Newsletters

May 2023

Sense over Sectarianism Sports Events

Sense over Sectarianism (SOS) Sports Events have always been an integral part of both the Communities United programme and the SOS Primary Workshops package.

Bringing young people from different schools together to play sports can be used as a reward for the hard work the young people have put in during classroom workshops and as an opportunity for teamworking and building friendships.

These sports events take different formats. The most common this year has been to bring closely located schools together in one of the more establishments, and deliver a morning of multi sorts, team building activities as well as football.

One of these such events was delivered in May and brought together P7 boys and girls from Broomhill and St Paul's of Whiteinch Primary schools. The schools had not previously held such an event and the young people from St Paul's were excited to visit Broomhill.

Penalty Kick and Crossbar Challenge competitions were held first to build the excitement of the day. These were followed by 7a side games between the schools initially then with the teams mixed in with each other for the final games.

The morning was a great success and photos from the day can be viewed on the SOS twitter and Instagram pages @sos_glasgow.

 

April 2023

Sense over Sectarianism Annual Report & Mentors for Violence Prevention

Annual Report

Sense over Sectarianism (SOS) must compile twice annual reports to the Scottish Governments Community Safety Team.

As a project we must report on the success or otherwise of the funded outcomes for that year. Both in qualitative and in quantitive terms. As a result of high demand from schools, and to support classroom learning around the Novel Study the Divided City, the SOS team made Primary 7 workshop delivery the focus. 

The annual figures are detailed below. A great testament to the programme and the willingness of Glasgow schools to be involved in this important work.

These workshops support the teacher delivered topics, as mentioned above, such as The Divided City and related Equalities and Citizenship curriculum.

Total

Number of Primary Schools                     85

Number of Workshops                             401

Number of Primary Pupils                        4883

Mentors for Violence Prevention (MVP)

SOS has coordinated the National MVP Gender Based Violence programme in Glasgow for several years. Over this academic year it has worked hard to re-establish the programme which was highly impacted by Secondary School's recovery from COVID restrictions.

During the previous period April 2022 - March we have delivered 5 staff training and CPD events which were attended by 65 members of staff. As a result the MVP programme was delivered over the year in 13 Glasgow Secondary Schools.

Planning for delivery of the MVP programme must occur much in advance as staff and in turn senior pupils are trained to facilitate the project. As a result, SOS will once again host a 2-day Peer Mentoring Training Event in the City Chambers in May for school staff and Campus Police from several Glasgow Secondary schools.

This event allowed existing schools to train new staff, schools who had previously delivered the project to restart and three schools new to programme to get up and running.

March 2023

National Week of Action Round Up

In February Sense over Sectarianism (SOS) held a "National Week of Action" for the Fifth time for schools across Scotland. Working in partnership with Action on Sectarianism the SOS National Week of Action mainly featured a poster competition across the week of 20^th - 24^th February and indeed the run up too.

Posters Art Competition

The key element of the month of action was the National Tackling Sectarianism schools Poster Art competition which attracted huge interest and a daily series of Twitter posts highlighting entries from primary and secondary schools.

Pupils were invited to make a Poster about the topic of sectarianism/tackling sectarianism.

The winners of the National Poster Art awards (who each received £500 for their schools) were as follows: -

• Primary Award winner was Gracey from P7 at St Conval's Primary School in the South Side of Glasgow.
• Secondary Schools Award winner was Scott from the ENP Unit at Lochend Community High School in Easterhouse, Glasgow

Twitter Activity

The ten finalist poster entries were detailed on Twitter in a popular vote where the winners were the entries which received the most "likes" in each category.

These finalists were viewed on twitter more than 120,000 times and received a total of over 1500 "likes"!

Both competition winners and the entries of the finalists can be found on the Sense over Sectarianism twitter account @sos_glasgow and Action on Sectarianism twitter account @AoSectarianism

For more information about this event or any other SOS initiative please contact mark.adams@glasgow.gov.uk

February 2023

Sense over Sectarianism, Holocaust Memorial Day Event

The annual HMD education event was once again hosted by Sense over Sectarianism on January 27^th in the Banqueting Hall at 10am. Cleveden Secondary pupils were the hosts on the day for SOS.

There were a variety of speakers and performances who addressed an audience of over 350 young people and staff from a selection of Glasgow schools.

The headline speaker was Kirsty Robson from the HMD Trust and other speakers included the Director of Education Douglas Hutchinson and Councillor Christina Cannon.

School performances included music and drama from Bannerman High School, singing from the Glasgow Create choir and a variety of readings by Notre Dame High School, St Timothy's PS and St Benedict's PS. Lots of photos of the event are available on Twitter @SOS_Glasgow

Full Event Details are below: -

10.00   Welcome & Opening Remarks  -  Cleveden Secondary Hosts

10.05   Music - Hine Ma To and Al Shlosha d'varim, both by Allan E Naplan  -  Glasgow Schools CREATE Choir

10.10   Director of Education  -  Douglas Hutchison

10.20   "Ordinary People " Readings  -  St Timothy's Primary School

10.30   Echoes Through Time Drama  -  Bannerman High School

10.45   "Ordinary People" Readings  -  Notre Dame Secondary School

10.55   Kirsty Robson  -  Holocaust Memorial Day Trust

11.10   Christina Cannon  -  Education Convenor

11.15   Lighting of the Candles  -  Glasgow School Orchestra / St Benedicts PS

11.20   Lords Provost Office  -  Bailie Anthony Carroll

11.30   Thanks & Closing Remarks  -  Cleveden Secondary Hosts

For more information about SOS workshops contact Project Coordinator Mark Adams at mark.adams@glasgow.gov.uk

January 2023

Sense over Sectarianism National Week of Action Poster Competition 20^th - 24^th February 2023

The Sense over Sectarianism National Week of Action will be taking place on 20^th - 24^th February 2023 and we are delighted to announce details of our SOS National Poster Competition.

Two Awards will be split over Two Competitions:

• SOS Poster Competition - Pupils are invited to make Poster Art about the topic of Tackling Sectarianism

o (1) Primary Award and (1) Secondary Schools Award

This is a National Competition and will be voted on by public vote via Twitter.

A Prize of £500 for each category will be made to the winning schools!

Key Competition timings:

• 9^th January Competition Opens
• 6^th February Competition Closes (shortlisting begins)
• 9^th February Twitter Polls Open
• 17^th February Twitter Polls Closes
• W/C 20^th February Winners Announced

Entries should be submitted by Photograph (small file size) to senseoversectarianism@gmail.com

All activity and updates will be on Twitter. Please follow @SOS_Glasgow & @AoSScotland and keep a look out for latest news.

For more information about this competition please contact mark.adams@glasgow.gov.uk