Introduction

In September 2010, Southall Black Sisters (SBS) embarked on a two-year pilot project to test the whole school approach in preventing violence against black and minority ethnic (BME) women and girls. The aim was to establish if our intervention could successfully challenge and change attitudes and behaviour at all levels, amongst pupils, teachers, governors, parents and support staff. We also endeavoured to embed the issue in the teaching of curricular and non-curricular subjects and, indeed, to change the whole ethos of a school so that its policies and procedures on equalities, safeguarding and school bullying reflected an understanding of, and measures to tackle, violence against BME women and girls (BME VAWG).

The SBS project was part of a wider evaluation of the whole school approach to preventing violence against women and girls (VAWG) pioneered by Womankind Worldwide, funded by Comic Relief. The project built on decades of work by SBS in schools and colleges with young people in raising awareness of and challenging attitudes to BME VAWG. The work of the project concentrated on Year Nine and 10 pupils aged between 13 and 15, but in total we worked with about 2300 pupils/students, teachers, governors and parents in two schools from September 2010 to August 2012. In order to assess the impact of the project, a range of tools were used, including pre- and post-surveys, focus groups with pupils, ‘learning journals’ for pupils in classroom sessions, questionnaires for teacher training provided in the project and interviews with senior and lead teachers.

In the words of one lead teacher, there was a particular fear that the SBS project would open a ‘Pandora's Box’. Both schools were concerned about religious and cultural sensitivity, and about challenging some BME pupils, especially boys, holding ingrained conservative attitudes on gender equality. The fear of being accused of racism, intolerance of minority cultures and, in particular, of being Islamaphobic or anti-faith by BME parents and the community were unique issues which hampered progress on addressing BME VAWG. This chapter focuses on how SBS attempted to overcome these barriers, and the extent to which we successfully increased levels of awareness and understanding among pupils and teachers, changed attitudes and behaviour among pupils, and improved the policies, ethos and environment of the whole school in relation to BME VAWG.