Training Events

Sense over Sectarianism Partnership with

Police Scotland

This October school holiday week has seen the partnership between SOS and Police Scotland develop through a series of training sessions delivered across the country.

SOS Development Officer Mark Adams and the FOCUS (Football Coordination Unit for Scotland) have developed a modular 5 session resource pack which has been designed for delivery to young people of secondary school age who are vulnerable to criminalisation under the terms of recent legislation (Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications Act (Scotland) 2012).

Training sessions around the delivery of the resource called "Pitchin In" has been delivered to Police Officers from across the country in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Perth to help enable them to engage young football fans to understand exactly what Offending is and what it looks like, and what the possible consequences are.

Other lessons in the pack challenge the language of offending and examine songs which may be sung around football matches and look at the origins of these songs and why they may or may not be offensive.

Sgt Elaine Gordon of the FOCUS team said "the training sessions have been very well received and have been delivered in an interactive style, the feedback from course participants has been extremely positive".

Glasgow University

Throughout every period of funding Sense over Sectarianism agree with the Scottish Government Community Safety Unit on a number of targeted outcomes for the advancement and development of anti-sectarian work in the SOS jurisdiction. Namely Glasgow and the "travel to" area of central Scotland.

In 2016 it was agreed that once of these new outcomes should be "We will build the capacity of professional practitioners to deliver anti-sectarian educational programmes and address wider hate crime issues"

A key area of meeting this outcome is to form key partnerships with Higher and Further Education establishments across west central Scotland.

As a result SOS Development Officer Mark Adams has developed, and is delivering, a series lectures to current and future practitioners who are currently studying for a Master's Degree in Community Learning and Development at Glasgow University.

In early 2017 Mark will deliver a lecture to all PGDE students at Glasgow University as an introduction for a more comprehensive series of lectures in the 2017-2018 academic year.

Probationer Teachers

For several years Sense over Sectarianism have delivered probationer teacher CPD training based around the offerings available for anti-sectarian work across the school network and across the curriculum.

SOS Development Officer Mark Adams and Social Inclusion Manager Alison Logan have jointly delivered the training which is offered to all new primary and secondary school teachers.

This academic year the training has been separated and delivered as two separate training events with a twilight session being available to primary teachers specifically and secondary teachers specifically. In addition the sessions have been brought forward to be delivered at the end of term 1 to allow the new teachers to get involved in the delivery of the SOS work during their probationer year.

This is as a result of the vastly increased numbers of our schools who engage in SOS anti-sectarian led projects. In addition with multiple resources available across the school stage process it is important that each area is covered in sufficient detail as to equip these new teachers with the knowledge and information to be able to deliver the SOS resources.

West Dunbartonshire

For several years Sense over Sectarianism has worked in partnership with the Citizens Theatre education department over a number of projects. In recent years as well as working closely on the production of the Scarfed for Life text and resource pack SOS have supported the government funded Citizens Theatre project around the Divided City Drama production.

This year the Citz is delivering the Divided City drama project in the West Dunbartonshire local authority area. As part of this programme of work, SOS Development Officer Mark Adams delivered teacher CPD training based around the offerings available for anti-sectarian work across the school network and across the curriculum.

In particular the training covered the delivery of the extensive resources that SOS have developed over recent years for the novel Study "The Divided City". These resources include a literacy pack, a drama pack and additional work sheets on various themes closely related to the topic.

As a result of this training provided by SOS and the drama project delivered by the Citizens Theatre staff primary schools across the West Dunbartonshire network have requested additional support in the form of additional resources and directly delivered workshops.

East End of Glasgow

Sense over Sectarianism was delighted to be asked back to work with three East End Schools who continue to work together to challenge sectarianism in their community and beyond.

Due to the large numbers of pupils participating, the lessons had to be adapted. In previous years workers have split the numbers and worked with different groups concurrently. However this year we decided to try it a little different by having two workers and the support from the staff from the schools we were able to work in one large group.

It was crucial that we had lots of group work activities to ensure that the pupils mixed with each other and also they were able to look at different perspectives in their community.