STAFF at the University of Edinburgh are reportedly undergoing training sessions to help tackle “accent bias” when teaching students.
Last year, the university issued guidance to its student body following claims of anti-Scottish discrimination by some of its students, where it encouraged students not to be “snobs”.
In November last year, the student-formed anti-discrimination watchdog, the Scottish Social Mobility Society, said it received more than 200 reports of Scots being mocked over their backgrounds since it was founded.
A group of students, The 93% Club, named after the percentage of people in the UK who are state school educated, has been working with the University of Edinburgh to provide “accent bias” training sessions for staff, STV News have reported.
President of the Edinburgh University club Grace Mai Clark told the broadcaster she had experienced bias from lecturers and witnessed a Scottish student who was “mocked” for their accent.
She said: “A lot of the time there is a perception that this is just peer on peer and, don’t get me wrong, that does definitely happen.
“But unfortunately, there can be staff who can make off-hand comments – I had a tutor in my first year who said he could tell who was privately educated based on people’s writing, and we had a Scottish student who had her accent mocked back to her by a member of staff.
“And these are obviously one-off incidents – we’re not making any generalisations about staff – but it is something that still happens.
“But what stood out to us was that those instances really stood out to people because if anyone should know better, it should be the staff.”
Third-year English literature student Holly Longman-Bradfield also told STV News she was often mocked for her accent in class.
“I’m from Ayrshire originally, so for that reason I say ‘po-yum’ and not ‘poem’,” she said.
“That has been kind of the main thing on my actual course, being giggled at in seminars for the way that I pronounce different things.”
Longman-Bradfield added: “It sounds like quite a small thing from the outset, but it is quite a confidence knock, especially when you are younger.
“You’re in first year and coming into an environment that you’re not necessarily familiar with and comfortable with.
“You want to be taken seriously, especially academically.”
Dr Christian Ilbury is a lecturer in sociolinguistics at the university and has reportedly been encouraging his fellow colleagues to think about their bias when it comes to accents in the classroom.
“I think we’re one of the few universities having conversations about this and I think it’s positive that the university, rather than shut this down, is actually letting us work on this,” he said.
“I’m a professional who works specifically on linguistic discrimination so I think we should really think about how that could be utilised in the future as a potential strategy to addressing these issues.
“My hope is that this does actually improve student and staff experiences and essentially addresses the issue of access bias.”
Meanwhile, widening participation and outreach manager at the School of Engineering, Dr Katie Grant, has encouraged staff at the university to “take a step back” and be aware of any bias they may have.
She said: “I think it is about being aware of your own bias, I’d say that maybe I have a bias in perhaps the opposite direction, I could be bias against people that maybe have what we’d class as a ‘posh’ accent.
“So I think that it is about being aware of your bias and sort of taking that step back.”
