THE annual STUC St Andrew’s Day March and Rally is an extremely important event, where people from across Scotland join together to reject the scourge of racism. The EIS, Scotland’s largest teaching union, is a long-time supporter of the St Andrew’s Day march, always bringing a large delegation to the streets of Glasgow.

The often toxic debate around immigration — fuelled by politicians, British government policy and the right-wing press — has created an environment where many migrants and refugees have increasingly felt unwelcome or unsafe.

Events such as the St Andrew’s Day march send an important welcoming message to people who have come to live in this country, often having faced persecution or danger in their native lands.

Many young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds are in our classrooms, with local authorities, schools, teachers and support staff working hard to offer as much support as possible to them. The British government’s programme of austerity has significantly reduced funding for education and other public services, making this area of work even more challenging with less money available for specialist support in schools.

As part of our own commitment to supporting learners from migrant and refugee backgrounds, the EIS recently launched a suite of specially designed “Welcome Packs” to assist children who are newly arrived in Scotland to settle into their new school.

The welcome packs are specific to three age ranges (P1-P4, P5-S3 and S4-S6), and are designed to convey a positive, welcoming message to the young people about Scotland as their new home and to inform young people and their parents of their rights as students in Scottish education.

The packs contain a series of booklets with colourful illustrations commissioned from a local artist. The booklets give newly arrived young people and their families key information about school education in Scotland, as well as some background about Scotland itself by way of introduction to the country.

The EIS was proud to launch the new welcome packs at a special event held recently at Hillhead High School in Glasgow. We hope that these packs can, in a small but meaningful way, help to ease the often challenging transition to a new country for these young people.

It is hoped that the new packs will become part of teachers’ work with young people who are newly arrived in Scotland — for example, as part of initial exposure to use of the English language in schools. The packs have been written predominantly in English for this purpose, though they also feature some text in French, Polish and Arabic — the three most common languages spoken at home by pupils from migrant or refugee families. The digital versions of the booklets can also be translated using a translation tool on the EIS website.

Speaking at the launch event, Khadija Khadija Mohammed, convener of the EIS Anti-Racist Committee, explained that teachers wanted to show their commitment to the welcome and protection of the young people who were arriving in Scotland, either with their families, seeking a better life; or with or without their families, having been forced to flee political upheaval, violence and threats to their safety.

“These welcome packs,” she said, “are part of the EIS contribution to ensuring the realisation of the human right to education and all the benefits that should bring, for new young Scots.”

In addition to the new Welcome to Scotland and Going to School in Scotland booklets, the welcome packs also contain a companion booklet for parents and carers, and some stationery and books gifted by the EIS and a sister education union, the American Federation of Teachers.

Following a herculean effort by EIS staff in assembling packs and packing boxes, distribution of the new welcome packs has now begun. Glasgow City Council, which has welcomed the vast majority of refugees living in Scotland, took delivery of the first batch of 2,500 packs earlier this week. The remaining 1,500 welcome packs will be distributed to all other Local Authorities over the next week.

The EIS is grateful to our local authority colleagues who are ensuring that the welcome packs get to the individual children and young people for whom they are intended. It is by working together — through our schools, local authorities and trade unions — that we can ensure that migrants and refugees receive the compassion and support that they deserve when they arrive in this country.

Larry Flanagan is general secretary of the EIS.

To find out more about EIS’s anti-racist work visit: www.eis.org.uk/Policy-And-Publications/WelcomeToScotland.