Given the appalling rise in racially motivated hate crime in Northern Ireland in recent weeks, it is vital that we ensure that newcomer members of society and indeed established ethnic minority groups feel welcome and are fully integrated into communities. A good place to start is to look at the experience of ethnic minorities in our schools and also to ask to what degree education could help address the racist attitudes present in our society that have produced these attacks?

Conor Coyle writing in The Irish News on August 28th reported on the fears of Muslim mothers for their children going back into schools for the new term. He highlighted a letter sent by a group of Muslim mothers to