So, we do celebrate the fact that, in Wales, we do have this, but we recognise that it's bigger than that. As David said, it's about long-term goals. It needs to be kept on the radar and we need to keep pushing in this area and we need to be acknowledging the experiences. Because there was a recent report that came out around maternity services and that people are experiencing the same. So, even though the anti-racist plan has been in and we have been working in that area, it hasn't been felt in the communities that we provide our services to. So, it needs to be long term; this is just the start of the work that we're doing.

Okay. Outcomes. Thank you. 

Thank you for that. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has said that the public sector lacks confidence when collecting and submitting data on ethnicity. To what extent is this the case and how could data collection be improved across the health and social care sectors? 

Okay. Professor Mangat has already talked at length about some of the challenges, but it would be good to hear from David Pritchard, because we didn't hear from the social care sector at that point. David.

Yes, thanks. Social care has had, traditionally, a weaker set of data available to it, partly because of the reasons I talked about earlier, about its disparate nature of provision and delivery, and that's something that the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' and we have been very committed to improving. I've got data now in front of me that I didn't have two years ago, about things like ethnicity data in social care. For example, I have data across all registered peoples—that's 60,000 people in social care in Wales—about their ethnicity, and a really high level of contribution to that, of 84 per cent. So, we have really improved that information. Beyond that, though, we also have clear indications from that data of where significant inequalities lie as well. So, I can tell you that, for people who work in adult care homes, 10.9 per cent of them define themselves as coming from a black heritage, but actually, when you look at the managers of those care homes, it's 0.7 per cent. So, what is happening between the workforce and those who manage the workforce? There is such a significant difference, and the data is just being able to tell us that, so we can start to identify where change is to happen and hopefully what that data will do is allow us to track improvements as we continue to deliver the plan. Thank you.

Thank you very much, David, for that. Organisations report that a workplace race equality standard implementation group has been established and a report is expected in 2024. This was viewed positively by a number of organisations. What difference would you like to see as a result of the standard and what needs to be in place to ensure its success?

Does anybody want to comment on that?

I think Ceri does.

David.

The race equality standard is going to be slightly different, I think, for health and for social care, partly because, again, people who work in health—not all—tend to work through the NHS, so there is a single system that can be used, whereas that's not the case in social care. But what the RES is going to do in social care is really allow for the first time the voice of the workforce to come through.

We did, as part of that development, the first ever workforce survey of the social care workforce this year where we asked questions about a range of topics, including, actually, things like discrimination, where we got very concerning results about people from particular ethnicities. But what the RES will make us do by repeating that every year is bring the voice of the workforce, the people who are actually delivering front-line services, right to the heart of the agenda. So, I think that's, in itself, one of the really major things.

I don't think, by the way, that we are yet in a position where we know how we're going to measure everything we want to know, because of the challenges of the structural nature of social care, but we're working very hard to try and solve those problems.

This is really for David, this question. What work has been done to develop the social care content of the workplace race equality standard? How realistic is the March 2024 timeline? Has the Minister provided guidance to help raise awareness of the impact and experiences of different forms of gender-based violence on different groups of women and girls, in particular the risk factor indicators of violence related to so-called honour-based abuse, female genital mutilation and virginity testing? Thank you.

I think you'll have to forgive me for not being able to answer with absolute confidence about all of those matters—

That's all right.

—but what I would say is that we are in the middle of an extraordinarily intensive piece of work around the RES and we're working with Welsh Government officials who have invested their own time and efforts in this at quite a high level. I think they're bringing the Minister's ambitions to that discussion. So, I'm happy to go away and get further information on that, but I'm not good to pretend I know the finer details of what work would be at that level of granularity. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr Quinn-Aziz, is there something you'd like to add to that?

I was just going to talk on behalf of the registered social workers. At BASW, we probably have about 50 per cent of Wales's social workers registered, and we know their ethnicities and that kind of detail. I think, just to follow on from David about hearing the voice of those people on the front line, some of those areas are becoming topics for discussion—so, for example, workshops on honour-based violence or just the whole anti-racist movement itself. It is still bitty, but we're starting to bring things together. There's an anti-racist working group, there's an officer, but that is very much just the social workers, and in terms of Wales's social work population, a very small minority are from racially minoritised communities.

Okay. I think we need to move on. We could spend the whole session on this, but I think if we can move on to Ken Skates. Those were important issues, but I think we'll have to pick them up another time.

Thanks, Chair. I'm going to ask about resource allocation and funding. In written evidence, the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy states that organisations should not see funding as a barrier to implementing the changes that need to be made in this space. Would you agree that this is the case?

Who'd like to start? Shall we start with Mr Quinn-Aziz while we've got you with us?

Funding shouldn't be a barrier, but I think, as I said right at the start, where I'm involved in so many different things, if we look at social work, there are very few of us, and it's left to racially minoritised workers to lead the change, and though I’m not doing it for the money, there’s a huge burnout. So, yes, it shouldn’t be resource based, but there are implications. If I listed the different pieces of work I’ve done on top of my job, you’d see.

Does anybody else want to pick up with a point that hasn't been made yet? David.

I think a lot of what we’re doing and a lot of what’s being done is being done without additional resource. That’s particularly, I think, where we’re looking to change things that already exist. We have a workforce strategy; we want to make sure it reflects the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' and then put in place things that focus on that. So, I think those kinds of things are happening without extra cost.

There are things, I think, where there probably needs to be either resource movement or resource allocation, which are around particularly, I think, where you’re going to invest in minoritised communities to give them additional support, confidence, et cetera, to perhaps take leadership positions; we’ve got a particularly interesting scheme around that. I think there will be need for some ongoing investment, and I think one of the dangers is that that investment does get lost at some point in the future.

So, I don’t think resources are the whole story, and I think 80 per cent of the plan can be delivered without them, but there are going to be some areas, I suspect, that might need that extra intervention.

Thank you. And specifically to HEIW: in your written evidence, you said that the plan doesn’t set out what funding would be provided for several of the actions identified in the plan, and that you’d raised this as a concern. Could you just outline what sort of impact this has had on the delivery of actions, and who you've raised this issue with?

Professor Mangat.

Sorry, I was waiting to be unmuted. There are two things. I agree with something that David just said—that you can make progress without resource. A lot of our functions are in executive leadership, clinical leadership and compassionate leadership, all of which include—or can include—the implementation of the principles of the race equality action plan.

Yes, there are a number of things that can go forward without extra resource. However, if we want to support and maintain changes—. You know, we could implement the race equality standards, but many standards then are just that: they’re standards. And unless you make sure that people are striving for, reaching and attaining those standards—. You may not be able to do that without resource. So, I think it’s a question of literally giving it a boost, giving our endeavours a boost to get them started and making sure that they’re embedded into everything that we do.

One of the biggest things that we haven’t mentioned is how do we change culture. When we talk about investment and resources, I think that there may well be resources required within the Welsh Government itself to lead on this and to maybe have a supportive advertising campaign to support the actions that we’re looking at.

That’s where I think some of the resources need to be. We spent a lot of money on the organ donation issues in the past, when we wanted to become a presumed-consent country. This is much bigger than that; this is to change the culture of the whole nation. And I think that to do that without the proper support and resource that comes not just from the Welsh Government but from all of our public services is going to be difficult, particularly with the financial climate that we’re in.

Thank you.

Can I call in Jane Dodds now?

Chair, I think Ceri wanted to say something on the last two points.

I beg your pardon, Ceri. I failed to call you.

Thank you, and thank you, Jane. Yes, we don't need resources, but it'll take longer. And also it's about valuing—it's about valuing people's time. We are trying to work on a co-production method, where we work with our communities to get them involved, and we need to value their time. Their time costs money. I'm paid to do my job; they're not. We are expecting a lot from people for nothing, and so we need to value that time. If we want to take this seriously, then you do need to put your money where your mouth is on this one. And so if we want to achieve an anti-racist Wales by 2030, then we need to have those resources. 

Like I said, I've been working in equality for 20 years. I literally have to beg, steal and borrow money to do different initiatives. I pay for initiatives out of my own pocket because it's important to me. If you want something to change and you need the culture to change, it has to be everywhere. So, I welcome public advertising, I welcome that which we've seen around other initiatives, because that's the only way it'll change.

We also need to look at what do we do if we have a patient who is racist towards our staff. At the moment, we don't have a system in place. In England, they have the red card system; here, if we introduced a red card system, that would mean that we would be able to challenge. And so, if we did have racist abuse towards our staff, as long as it wasn't life-saving services that we were providing, we could refuse service. That will change a culture. That will say, 'This is not acceptable'. So, it has to be more—it has to be more, and it has to be resourced. 

Thank you for those important points. Jane Dodds. 

Thank you. If you look at the timeline and the flow to chief executive, it's often through finance. You'll often find that they're finance directors, so there's a money connection. Often in finance, we see a majority of men in those roles, who are attracted to the roles around accountancy, et cetera. So, that's the logic from that point. But I think also it's around, again, visibility. If we look in Wales, the Chief Nursing Officer for Wales, Sue Tranka, she is the first person of colour in that role in the UK. There's no visibility, so you need to lead by example. 

There is a BAME leadership-to-board programme that exists in England; we need to adopt that within Wales, and then we could provide that support and mentorship, reverse mentorship, within each of our health boards to ensure there are those opportunities. We want to have the porter from today to be the chief executive tomorrow, and we can only do that if we look at the training opportunities that we provide, because if it's not mandatory training, often our global majority staff don't have an opportunity to go on those training schemes, and therefore they will never be able to achieve that CEO status. 

I think, especially in terms of social work, where possibly 80 per cent of the workforce are women, yes, it's just those kinds of structural issues that enable men to get to the top. There are—. I'm drifting back into university, where we're looking at a shortlist having to be 50 per cent men and women, as an example. So, there are steps that can be taken. And in universities there are changes in the population. There's still a long way to go. So, yes, definitely around social work, because of the population. I haven't got that answer, though.

I suppose, in terms of social work, it's a very, very small black population for registered social workers, and I've only known of one director across Wales who was a person of colour—in Cardiff, about 10 years ago. A simplistic answer would be that we're far too busy just doing the work to think about the ladder, but the ideas of reverse mentoring or coaching or seeing people like you at the top are real positives. And there is the black leadership group, so there are some initiatives that can work to support people. I think, very simply, as someone black, you have to be 10 times as good to get in the same place.

Thank you for coming back to me. I think that this is a huge issue in health. When you look at the number of doctors in the NHS, particularly in secondary care, who are of overseas origin or a different skin colour, they are absolutely not represented at senior positions. I would say that women are quite well represented at senior positions in the NHS executive roles, when I look across all of the health boards and trusts, but I went to a team Wales meeting two weeks ago and in this room full of over 200 people there were only five people of visibly ethnic origin outside the white race, so I think there's still a lot of work to be done within health. We have made big progress in gender-based recruitment, but it's not reflected in ethnicity as yet. One of the problems is—and this probably applied to me before somebody chose me to or asked me to apply for a senior position—was that I never thought it was the sort of thing I would be allowed to do. So, enabling people to take on senior roles is a huge part of this, and this is where I go back to 'everybody has to open doors', and it goes all the way to Welsh Government. I don't know what the appearance is amongst Welsh Government, amongst the Senedd Members—that's for the Welsh Government to look at—and the employees, but I think there are a number of—. You know, we've got to look at it from top to bottom in this respect. Culturally, I don't know what the councillor proportions are in this respect. So, you know, I think this has got to be looked at across all areas if we're going to truly embrace this, and this idea of encouraging people from other backgrounds to apply or to feel that they are in with a chance if they apply I think is a real challenge.

Thanks. As you were asking others, I was just checking my data, actually, to have a look, and, in terms of social care, we have what are called registered managers, so they're the most senior person in a service, and then we have the rest. And, actually, for both of those, in terms of gender across the sector, around 80 per cent to 82 per cent are female and the remainder are male. And that is actually reasonably consistent between manager roles, but, as I said to you, it's not necessarily the case for all protected characteristics, and that's what the data is kind of telling us at the moment. But I think, you know, what Push was saying about people's perspective about their opportunities is really quite important. So, one of the key actions for us in the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' is to actually do quite a bit of work researching and developing things that can be used to change that narrative, to give people support psychologically, but also practically, about, 'Do you want to take a leadership position? What do you need to be done that you don't have available now?' We're currently doing that research now, so that is quite a significant piece of work for us, and that will give us, hopefully, a toolkit that people can use to support those. So, I think that's it.

We're also monitoring—. In our survey this year, we asked for the first time the question, 'Do you see yourself in a future leadership position?' and we were able to give a number, if you like, to different groups' views of that question, and we will be able to see if that changes over time. So, I'm relying very much on the data, to be honest, but also the research with people with lived experience. Thanks.

Okay. I just want to use the last couple of minutes to just go back to this issue of what's happening on the ground. The Royal College of Nursing, in their evidence, were saying that people leave the workforce at higher rates in comparison—. People from global majority backgrounds leave at a higher rate to white nurses due to racism. And the Royal College of General Practitioners called for compulsory active bystander training. Now, these are really significant issues, and not least because we have such challenging recruitment and retention issues. If this is one of the major contributors, surely this should be very high on our list of things that we need to address now. I just wondered what is happening on this. Ceri.

We actually run active bystander training within our organisation, and I know several health boards that have now introduced active bystander training, because it is important that we challenge the culture, and active bystander training is a move away from unconscious bias to how to be active in those areas. I think one of the many problems that we have is around challenging culture in areas where international nurses, when they come across, are paid less as they're waiting for their qualifications here to be brought on board, and the impact that that has around feeling valued within organisations, when we have microagressions and a lack of awareness of what a microagression is that they're experiencing, that we go straight down the route of capability rather than looking at reasonable adjustments due to someone's cultural background and understanding of how things are different. So, I think we need to look at all of that within the active bystander field. It helps in some ways, but it's about that challenging of culture, but also having robust processes in place to support nurses that do feel that way, around exit interviews, around having those conversations, and the staff survey around asking questions about, 'Do you feel like leaving and why? How can we support you? How can we change that?' and taking the learning from that, rather than recording it and then putting it into a nice box after—that's no good, because then we lose the confidence, and people will not report and will not state how they're feeling—but also recognising, when we do ask them, that we are re-traumatising them when we ask them to constantly repeat their experiences over and over again, and therefore we need to look at trauma support as well for our staff, when we are asking those questions.

Professor Mangat.

As you mentioned the Royal College of General Practitioners, what I can say is that here in Wales we have taken a proactive approach for all postgrad medical training, be it foundation doctors, secondary care or primary care, and we are looking at—. We've appointed people to identify any trainee who we would anticipate being subjected to discrimination of any sort. They are identifiable based on their score when they're appointed and their characteristics. So, we identify these people and train them in advance on all active bystander training, microagressions, standing up for themselves, making sure that they don't allow any bad experience to be just absorbed, but they make sure that it's reported. We also have an anonymous hotline, where they can talk to us if they can't raise it within the organisation. So, we've taken that very seriously. And it was, actually, the Royal College of General Practitioners who first brought up the description of differential attainment, and BAPIO were the ones who took that to High Court to have it heard. So, I think that we've got a long history in knowing about this, and we're now in a position where we hope we can start dealing with it.

Thank you. I want to thank you all for your participation in the meeting today. You will be sent a transcript of what you've said, and please use that opportunity to make sure that we've captured your remarks accurately. In terms of Abyd Quinn-Aziz, if there's additional information you'd like to submit in writing, we'd be very pleased to receive it. Thank you very much indeed. The committee will now take a nine-minute break to enable us to start our next session on time.

Welcome back to the Equality and Social Justice Committee's inquiry into the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', and we now have new witnesses: Yusuf Ibrahim from ColegauCymru, based at Cardiff and Vale College; Dean Pymble from Show Racism the Red Card, both of whom are joined—. Sorry. And then Sue James, who's a lecturer at University of Wales Trinity St David, representing BAMEed Wales—I hope I've pronounced—. BAMEed Wales, beg your pardon. And Harriet Barnes from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales.

So, I'm going to just start off the questioning. There are four of you in the room, so you don't all need to answer the question. Please do come in if you want to add to what somebody else has said, but you don't need to repeat and say if that's exactly your view as well. So, starting off, what's the Welsh Government doing to lead by example? What further actions would you like to see the Welsh Government taking to ensure that the vision of an anti-racist Wales is achieved? Who would like to start?

I'm happy to start.

Yusuf.

Diolch. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak to you today. So, in terms of leading by example, one of the things I often do is juxtapose the position of being privileged to live in Wales, the only country that has a mission statement at a national level to become anti-racist by a certain date; I think it has been an example of where policy does drive practice, having lived in a world without that commitment, and comparing that to a world that does have that commitment. So, having that forthright certainly allows us to have something to aim towards. It is indeed a lofty goal.

I would also say from the further education context—and I'm here on behalf of ColegauCymru—there has been resource put in to try and facilitate this, where there are a couple of things that I think are important. Where resource is deployed properly, you can progress this agenda, but it requires understanding how to deploy the resource, what is the best way of interacting with communities to make sure their lived experience is authentically fed through any implementation of a resource, and also having some key measurable outcomes so that we can assess whether that initiative or that resource has made a difference.

So, if I can give the example of the FE curriculum project that I led on last year, I led a team of 60 people, which was a result of a £1 million investment from Welsh Government to create a blended learning set of resources for the 13 colleges in Wales. One of the contentions is that it is difficult to find talent that comes from a global majority of black and minority ethnic communities. Of the 60 people, 42 of them came from black and minority ethnic communities, from academic institutions from across the UK, internationally as well, people who are highly skilled and highly professional, and that represents 75 per cent of people coming from black and minority ethnic backgrounds to a highly skilled project. So, the money certainly was invested, and the challenge then was to deploy a resource that’s worth while, and that’s being implemented this year. But I think in terms of leading by example, that is one area where I’d say that has had some fruition. The other area within the FE context is the affiliation of the 13 colleges to create their own FE anti-racism action plan, and they have affiliated with the Black Leadership Group, who also were a contributor to the overall anti-racism action plan for Wales.

Where there are challenges, and where there are further considerations, resources of—. You’re going to be told about resource all the time, aren’t you, in terms of that coming forward? But if I may give one anecdote, one of the founders of the Black Leadership Group, Stella Mbubaegbu, says that anti-racism is the rising tide that can lift us all; that if we’re able to tackle the sharp edge of inequality—which is racism, because it’s your race plus any other intersectionality plus any other sort of trauma that you may have undergone—then you are dealing with the most profound of problems. If you can tackle that problem and understand how to resource that, which isn’t just about the amount, but also the mechanism, then you will, by default, lift up other characteristics.

And the final point I’ll say on that is that recently we have been working with a college in Yorkshire, Kirklees College, who define themselves as a trauma-informed and anti-racist organisation. Trauma-informed and anti-racist: that is a powerful combination, which avoids the othering challenge that you have when we’re talking about, 'What about the other protected characteristics?', which is a sensitive conversation. That’s not to demean it, but it’s also to recognise that, for 60 years, racism is something that has not shown progression, and in some cases has regressed. So, in terms of considerations of what’s moved forward, it is more resource, it is required, however, it needs to be carefully deployed, and I’d argue in ways that allow efficiency to uplift other areas too. Apologies if I went over there.

It's all right. We'll come to resources later. Harriet Barnes.

Thank you. I’d like to turn first to a parallel perspective from the higher education sector. Certainly, from HEFCW’s perspective, we think the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' is a very positive step—I think what Yusuf has just said. It’s clear, it’s public, it’s setting actions that are short term, encouraging action at pace. We’ve also been very pleased to see that we have been the recipients of cross-governmental joined-up thinking on this, in that our remit letter from the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language has requested HEFCW to support the higher education sector to take actions in this space since 2021, i.e. pre-dating the plan itself, and showing that there is cross-governmental support for that.

I think, as a funder and a regulator, HEFCW has limited powers in this space because the regulatory responsibility sits with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, but we’ve been able to use some of our funding and our influencing powers to require universities in Wales to increase the pace at which they’re tackling racial inequality, and to support their work to achieve an anti-racist Wales. And I think we can also say there is a point of contrast here between the commitment we see the Welsh Government making in this area compared to what we see with some of our fellow regulators in other parts of the UK, and the approach they are required to take to keep aligned with their governmental priorities.

Certainly, from a HEFCW perspective, we’re committed to ensuring that higher education is inclusive for everyone, regardless of their characteristics and their background, and the fact that all institutions in Wales have committed to gaining the race equality charter by 2025 is a huge step forward in that direction. The actions that they need to take to achieve that cannot be underestimated, hence why we’ve provided funding to support them in that endeavour, but the fact that all nine universities have committed to that is a really big step forward, I think.

Okay, thank you. Those are positive remarks from HE and FE. The picture is less rosy, I think, in schools, based on your written paper, Sue James, which we've obviously all read. You're talking about many schools simply not having adjusted their school improvement plans to take in the importance of tackling systematic racism. And we also know that there's a recruitment issue in terms of having teachers who look like the pupils that they are serving. So, I wondered if you could tell us why you think the plan for education, certainly in schools, is not clear enough, and what evidence you've got to support this claim.

The reason that I say this is because my encounters with teachers across Wales generally receive a negative when I ask if they are aware of the 'Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities, Contributions and Cynefin in the New Curriculum Working Group' report by Charlotte Williams and the action plan. Having done a number of sessions with schools where they're wanting to do workshops on anti-racism, et cetera, as part of their professional learning suite of activities, I've discovered that the people who had signed up to coming to the anti-racism workshop—this is a recent event—none of them had ever heard of the action plan, had no idea that it existed, or that this was the ambition of Wales. They certainly hadn't read Charlotte's report and understood that they were mandated to do something to ensure that black Welsh histories are taught, and that is tragic.

And I would like to ask many of you to go into schools and ask if teachers are aware of this commitment. I think you'll find, along with many of us, that that is a negative, that they don't know about it. This is not to say that I don't admire or respect the ambition. I'm glad to be part of this country and that this is our ambition. However, in terms of making it known in schools, I would say that that is pretty thin on the ground. And when you're working with people who've signed up to come to a workshop on anti-racism and they don't know about the legislation in Wales, one wonders what the other teachers who didn't sign up for this are thinking, or know. 

When I do speak, as I say, to quite a lot of teachers in a range of different schools, I am constantly met with this blank when I mention the anti-racist action plan. Certainly there are very few schools that are actually putting anything in their action plans or school development plans in relation to what they will be doing in the future towards this. Most schools seem to think that they've met their obligations in relation to this when they talk about their policies on equality, and that they've revised these. But the tragic news is that most schools, I would say, are unaware of their obligations or the legislation that Wales has committed to.

It's unlikely they're going to be changing the curriculum to make sure it's not delivering racist stereotypes in the way they're teaching pupils as well.

I would say that most teachers wouldn't be in any way aiming to do that and that the majority of teachers would act in a non-racist way, at least. Some would definitely be anti-racist, but I would not expect to find that we're having incidents of teachers actively teaching things that are racist, but in terms of recognising that we are aiming towards this really brilliant goal of 2030, most of them aren't working towards that.

I could see Dean's hand there because Dean and I work in schools.

Okay. Let's hear from Dean before we move on. Dean. 

Brilliant. Thank you very much. We're currently doing a small piece of research where we've had around 200 teachers or educators take part so far, and 26 per cent of them are aware of the Williams report. So, only 26 per cent, and then of those—I think there are around 205 at the moment—only 15 per cent of those educators are confident about how they understand that anti-racism will fit into the curriculum. So that's an extremely small number that are actually confident and have read Professor Charlotte Williams's report.

Again, we see varied accounts. So, some schools are doing absolutely amazing work, some schools are doing very little and some are doing nothing at all, so it's very piecemeal. And, when we look at anti-racism training, it's will they dedicate their time to it. There's a lot of amazing work going on through the diversity and anti-racist professional learning project and raising awareness, and some leadership—you know, across Estyn, across WJEC, the consortia, they're all doing lots of fantastic work now with DARPL, but it's how that is translating down to teachers and educators in the schools who aren't necessarily on the journey already. I know that there's been a lot of hard work with leadership to make sure that they're on board with the journey and understand how they can support schools, but it's looking at those unengaged schools and how they're actually engaging and understanding the mandate that they have to include this.

We work with universities delivering initial teacher education around anti-racism, funded through the National Education Union, and some of the ITE leads haven't read the Professor Charlotte Williams report. So, again, there are some fantastic universities doing some really in-depth work, so, you're looking at things like—. Cardiff Met and Swansea University have done some fantastic work, and then there are others that aren't anywhere close to starting that journey. And some are saying that it's optional, the anti-racism professional learning for their student teachers, which then, obviously, means that not every single teacher on the course is actually going to be involved in that education. And then other people are saying, 'Yes, it is actually mandated; they have to take part in it and we're delivering that course to them.' But I think it's really important to understand that there is a big difference across different universities and different schools in what's going on and understanding how that relates to their work. Are they on the same page of understanding that it's mandatory or are they thinking, 'Well, this is optional, we can do it if we want, or if we don't want to—'? And some are saying that, with the condensed PGCE course, there's not enough time to deliver it, whereas others have integrated it into their PGCE courses. So, again, it's not translated across to all universities, the importance of this piece of work, which we think it is.

Okay. Thank you for setting the scene, all of you. We'll now move on to some of the detail. Sarah Murphy.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, all, for being here today. I'm going to ask some questions now about intersectionality and meeting strategic equality objectives. So, it'd be great to hear from you what your organisation is doing to address the issues around intersectionality and to align to various equality-related strategies, but, specifically, do you require any further support to ensure that the needs of different groups—? Are there any groups in particular that you're struggling to reflect in your plans?

Who wants to go first?

I'm happy to.

Okay, Yusuf.

I think it's a very important question around addressing intersectionality. I think there is a sensitive issue that comes with this that we need to be very mindful of, which is to what extent intersectionality becomes a reason to not be anti-racist, because we want to focus on the intersectionality as opposed to the core issue of racism itself. If I give an example, there are, where you look at intersections, some real deep challenges. There are ethnic groups and religious groups who sometimes struggle with some of the intersections that present themselves in a modern liberal society. And what I would suggest is that if we want to authentically work on intersectionality positively, then we need to understand some of the barriers that are there and that is by being anti-racist. And this is about understanding cultural norms from other parts of the world, where we now live in a multicultural, multigenerational society where the generations now are very different to the generations of forefathers who preceded them. 

So, when it comes to intersectionality, I think it's important that a nuanced approach is taken that sensibly looks at where different cultures are and where you can start to have conversations around different characteristics. If I give an example from an educational perspective, I know of a case within the education sector where a Muslim person came forward to a Muslim male teacher within the organisation to disclose that they were gay. Now, they disclosed that because of the familiarity around the culture, as opposed to the familiarity around the sexuality. So, I think it's very important that we understand the tensions, the sensitivities and also, then, the opportunities of trying to ensure that we're meeting people's needs, because, ultimately, we're looking at communities who will probably, with great validity, say to us, 'You'll put anything in the way of actually tackling racism.' This could be another example if we're not careful about how to deliver that.

So, how do you do it? It goes back to my point that I made at the start, which is whereby we're looking at things holistically, and if we understand that racism is the sharp end of the wedge then it means, simply, once we start moving across, we can then begin to understand the lived experiences and the challenges that people have and that manifest themselves deep within communities. I think there are a number of elephants in the room, and we won't be able to talk about all of them, but one of them, for example, is, absolutely, there will be communities that have a greater challenge in dealing with different sectionalities, if you like. Therefore, we have to be open about that, and we have to understand what that looks like. Therefore, the question is how do we start to build a process of trust where people can begin to share the lived experiences that relate to the base of race, but also whatever the sectionality presents itself as as well. Thank you.

I guess I'm struggling with your question purely because, as an organisation, we're not funded, and so it's not something that we are doing as a point of, 'This is a mission.' However, our commitment to promoting an understanding of race and race issues is top of our agenda, and making sure that we support educators to feel that they are able to be resilient within the workforce when they find themselves in a minority position in order to encourage more people to enter into education. When we are looking at things, we are looking at them in terms of how can we offer support and encouragement to other educators to survive the racism that they encounter on a daily basis as educators. But when we're looking at intersectionality that might provide us with yet another complexity, as Yusuf has said, because that crosses into the other aspects of racism, which are culture and that whole thing of faith and commitment to particular stances. Sometimes, that creates some tensions within a community, and often can be seen as a way of deflecting from the issue, which is racism for us as a group, and I make no apologies for that being our focus.

Recently, we did host a zone in a mastering diversity conference, and, during that, we were asked to consider making sure that there was a reflection on intersectionality, so what we did was we hosted a panel. During that, we looked at the crossover of the difficulties to do with sexuality, to do with disability and those elements of race that relate to matters of faith and position. That was probably one of most powerful things that I've experienced, working with a range of people where we addressed issues that intersected and how debilitating, to some extent, any kind of prejudice is, and how important it is that we have the conversations, that we have those discussions, that schools are aware that those are the important spaces in which we learn from each other.

So, for us as an organisation, our focus is primarily on looking at the race issues for us as educators and how we best address those, but, in terms of intersectionality, I think that experience in September was quite a powerful one for us, and recognising that we do need to have more conversations, because there are so many issues that affect all of us when we are othered and placed in a different space, and those issues need to be addressed as part of a whole, and not simply isolated, because they're not isolated; they are intertwined inextricably.

But, in terms of what's our policy, we don't particularly have one in relation to that, but our commitment is to eradicate racism as far as we can.

Yes. Harriet, can I just ask a follow-up question of you as well, before you come in, just to expand on it maybe a little bit? It sounds to me like obviously there are the different strategies, the equality strategies that you've got: the race action plan, and you've got the LGBTQ+, for example. What I'm sort of hearing, and what we heard in the previous panel, is that because they're separate, and they're released at separate times with separate targets, do you think it is difficult to intertwine them, especially when it sounds to me like a lot of this is still being discussed within the communities as well?

Thank you. That was actually one of the points I was going to make, that it's a very complex, challenging area, the need to balance both the focus on specific issues affecting specific characteristics alongside the importance of intersectionality and recognising how those intertwine. So, yes, I think there is more opportunity to ensure that even if plans focused on different characteristics can't all come out at the same time—you can't have just one huge plan; that's simply not feasible—making sure there is no contradiction, that they complement, rather than contradict in that respect.

We have taken an approach of trying to stress an overall achievement of safe and inclusive higher education, which reflects that there are different challenges for the different groups. One that hasn't been mentioned, for example, is violence against women; it's another area where there's an intersection. But keeping that high-level focus on safe and inclusive higher education enables us to perhaps take a lens on different parts as they come through.

And one other area of challenge I'm just going to mention very briefly is that we try to be evidence informed and data led, and, when you get down to questions of intersectionality, the numbers become very small sometimes, and that makes it extremely difficult to have that data-informed approach.

That's a really good point. Thank you very much. And just to mention, another group is the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller community. The plan does include an action to co-design and publish the statutory Gypsy, Roma and Travellers guidance for schools. It has been pointed out, though, by Swansea Council that there are no lead and partners identified, and that the target is probably about a year behind at the moment. So, I was just wondering, from your experience with working to try to complete this target, do you think it is behind? Do you think maybe the target from Welsh Government was unrealistic, and why do you think that is? What are the issues around this, do you think?

I'm happy to go again, just to follow up.

Okay, briefly.

Very briefly. So, within the anti-racism FE materials project, we did have a section that we wanted to explicitly focus on the Traveller community, and we have found it challenging to engage the community, and that's on us, trying to make sure that we have better ways of engaging. That being said, the engagement was positive. We got to the point of a resource being produced and a video being produced. Unfortunately, the person who produced the resource wanted to retract it at the end, because they weren't comfortable with it being a product of the community. There are lots of sensitivities around it. We'd engaged with the community, we'd moved forward, and we had a resource produced, but, ultimately, they weren't comfortable. So, you know, we have to try and think about how we return to that.

Thank you. Dean, you wanted to come in.

Yes. I think, when we talk about race and racism, a lot of the time, the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities get left out and forgotten about, and probably some of the most normalised racism comes towards those communities, and I think it's from not including them in a lot of these conversations and having their lived experiences shared. And though there is some work with DARPL, which we're part of, working with, I think it's Travelling Ahead, so Tom Tom and Rhiannon, who do some fantastic work, so it's making sure that during every session, during every policy, that we are making sure that their lived experiences are included. And then that, when we're doing education, we touch on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller education and some of their experiences, but I think it's having more people with that lived experience being able to share it in a sensitive way. How we do that is very difficult, because we want to make sure that they're comfortable sharing their lived experience, and that's not always the case. But I think it comes down to just making sure that they're included when we talk about racism and that it's explicit that they'll be included within that, because I think some people, when they look at racism, are looking at black and brown faces rather than looking at racism towards Jewish people as well, which is not always considered when we look at racism. 

Absolutely. Thank you very much. Thank you, all. Thank you, Chair. 

Thank you. Sioned Williams. 

Dean. 

I was unmuted anyway, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to go. I think there's not enough sharing across sectors. I think, within education, where we're heavily based, being Show Racism the Red Card, the DARPL collaboration, where there are lots of different organisations with both lived and professional experience of racism and anti-racism coming together, is really the way to go. And I think, across different sectors, they could use that model as best practice, where the individuals involved within education, individuals involved not in education but with professional experience, all come together with different skill sets; it's really impactful and it has seen a massive drive of education moving forward with the plan. That being said, there are strong people within Welsh Government, like Kevin Palmer, for example, who are really driving the message forward, and Jeremy Miles. Every time they're talking and they're mentioning the plan, it's improving that understanding that it's there. But using a similar model to the DARPL model across sectors I think would be really useful, and I haven't seen that happening so far. 

Diolch, Sioned. I'd like to just pick up on the example of the interplay between further and higher education. We obviously have the new commission for tertiary education and research due to become operational on 1 April 2024, but we're already taking steps across the HE and FE sectors to look at where we can share practice. HEFCW ran a seminar about a year ago, in fact, which looked at sharing good practice in anti-racist practices across the sectors, and we are increasingly trying to ensure that we have cross membership of various advisory groups. At the moment, those groups are sectors, single sectors, but by cross membership across them, we can start that process. And we think there is a huge opportunity through the new commission to strengthen that and learn lessons. And obviously it's not just further education, but it also reaches into adult education and the apprenticeship sector, which are areas that we perhaps don't talk enough about and we probably should in this space. 

As a network, I would say that we are fortunate in having people from a range of different aspects of education that come to the group, but, as I've mentioned, ours is more about offering support and then beginning to look at what issues we've identified from our own lived experience that need some kind of addressing in order to move this agenda forward. I would concur with the rest of the group that there are pockets of this happening, but it's not consistent enough for it to have sufficient an impact. I think it's that joining of dots and making sure that we are communicating with one another to know what's going on. Because I had no idea about the work that Yusuf's doing; I'm aware of Dean's work because I work closely with people from DARPL. However, there are lots of singular bits of things happening across the sector, so there needs to be something that drives this forward and makes sure that it is unified.

In terms of the cross-sector collaboration in order to make policy drive forward, I think you have to have somebody that's leading the way on this and drawing those groups together, because this is one of the first encounters I've had of us talking about what's happening in a range of different sectors. I've attended the conferences, but they're so costly that I'm sure not everybody who is doing something in relation to this is attending. Certainly, there wasn't much in the way of opportunity for us to cross-pollinate or to talk about the work that we were doing. So, I think that there needs to be somebody that's driving this in order to get us together to find out what's happening and where we can support each other, rather than duplicating work.

Ultimately, I would say making sure that all schools recognise and know their responsibilities in order to help move this agenda forward. That possibly needs to happen via local authorities maybe having action plans or being expected to identify what they as a school will be doing in order to achieve this goal. Schools are expected to account for their actions in order to achieve the 2050 goal of a million Welsh speakers. I can't see why they're not asked to do the same in relation to the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'. What are they actually doing? At least then, we could be sure that they would do something. And people often will go, 'Oh, it's only tokenistic'. Well, a token is better than nothing, in my mind. And if we start on the journey and they begin to realise what they can do, well, that, I think, would make a massive difference—if schools were looking at, 'What can we do to make this happen? How can we realise this?' So, I think that would be a positive way forward, getting schools to consider how they would action part of this plan.

Fine. Dean, you wanted to come in. 

I think when we look at even the simple things, like the logging of racist incidents, it's not consistent across all local authorities. Some local authorities are logging it a certain way, others are logging it on MyConcern, but not having a standardised system across the whole of Wales doesn't allow you to compare and contrast different local authorities. And the understanding with teachers of what a racist incident is depends on whether they are going to log it or not. So, again, it comes back to that education and understanding around racist incidents and what racism looks like. That starter of a very basic understanding of what racism is needs to be broadcast across all teachers. But as we touched on earlier, people not being released from their positions or professional learning not being included into their working time makes it difficult for everybody to be on board with that mission, so I have got sympathy with teachers. They've got massive workloads already, and having this as an add-on isn't good enough; it needs to be included within their working day. So, that's very difficult as well. And how can you collect that data if schools aren't happy to give that data out that actually there's been a racist incident? And having a racist incident doesn't mean that they're a racist institution; it means that they're recognising that there has been a racist incident. So, it's really important to understand that messaging that comes with them. That's part of a bigger, wider scale kind of issue that we don't see those incidents being reported because teachers aren't recognising them, they haven't got the confidence there, but also the systems across local authorities are very different. So, it's that understanding. It's the same with exclusions based on ethnicity. Is that being recorded across different local authorities? It's not being recorded in the same way, so that can lead to inequalities across the data, where we can't have a true picture of what is actually going on across Wales.

That leads us neatly on to monitoring and measuring progress. Altaf.

Thank you very much. In their written evidence, Estyn said that they do not feel that the progress and monitoring arrangements of the plan for education are clear enough. How effective are current monitoring arrangements, and what further support could help organisations evidence and record progress?

Dean's point about training is a massive thing in terms of supporting teachers in understanding when a racist incident occurs. The whole thing of microaggressions, for example, muddies the waters a lot of the time, and children and adults are gaslit by being told that they didn't mean it like that, it wasn't a racist incident. And yet, when you meet with other people from an ethnic background, we know the frequency with which some of these occur and the commonality of some of the microaggressions. We know that those are racist incidents. However, in the light of day, it looks as if it was just being rude or misspeaking. So, training is a really important aspect of this. If we are to monitor what's going on, we need to understand what we're looking at. I think a lot of the time for teachers, they're not sure what they're looking at. You'll hear things like, 'Well, it's bullying but we can't say that it was racially motivated' and yet the child is black, they're saying it's racism, and that is often counteracted with, 'It wasn't meant the way that you interpreted it'. So, I think that training is a crucial part if we are to monitor and to see change in schools.

Is there anything else—

Harriet was putting her hand up.

Thank you. I think, from a higher education point of view, we are quite fortunate in having a good body of data, which has been collected over many years, which only allows us, obviously, to get at the concrete characteristics. It doesn't capture incidents such as the ones that have just been talked about. But we have been monitoring that data on characteristics and numbers of students and staff from various minority ethnic backgrounds. We're shortly going to publish our first annual report, and that was an expectation on HEFCW in the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', so I think that's helpful, recognising the importance of that monitoring and the data. We're seeing that in some places the data is improving and we are seeing gaps narrowing, but in other places that data is not improving, for example the number of staff from black backgrounds in senior levels in universities. That gap is definitely not shrinking. But we'll have to recognise this is a cultural change that will take time, so continuing to monitor that data is really important and we can't just do one report and think we've done it; we've got to keep doing it and keep following it through. And that is what we're committed to doing in the higher education space.

I was coming to that report. Is there anything else we need to know, or can you update us on any further progress about that report?

Do you mean the report that HEFCW will be publishing on data?

Yes, the one you're going to publish. 

It will be published very shortly. We now have the final version and we're just going through the translation process. The data, as I say, shows that the number and proportion of applicants and students entering higher education from black and other minority ethnic backgrounds has increased. There is a challenge in the offer rate, that, while the number of applicants has increased, the proportion receiving offers has not increased as quickly. So, while we are seeing more students come into higher education from those backgrounds, it's perhaps not as quickly as they are showing engagement with higher education.

I've mentioned that, for staff, the key aspect is the representation at different grades, where the gap, particularly for staff from black, ethnic backgrounds, has not narrowed at those higher levels—they are over-represented at the lower grades and under-represented at the higher grades. And we have also seen—a positive story—the narrowing of the awarding gap. If you take a good degree as a 2:1 or a first, that awarding gap has narrowed for students across all minority ethnic backgrounds, but the proportion of black students receiving a first has increased—the gap there has increased. So, that is not the best, so there is still a lot of work to do within the higher education sector, and we can let the committee know when the report is published.

Thank you. 

We'll look forward to that. Thank you very much. To Dean, really, what progress has been made to strengthen data on the reporting of racist incidents and harassment in schools and colleges?

Yes, again, this comes back to education, so providing education to teachers. There are something like 35,000 teachers in schools across Wales. Being able to provide all of them with the skills—. DARPL helps with that, with the online asynchronous and live versions of teacher training or educator training, but it's whether they've got time within their working days, as I go back to, to actually take part in the training and understanding what a racist incident is. And those are the ones that are actively wanting to take part and be on the journey. It's unengaged schools, or the leaders within the schools that unengage—because we have got those within Wales; not everybody's on this journey and agrees with the mission of an anti-racist Wales by 2030—and so it's how do we engage those to make sure that they are providing that time for educators within those schools. 

So, I would say that there's a lot of teachers who have taken part in the training and have a better understanding, but there's a lot more teachers that need that training, and it's providing them with the time, but also holding schools accountable. And I know that's part of Estyn, but, with over 1,500 schools in Wales, Estyn is a small team to try and go around every single school with the new curriculum and inspect those schools. There needs to be more onus on accountability coming from consortia, all the way down, but also Estyn having that support to be able to get around, because it's not just holding them accountable, but also looking at what support they need, whether that is bespoke support for local authorities, with trends and looking at that data, or whether there are certain issues within certain local authorities where they need more support to achieve the goals. And I think it goes hand in hand—holding people accountable, but making sure the support's there to achieve what they need to is really key.

Thank you very much. And the last question: the Equality and Human Rights Commission has said that the public sector lacks confidence when collecting and submitting data on ethnicity. To what extent is this the case, and how could data collection be improved across the education sector?

I would say, again, it's a sensitive issue, and I think it's common across all sectors that those who identify as 'unknown' are often larger than any of the other ethnic minority groups individually. I think it's a process of confidence and trust. People are very sceptical about why data is going to be used and for what purpose it's going to be used, so there is a trust issue there. And I think one of the benefits, or one of the outcomes that we should see is that number reducing—that more people are confident in declaring their ethnicity.

To draw your attention to a report that was commissioned by the Welsh Government towards an anti-racist FE sector, which was published last month, that was a qualitative piece of research, with 135 staff and students interviewed, and it is that lack of confidence, touching on what Dean and what Sue have said, in terms of you reporting a racist incident, but it gets called anything but a racist incident. This was loud and clear from the findings. And so, if we carry that example through, what confidence am I going to have that my disclosing of my ethnicity is going to be handled in a way that's going to be beneficial to a process or to any sort of system, and to what extent is it going to be a detriment to me moving forward? And we know there are many studies that have looked at people having to change their names before being able to get a job. There are people who will therefore also, including myself—. I'm mixed race, and before I'd class myself as white to see if that got me any further anywhere else. So, there are reasons why people will make choices about accurately disclosing their information, as well as saying it's 'unknown'.

Thank you. Can I call Ken Skates now?

Thanks, Chair. First of all, I'm going to ask a question of Yusuf and Sue. In your evidence, you both raised concerns around resources and funding allocation. How will these issues impact on the implementation of the plan in both the short and long terms? And do you have any examples of where funding and resources are needed?

Initially, I would say we talk about training. The issue for most schools, with regard to training, is, when you have a course that's available for teachers to do, there are cost implications for the school, whether the course itself is free, because they need to cover that day’s teaching. Then, if there are other courses, other events, often they are quite costly. In this climate, there are problems in terms of where do you allocate funds. If you don't see this as an important issue, then this is not where you are going to direct your funds for your staff to have training. It requires some kind of mandation to actually get schools to commit to that, and if there's no requirement to do so, then funding is not ring-fenced for this, and, if it is ring-fenced, it may be for one member of staff to then disseminate the information. So, that's a little basic one—the cost for schools to get training for staff.

In terms of other resources, I'm particularly concerned that there are so few Welsh-language resources. I'm involved in writing some resource materials, researching histories of Welsh BAME people, and we are writing those, but that's still very limited in terms of Welsh resources to support teachers in Welsh schools to deliver this work. I'm trying to work with a lot of these Welsh schools in order to get those resources, but, when I look at the plan, it's not very clear who's taking a lead role in developing those resources. And, certainly, in lots of Welsh-language schools, there are few minority communities within the school, and that is something equally we want to work towards improving—the representation in Welsh schools from the black and Asian and minority ethnic communities. We need to see them in those schools.

In terms of the money that was noted in the action plan for the commitment to this project, it's quite small, shall we say, in relation—. I keep on coming back to the one million Welsh speakers. When I look at the money invested in training, in supporting the actioning of the 2050 goal, that's significantly more than the money that's being invested in this attitude change that we're asking for society to make—much, much more difficult to teach than teaching a language, to be quite frank. I can teach you the word for 'a chair'. Changing your mind about the person sat opposite you that you don't feel is the same is going to take a lot more work than simply me showing you pictures of chairs. There are lots of ways I can teach you the language. So, I feel that there's insufficient investment in terms of looking at, 'How do we help support teachers who are terrified about getting it wrong because they want to get it right? How do we support our children?'. And that's something that's beginning to concern me even more when I'm looking at the gaps—where do our children go, when they're the ones on the front line experiencing racism? Where do they go? As adults, we are talking about it, but it suddenly dawned on me, 'Who do they speak to if they're not allowed to speak to the teacher or the teacher doesn't want to speak to them?' They don't want to upset their parents because they don't want their parents to come rushing into the school and sorting it out. So, I think that we, in this action plan, have to look at what support is available for our children. What helplines do they have in this? So, I think we need to look at what investment in resources to support children experiencing racism we're doing at the moment too.

So, there are lots of things that I think that we need to look at, and if we are committed to the over 50 recommendations in Charlotte's report, and all the other recommendations in the action plan, then I think there needs to be a far more extensive commitment of finance, or looking at ways that we can achieve the goals effectively. I think perhaps that requires, as I said earlier on, somebody to lead this, not us all randomly getting little pockets of money and doing a little bit, and somebody else doing another little bit, and then discovering that we've duplicated some of the things that we're doing. So, as I say, I've been writing histories up and then I've discovered that somebody else is doing a timeline that they've been funded to do, and we're doing similar stories. Well, that's actually not that productive. It might be a nice resource, but it's not really productive; there are other things that I think we could do, but I think we've got to have somebody managing and leading that process.

Thank you. Yusuf.

Thank you for the question. I'll try and build upon Sue's answer, which I completely agree with. I think one of the phrases I've taken away, which I use a lot for the anti-racism action plan, is 'a different approach'—that a different approach is required for us to be able to make progress with a problem that has haunted us for generations. If I may, I do agree that more finance is required, but I also think that it needs to be invested properly and strategically—that, actually, we waste a lot of money by not taking the time to look at how best to implement it. One example is with the anti-racism materials project. We had to deliver that within one financial year, and it was actually less than that by the time you get the wheels off the ground and get it rolling. This is a significant challenge. I think we need to look at the time frames in which we look for an investment to take place, and we should not be using the financial year as a constraint by which we're looking to make a project successful, because this puts a barrier—and an unnecessary barrier, in my opinion—on something being able to be used, and you can actually get much more efficiency by having established teams working for a slightly longer period of time.

The second thing is leaders need to be held to account for their leadership. We're already paying leaders good amounts of money, and they need to be held accountable for, 'What are they going to do?', 'How are they going to measure it?', and, 'How will we know that they are successful?' They've got all the stuff out there that they could look at, but how are we asking them those questions, and what are we doing about it if they're not getting it right? Because, for me, it's a privilege to be working in the public sector, being able to work with communities; it is not a right and it's not an entitlement, and, frankly, if people are not going to lead this well, then I think that we need to look at who's leading it across all sectors.

Then, I think it's about us looking at a sustained approach, and I've got a term here, 'anti-racism connectors'—who are the people who are connecting institutions to communities and who, for reciprocal mentoring, or through training, are standing the test of time by making sure that these organisations have that reflective mirror in front of them so that they know whether they're making progress or not in terms of getting into those communities, understanding their feelings, and understanding whether things are working or not? If we get to the end and, by 2030, we are anti-racist, we'll be living in the best country in the world by far. It will be economically the most prosperous country, because everyone from the global majority is going to want to come here and is going to want to work here. So, there are real reasons why. I'm not going to call it resource; this is an investment opportunity. This is the best investment opportunity that Welsh Government have to be able to allocate resources strategically, but they need to do it by consulting with people who are looking at things cross-sector.

And the final thing I'll say on that is, the anti-racist and FE curriculum—. And I absolutely understand why you don't know about it, that this is the first time you've heard about it, because I can see the ivory towers. We should be looking at the educational piece holistically. The pedagogical training for knowing how to not be racist is no different for a HE lecturer or an HE human resources administrator than it is to someone working in a school or in FE of work-based learning. There is absolutely no need to be siphoning off money in different sectors and for reciprocal pieces of work to be happening. It's fine, it can happen, where it's complementary, but I would argue the FE curriculum that we developed is just as successful to schools as it is to the HE sector as well.

Brilliant. Thank you. Just moving to Harriet, and just a couple of questions for Harriet. Your written submission says that you've been able to fund universities with £1 million annually, to make progress at pace in tackling racism, but how are you measuring the impact, and will that funding be available and needed over multiple years? And then also, the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' states that all universities need to achieve a race equality charter mark as a condition of funding. How is that going to actually operate in practice and what progress has been made so far?

Thank you, Ken. Those two questions are really quite interconnected. So, our funding—we have committed to that funding up until July 2025, as that is the timescale by which the universities are required to achieve their race equality charters. And the two things are linked together, which is not purely for work on the race equality charter, but is generally for the actions in the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan', but the key one of those is the race equality charter, and we see that as an important part of delivering those actions.

In terms of monitoring progress, all nine universities in Wales signed up to achieving that charter in March 2022, and they're all committed to completing that achievement by July 2025. We as HEFCW then monitor their progress on an annual basis. We are shortly to receive the first full monitoring reports on that, and that will include the universities' plans for how they get from where they are now to what they need to have in order to meet that deadline of July 2025. We've highlighted to vice-chancellors just how much time and investment is needed to achieve that, and that if they haven't already got the plans in place, achieving that 2025 date is going to be a real challenge. It is a programme of sustained work over time that requires self-evaluation within institutions, groups that bring together those with lived experience to explore the position within each individual university, looking at the data, taking actions and moving forward. But even having said all that, the actual achievement of the charter is really just the first step and it's a longer term process that then enables you to put in place the actions that will move towards a more anti-racist institution in the longer term.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Can we move to call in Jane Dodds?

Yes, thank you, Jane. I really appreciate that question. I think it comes back to experiences within school. So, the experience of black pupils within school has been a negative experience. They haven't seen any representation across the teaching workforce. 'You can't be what you can't see' is what we often hear, so they're not seeing that as a profession for them, and that is being reiterated around the rhetoric and the curriculum—that they don't see positive role models that look like them across any part of the curriculum, that they don't see, then, that that education and feed-in to become a teacher is a role that they're going to take part in or want to be involved in. If there's a lack of black teachers, we're going to have a lack of black senior leaders and headteachers, because there's no production line of getting these teachers through that process of becoming a headteacher.

That being said, there are snippets, and there are some teachers that are black. But, again, what are their experiences like of racist incidents? Are they being treated with respect, with professionalism, in school? And do they feel like those incidents are being treated well? That then feeds into thinking, 'Well, actually, I don't want to go into senior leadership.' Are they staying and are they retained in the education workforce, or are they leaving? I think that's how we get that—. It's an early stage of improving the recruitment of black and Asian teachers, and then we'll have a bigger pool of staff to pick from that become senior leaders. But in the short term, it's looking at what pipeline can we find and what can we put on now to provide the black and Asian teachers we have got with the skills to then become deputy headteachers, senior leaders, but then headteachers as well—that, I think, is really important. Because Betty Campbell was the last black headteacher in Wales—so, looking at that, that should not be the case still now in 2023.

Do you want me to go first?

Yes.

So, having been a leader in a school, and returning to Wales, I came with that perspective that I started at the bottom again, which probably is quite sad now, on reflection—that, in schools in Wales, certainly, we don't have that pool of teachers that are there readily waiting in the wings for those jobs. However, when they are waiting in the wings, they're also struggling with some of the issues of the lived experience of racism for them. That mantra that we are often told, that you have to work twice as hard to get half as far as your colleagues, certainly rings quite true in this instance. However, what has shocked me, being back here in Wales, is the fact that, within the institutions, within the system, there are problems. So, when teachers are struggling with that isolation, and feeling that they have to represent a community, when you offer support, which they've asked the network to do, we are closed out, and schools will say that they will do it on their own. What they don't understand is that, sometimes, you actually need somebody that understands your lived experience, and this is not a condemnation or a criticism of the school, this is simply a recognition that there is a challenge at times when you're the only person representing your community. As a teacher, you are confronted not simply by the audience of the children in front of you—they are probably the easiest audience to be comfortable with—but their parents and their attitudes to your ethnicity. You also have your colleagues that you need to convince of the rightness of your position. And then, once you've done those things, and sometimes that's difficult, you need sometimes somebody to talk to about the challenges that you're facing, and, when you ask for help, the people that you feel could help you are closed out. That's a problem to me.

So, there needs to be an opportunity for people from minority communities who find themselves represented in a school to be able to draw on additional support, if they require it, because it is hard. Moving into those senior positions—that seems to be very problematic because, often, the criteria to go on training programmes for senior management require you to be in management of some sort within the school, and if you don't find yourself in those positions, then you can't go on the training, therefore can't make the progress. And as has been mentioned, sometimes you just give up because it's too much like hard work. I think that there is clearly a problem with some of the systems in place in order to offer support to teachers. And I'm not always an advocate of positive discrimination, but I think that there needs to be some positive efforts made in order to support people to progress to those positions. If you've got the qualifications to get you into the job, hopefully you'll begin to demonstrate that you have the skills and that you don't need, necessarily, somebody to teach you skills—you just need opportunities to make that progress.

So, I think the barriers to progression and to finding people in those upper echelons in education, they are more complex that I'm inclined to think that we need to do some more positive actions, affirmative actions, in order to see a change. 

I'll be brief. I'll completely echo what has been said. I'll give a personal example. I'm an English migrant. I moved from London where I was in the school sector as an assistant headteacher looking to become a headteacher. I sent 17 applications to schools in Wales at assistant headteacher level, and I got two interviews and two rejections. I then decided to go slightly more east and sent three applications to Bristol. I got three interviews and got offered a job, same position—assistant principal—in a school. This is why I ended up working in a college. So, I think there is a real systemic challenge, and the only way you'll deal with that, going back to the point on leadership, is by how you're going to hold people to account for not sourcing the talent effectively enough, and there being a mechanism to hold them to account to do that. When you look at ethnic minority communities, they have high levels of innovation, high levels of entrepreneurship, high levels of grit, determination, drive, want to work hard, want to do well. And therefore, the only obvious solution to me is to ensure that the system demands that that talent is nurtured and recognised so that we don't fall prey to some of the challenges that Sue outlined.

Thank you. Thank you very much indeed, all of you, for your participation. We'll send you a transcript of what you've said, and you'll have the opportunity to correct it if we've got it wrong. But it's been a very interesting session, and we thank you for your time.

I'd just like to ask committee members if you are happy to accept three papers to note before we move into private session. Okay. Thank you very much.

Under Standing Order 17.42, I'd now ask you to recommend that we exclude the public for the remainder of today's meeting. Thank you.