To combat racism, ethnic minority students in Wales will receive an additional £5,000 to pursue teaching careers as part of a new initiative.
All training teachers are eligible to receive a £15,000 grant from the Welsh government if they specialise in a subject most needed in the country’s schools.
This includes biology, chemistry, physics, IT, design and technology, Welsh, modern foreign languages as well as maths.
As part of the
Labour
The government’s ‘Anti-racist Wales’ initiative offers an extra £5,000 for people belonging to minority ethnic groups.
The initiative, designed to move Wales considerably toward becoming an anti-racist country by 2030, comes after calls by Climate Cymru BAME to prohibit dogs from rural areas in order to make the outdoor spaces more inclusive.
A spokesperson for the government had earlier maintained that they were not considering implementing the proposal put together by an environmental organization, stating that dogs would still be allowed in the Welsh hills.
This follows Wales’ scores in the previous 2022 international PISA assessments dropping to their lowest recorded levels for 15-year-olds in science, math, and reading. Additionally, the country finished at the bottom when compared with other regions of the United Kingdom.
Welsh Conservative shadow cabinet secretary for education, Natasha Ashgar, has since hit out at the scheme amid what she called a recruitment and retention crisis’ in Wales.
She stated that Wales’s Labour government ought to concentrate on attracting the finest mathematics educators to schools, irrespective of their ethnic background.
‘This additional funding for ethnic minority maths teachers increases the total grant to £25,000 — significantly higher than what is available to teachers from non-ethnic backgrounds,’ she told
The Times.
Given the rising number of math educators departing from the field and the limited recruitment efforts, shouldn’t the Welsh Labour government provide equitable funding for every mathematics teacher?
It is clear that the incentive program does not influence recruitment choices made autonomously by universities when deciding to permit an individual to pursue a postgraduate degree in Initial Teacher Education.
Of those working in Welsh education, 1.3 percent come from Asian, Black, and other minority ethnic groups.
Furthermore, 12 percent of Welsh students over the age of five come from Asian, Black, and Minority Ethnic backgrounds.
The 2021 ONS census found that 93.8 percent of Wales’ population identified themselves as ‘white.’
In order to qualify as teachers in Wales, students need to complete an Initial Teacher Education program. A grant of £15,000 is provided to those who choose to specialize in particular subject areas.
In addition to the £5,000 available for teacher training candidates from minority ethnic backgrounds, another £5,000 is offered to those wishing to undertake the program through the medium of Welsh or to study Welsh.
This aligns with the Welsh government’s objective of having one million Welsh speakers in the nation by 2050.
As of now, based on the latest census data, there are approximately 538,000 Welsh speakers in Wales, which represents a minor decrease compared to the 562,000 Welsh speakers recorded in 2011.
The Welsh Government stated: “We offer various financial incentives aimed at attracting new educators in critical fields like mathematics. Additionally, we’ve recently raised teacher compensation by 5.5 percent.”
We are dedicated to boosting the count of educators from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic communities to ensure that our youth see reflections of themselves and their life experiences in those who lead them.
The incentive program was launched with the aim of steering Wales toward becoming ‘antiracist’ across all aspects of its society and communities.
The Welsh government explained the process includes identifying and removing systems, policies and structures that could see ‘radically different outcomes for ethnic minority groups’.
The Welsh Government is also pledged to promoting staff members from ethnic minorities ‘at a level which exceeds their population share’ to tackle underrepresented on every level of the political body.
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