Examination of Witness (Questions 540-547)
3 FEBRUARY 2004
MR FRANK
MAGUIRE
Q540 Mr Sanders: Has your school developed
a response to those policies?
Mr Maguire: Yes, the school has.
We adopted those policies as a governing body.
Q541 Chris Mole: On occasions you will
get difficulties between various groups of pupils within different
religious or ethnic backgrounds. What policies and strategies
does the school have to deal with potential flare-ups or disruptive
disagreements?
Mr Maguire: Schools such as mine
do not have flare-ups and problems relating to ethnic, or social
or cultural backgrounds, they just have flare-ups relating to
football, or who is doing this and who is doing that, or you have
red hair or you are overweight, normal situations which happen
in primary schools. In the make-up of the school where I am head
teacher, there are no flare-ups relating to social, cultural or
whatever backgrounds.
Q542 Chairman: Do football flare-ups
not relate to the traditions of Catholic and Protestant teams?
Mr Maguire: My school is situated
in Liverpool and not Glasgow, so we do not really have that, although
there was a tradition some years ago between the two teams.
Q543 Chairman: You have been describing
to us the way in which the school manages to cope with children
from the two Christian faiths. What do you do about trying to
make sure that your children have an understanding of some of
the youngsters from other parts of Liverpool who comes from different
religious traditions?
Mr Maguire: As I was saying earlier,
part of our RE syllabus and part of our personal and social health
education is to engage with other faith communities. People will
come in to talk to the children about Islam or Judaism and we
visit mosques, we visit synagogues and so on. That is the strategy
which we employ.
Q544 Chairman: In some places they have
been twinning schools to try to make that work more effectively.
Do you see any scope for twinning schools so that you have pupils
going from one school to another school to do a joint activity?
Mr Maguire: I have not heard of
this. It sounds very interesting.
Q545 Chairman: The difficulty is that
if some adult comes in and talks to youngsters, they tend to remember
the strange and the weird rather than understanding the common
ground that youngsters have.
Mr Maguire: You are quite right
actually, but I certainly hope they do not think the adults are
strange and weird. I think they find them extremely enjoyable
and interesting. To suggest visiting other schools is an excellent
idea.
Q546 Chairman: Do you think race relations
in Liverpool are improving?
Mr Maguire: The answer to that
is that I do not know. I would hope so, but until we can have
people growing together from an early age and mixing together
as friends rather than as people from different race backgrounds
and allow that to move through to an adult age, I do not think
we will have great improvement. We must start at a very early
age with children whose friendship dominates the relationship
rather than ethnic background.
Q547 Chairman: You describe the fairly
large housing estate which you serve. Is there any discrimination
within that estate for people moving into it?
Mr Maguire: I do not see any.
Chairman: On that note, may I thank you
very much for your evidence.
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