Medr/2025/22: Anti-racist action planning guidance and funding publication for colleges

Summary guidance: Anti-racist action planning

This refreshed Further Education College Anti-racist Action Planning Guidance has been informed by funding guidance issued by Welsh Government to ensure consistency and continuity.

This guidance makes direct reference to previous anti-racism guidance. It has been further developed by Medr to take account of the Welsh Government’s Anti-racist Wales Action Plan (ARWAP) and the 2024 update.

We welcome the continued engagement of colleges with this work through their commitment to the actions in the ARWAP. In line with our values, we want to work collaboratively with the sector to support the delivery of the requirements of this guidance. You can contact the team at [email protected].

To ensure stability for colleges, and as we work with colleges on their collective contribution to the Welsh Government’s Anti-racist Wales Action Plan: 2024 update, we are allocating £21k funding to each college, for a sixteen-month period from April 2025 to July 2026. From 2026/27 funding will revert to a twelve-month academic year funding period. In 2025/26 we are also allocating an additional £4k, for the period August 2025 to July 2026, to enable colleges to take forward additional activity. Therefore, this guidance confirms an allocation to each college of £25k for anti-racism.

In our email to colleges in April 2025 we encouraged colleges to use the four-month period, from April to July 2025, to:

• self-assess their 2024-25 submissions to us;
• update their equality impact assessments;
• take account of the updated Anti-racist Wales Action Plan; and
• identify data-informed priorities for the college.

From July 2025 to July 2026, we expect colleges to:

• continue to take account of the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan 2022 to 2026;
• develop and extend their 2022-24 action plans, taking account of the ARWAP and corresponding advice from the Black Leadership Group;
• continue to identify and make progress with 2025/26 data-informed priorities; and
• engage with the anti-racist curriculum (Metaverse) project (and its evaluation).

Separately, in response to the 2025/26 one off allocation of £4k, we expect colleges to:

• engage with Welsh Government’s self-assessment maturity matrix for the Anti-racist Wales Action Plan (attached as Annex A); and
• deliver relevant anti-racism related training, relevant to the college’s needs, as identified through equality impact assessment and action planning.

Colleges’ anti-racism action plans, should be ‘live documents’, regularly reviewed and updated as part of the college’s annual strategic planning, risk and quality assurance processes.