‘Every Educator Needs This Education’

These are the comments we received following No Boundaries training on race awareness to staff, pupils and school governors at a school in Gwent.

“I would definitely recommend No Boundaries TC for staff training, supporting schools in challenge racism. The sessions help staff to develop a better understanding of terminology and initiate difficult conversations in a non threatening environment, creating much food for thought.”

Deputy Head teacher – Jane Jones

We were delighted to receive such praise from staff at Cwmffrwdoer Primary school following a programme of race awareness sessions that included pupils, teachers and school governors.

The programme started off with workshops with year 5 and 6 that got the pupils thinking about racism and the affects this has on our society. The young people had a safe space to share their thoughts and had plenty of questions including recent events such as sports stars taking the knee and the significance of this gesture.

We then held four sessions staggered over a few weeks with staff from the school that involved open and honest conversations sharing our knowledge and experiences as we navigated our way through discussions on terminology, bias awareness and how to support pupils experiencing racism.

At the start of each new session, we provided time to reflect on the previous one and to re-visit any topics or discussions. During the start of the third session, one of the staff shared with us how they felt empowered following our training on bias awareness to constructively challenge a course tutor after they shared an activity that negatively stereotyped young Black men. This led to the activity being reviewed, withdrawn and replaced with an activity representing a positive message.

In between the four sessions, we also delivered a bespoke session with school governors that went into more detail around terminology. The sessions were held over Teams were supported by short videos, interactive activities and presentation slides. Following this session, we were contacted by one of the attendees who was a headteacher at another school in Caerphilly and invited us to support pupils and staff that subsequently took place in the Autumn term.

We would like to thank the school for supporting No Boundaries and look forward to continuing our support.