Policies and legislation

A range of commonwealth and state policies and legislation exist in relation to multicultural education and anti-racism. Department policies reflect this legislation and policy.

Supporting resources

• The Multicultural Plan is the department’s strategic plan to ensure the whole school community’s requirements are met.
• Multicultural Policies and Services Program reports on multicultural activity across the department.

See the Multicultural Education Policy for more information.

Research

Research into multicultural education, supported by data on student participation rates and teacher professional learning needs, provides evidence to further develop and deliver multicultural education provisions. Research projects and reports include:

• The Rethinking Multiculturalism Reassessing Multicultural Education (RMRME) research project explores the challenges posed by increasing cultural complexity in schools and their communities. It examines approaches to multiculturalism in NSW government schools in urban and rural areas and how these link to the role of education in promoting social inclusion. The findings of the RMRME project are detailed in three project reports:
  • RMRME Report 1 Public School Teachers (2013)
  • RMRME Report 2 Perspectives on Multicultural Education (2014)
  • RMRME Report 3 Knowledge Translation and Action Research (2014)
• The Challenging Racism Project is the leading national research program on racism and anti-racism in Australia. Established in 2002, this successful research collective from Western Sydney University collaborates with academics from Deakin University, Curtin University and the University of Technology Sydney.
• The Australians Today project from the Scanlon Foundation provides landmark research into multiculturalism 2016, with 10,000 online respondents and qualitative data collected from 50 focus groups. The video Australians Today summary, produced by the Scanlon Foundation, provides a summary of that data.
• The Scanlon Foundation’s Mapping Social Cohesion National Report (2022) offers information on the five core domains of social inclusion: belonging, worth, social justice, participation and acceptance and rejection. Some research indicates an increase in racism over recent years.