Saroj Lal and the fight for equality in Scottish education

She established innovative social and cultural groups for South Asian women in Edinburgh, and served for sixteen years as the director of Lothian Racial Equality Council.

These efforts were born in large part from her initial experience as a classroom teacher, where she was often one of the few, if not only, female teachers of colour.

In 1970, she began working at South Morningside Primary School in Edinburgh.

And her son, Vineet Lal, said that if Saroj ever wondered whether she was in the minority, she only needed to look around the classroom.

During her three years, Saroj taught one pupil of colour – Sangeeta Sinha, who herself went on to become a teacher in the city.

The rest of her pupils were white.

Saroj’s sense that pupils like that young girl – and teachers like herself—were marginalised and were often denied equality of opportunity changed the course of her career.

Her legacy lives on today. After Saroj died in 2020, Vineet helped to establish three educational awards in her name. Each represents a different front in her fight for equality and inclusion.

Lessons in prejudice

Saroj was born in British India in 1937, before imperial retreat and Partition.

After emigrating to Birmingham and then to Scotland in the late 1960s, Saroj and her young family experienced a culture shock familiar to many people who immigrate.

“When she came to Birmingham, that was, I think, her first real experience of racism,” Vineet said. “And I think it probably came as a bit of a shock.”

Vineet describes the UK of the 1960s as strikingly different from the family’s previous home in Singapore.

“Singapore is by its nature a very multicultural and multiracial environment. I think in many ways, that [living in Singapore] was the start of her dawning realisation that education and society could function as a harmonious, heterogeneous environment.”

Despite the racism she initially encountered in the UK, Saroj enrolled in a teaching postgraduate course at Moray House College of Education (now part of the University of Edinburgh) in 1969. The move was unusual for an Indian woman at the time, but a logical choice in the context of Saroj’s upbringing.

“Her father was very ahead of his time, very pro-education, and a huge supporter of women’s rights,” Vineet said.

“He believed strongly that women should have equal opportunities, particularly when it came to education.”

After earning her degree and beginning work at South Morningside Primary, Saroj spent three years as a classroom teacher.

It was a relatively short period but one that had a lifelong impact, Vineet said.

“I think that that period of teaching was instrumental in terms of opening her eyes to the curriculum which in those days was very monocultural and rife with stereotypes.

“It offered a very lopsided view of the world.”

He described geographical resources that portrayed developing nations as full of people living in mud huts and basically uncivilised.

Read more: "No way forward without dealing with the past"

In contrast, parts of the world such as Canada and New Zealand were depicted with people living in modern houses and living in sophisticated societies

“It was very stark, the way the world was portrayed. And so many of those prejudices became embedded. I was subjected to the same ideas at school.

“It became engrained in you that, if you came from South Asia, then you were basically a second-class person because your background was primitive.

“There was no mention at the time that Asia had just as complex and well-developed civilisations as Europe and the West.”

The phrase “decolonising the curriculum” – reframing the way lessons are taught in order to remove deep-seeded, often White European, biases – was not part of the lexicon in Saroj’s time.

But she knew that it was needed.

Graduating from the classroom

After Saroj left teaching in 1973, she committed herself to social and community work. A committed feminist, she worked with the YWCA Women’s International Centre (later the Roundabout Centre)in order to give young ethnic women safe spaces to learn and develop.

The Asian Cultural Girls’ Club at Drummond Community High School was one of her most notable creations.

Vineet called it his mother’s “little subterfuge” because it helped young women break free from restrictions imposed by more traditional families.

“She was being quite strategic, because she realised a lot of these orthodox parents would not want their daughters continuing school after 16.

“She won their trust and confidence by creating this club at Drummond High School.

“It was her way of creating a platform for girls to express themselves openly and discuss their career aspirations outside the restrictions of the home.”

She followed this with the groundbreaking Continuation Course for Asian girls at Telford College (now Edinburgh College), which gave young women who had missed out on education a bridging qualification that would allow them to move on to further or higher education.

“I think she was really proud of that, that she was making a real difference to minority girls in terms of empowering them to stand up for their right to an education.”

Read more: Why anti-racism education in Scottish schools is not to be feared

This programme convinced Saroj that practical policy-minded solutions could level the playing field for women and minorities who wanted to pursue a career.

Vineet said that this pivot, from hands-on education to a policy-first approach, was a key moment in his mother’s life.

Moving one step further, Saroj joined Lothian Racial Equality Council in 1980. She became its director in 1990 and remained in the position until she retired six years later.

It was in this prominent role that Saroj came into her own as a spokesperson and campaigner for ethnic minorities and women in society. She dedicated herself to equality work and, Vineet, said, she was rarely off duty.

A non-smoker and teetotaller, she would often stay behind after meetings to mingle in pubs with her predominantly white, male colleagues and discover the hidden obstacles to equality.

“It was often my dad babysitting me and my sister at home, and she would be out late. Quite a contrast to other Asian families of the time.

“My mum was the one who was out at conferences, and she often found that the best way to find out what was really happening was to socialise informally after meetings, and linger with politicians and decision-makers.”

She continued to focus on practical solutions to racism and inequality.

She worked with Lothian and Borders Police to define the nature of racist attacks and monitor racial incidents; she set up Edinburgh’s first dedicated ethnic library at McDonald Road; she expanded mother tongue teaching across the city and supported ethnic arts and dance.

Along the way, she never forgot the early lessons learned at South Morningside, and she briefly returned to supply teaching after retiring.

“She carried education with her through all the different phases of her career. She knew that one of the key channels to combatting racism, and one of the key conduits to achieving true multiculturalism, was the classroom.

“She knew it was crucial to work in schools, to try to ensure that children were made aware of the fact that Britain is a multicultural society from a very early age.”

A lasting legacy

The educational landscape in Scotland has changed since Saroj left teaching.

Vineet credits his mother and her peers, who often felt that they were working from scratch, with laying the foundations

“Those were pioneering days, because there were not that many BAME (Black, Asian, or minority/ethnic) teachers per se, let alone women of colour.

“They were working in a vacuum. The basic principles of racial equality were not a given back then. They had to create the fertile ground first.”

That ground has borne fruit.

Read more: Edinburgh teacher wins national diversity award

Although it has its detractors, anti-racism has become a buzzword and rallying point in the world of education. Researchers, teachers and students across Scotland are now looking at ways to further embed equality and diversity into the curriculum.

A key example? The winners of the various awards and scholarships established in Saroj’s name.

Moray House School of Education at the University of Edinburgh offers the Saroj Lal Scholarship. It is open to candidates from a BAME background who are pursuing a teaching career in Scotland.

The Saroj Lal Award for City of Edinburgh Schools recognises school pupils who use creative expression to battle prejudice and racism.

And more widely, the Saroj Lal Award for a Pioneering Spirit in Equality and Diversity is given by the General Teaching Council for Scotland to teachers who put equality and inclusivity at the core of their teaching.

There have been four inspirational winners so far, and they represent the breadth of work being done to make equality a staple in Scottish classrooms: promoting racial equality, inclusivity for LGBTQ+ students, and putting policies in place for targeting and eliminating racist incidents from schools.

Although the awards bear Saroj’s name, her son says her work was always about a broader community.  As a result, her name represents and recognises the hard work done by those in the early days of the equality movement, many of whom never had their voices heard directly.

Vineet said: “She was very much speaking up not for herself, but for that metaphorical invisible queue of people stretching behind her into the distance who don't have a voice.

“She always felt that if you were lucky enough to have a voice, the least you can do is use it for greater purposes.”