Links with other equality issues

Challenging sectarianism is part of delivering equality and fairness within educational establishments. This resource is about challenging sectarianism and religious intolerance. However, it is important to make links with other areas of inequality.

The promotional leaflet about this resource has a diagram which shows the links to other initiatives such as the National Priorities and A Curriculum for Excellence.

Many of the strategies used to take forward work in the following areas provide opportunities to consider issues of sectarianism and religious intolerance

• Anti-bullying
• Developing school and community centre ethos
• Equality and Diversity (Equal Opportunities)
• Education for Citizenship
• Inclusive Education
• Human Rights
• Anti-racism

The resource also link with the National Priorities in Education (in particular Priority 3 and 4). The national priorities in school education, as approved by the Scottish Parliament in December 2000, are defined under the following headings:

Priority 1: Achievement and Attainment
Priority 2: Framework for Learning
Priority 3: Inclusion and Equality
Priority 4: Values and Citizenship
Priority 5: Learning for Life

When divisions are caused by religion and belief, it is equally important to think about divisions that may be caused by social origin, colour, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, geography and so on.

Equally, when diversity is celebrated within the classroom, include all forms of diversity from religion and belief to the range of abilities.

To ensure that equality and fairness become real cornerstones of educational practice and of school/centre ethos, we need to be mindful of the range of equality issues. Mainstreaming equality and anti-discrimination into planning processes will help bring these issues to mind at the outset of each new development.

It is important not to focus on one aspect of equality to the exclusion of others or to attempt to make one more important than another.

It is also the case that more than one equality issue may be raised by any incident or situation.