UNIVERSITY OF WALES INSTITUTE CARDIFF

 

EVALUATION OF THE GOT (GETTING ON TOGETHER) INITIATIVE

 

Professor David Egan

Centre for Applied Education Research

University of Wales Institute Cardiff

June 2009

 

9. RECOMMENDATIONS

9.1     The GOT Project provides a powerful model of how a community and partnership based approach can be developed in order to combat prejudicial attitudes based on race/ethnicity/faith and to promote tolerance and respect. Its focus on interventions through the education system to address these issues seems well founded through the experience of the lesson-based interventions that have occurred during this pilot. This is a model that should be supported and sustained more broadly by the UK Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and local authorities in Wales.

9.2     One of the conclusions of the Innes/Weston Evaluation is that this type of educational intervention will not, by itself, be capable of counteracting the forces working on the small number of young people who are at risk of being radicalised. Whilst the focus of this report has been on the potential for educational intervention, it is also recommended that such interventions should be placed within a broader community cohesion programme for Wales.

9.3     It is also clear that issues pertaining to prejudice and intolerance should not be identified as being solely of concern to the Muslim community. As the Innes/Weston and Jordan Evaluations point out prejudiced and intolerant views, sometimes of an extreme nature, were present within the profiles for a range of groups and individuals. This has considerable salience in respect of the need to broaden out the educational interventions involved in GOT to all communities and schools in Wales.

 

9.4     The main recommendation of this report, therefore, is that the GOT project should be supported by the Welsh Assembly Government so that it can ultimately be scaled up to become an all-Wales approach, employing a partnership and community based model focused on education interventions.

 

9.5     This could be done through a planned and incremental approach over a 3 year period as follows:

 

·           Year 1: Extension of GOT pilot across the city of Cardiff and into a valley and rural community in Wales. Development of the community and partnership based model, of the diagnostic tools and of the education intervention including resources and teaching support.

·           Year 2: Extension of the model to all secondary schools in Wales and beginning of a pilot in primary schools.

·           Year 3: Evaluation of the pilot and preparation of a programme to assimilate the GOT approach in a sustainable way into the future work of schools in Wales. 

 

9.6     Throughout this period ongoing development, research and training support should be available to the project so that it can continue to evaluate and disseminate its findings and experience.

 

Professor David Egan

Centre for Applied Education Research

University of Wales Institute Cardiff

June 2009