At least one hundred college staff will be offered a scholarship to train up on tackling antisemitism – after the government finally awarded a delayed contract.
An ex-labour MP’s new think tank and the Union for Jewish Students (UJS) have been handed millions to develop and deliver the long-awaited Tackling Antisemitism in Education (TAE) programme.
The procurement, worth around £7 million, was carried over from the Conservatives 2023 autumn statement but was put on ice in March 2024 after concerns from smaller Jewish or Holocaust education groups the format and style of the procurement favoured larger organisations.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson resumed the search after allowing the contract to be delivered by one or more suppliers last October, on the first anniversary of the October 7 terror attacks.
The TAE programme will be delivered over three years and deliver training, scholarships and the development of resources, including around the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Antisemitism scholarship for colleges
Cross-party think tank and research institute Palace Yard has won £1.5 million to develop and deliver two scholarship programmes.
Palace Yard was founded in 2022 by former Labour MP Natascha Engel who lost her North East Derbyshire seat in 2017.
Engel was previously a panel member of the all-party parliamentary groups (APPG) on antisemitism and ex-deputy speaker in the House of Commons. She was also formerly chair of the APPG on youth affairs and a trustee of UK Youth Parliament.
Around 1,500 staff are to be offered scholarships – half of which will be from schools and colleges while the other half will be from universities.
The Department for Education said it expects at least 13 per cent of the 750 participants from the schools and college group to be made up of college staff.
The National Union of Students (NUS) has been named as a subcontractor to recruit and engage schools, colleges and universities.
Partakers will be able to take a domestic “study visit” to learn about the Jewish faith and will get involved in role-play discussions and seminars on how to tackle antisemitism in their respective education settings.
Palace Yard will also set up an “action learning network”, where scholarship participants can share resources.
The contract documents added the training should not replicate content already available through existing Holocaust education.
“It’s important that the TAE scholarship focus is to actively tackle antisemitism today,” it said.
Jewish student union to ensure ‘smooth rollout‘
The UJS has been given a £1.1 million budget, aimed to increase the confidence in student union staff in recognising and tackling antisemitism and to inform university policies.
The UJS, which represents 9,000 Jewish students in the UK and Ireland, will have to collaborate with school, college and religious representatives to ensure a “smooth rollout” of the programme.
The union will have to deliver a minimum of 600 face-to-face sessions, at least 80 per cent of universities must receive at least six sessions.
The training programme, which is expected to start on September 1, will involve developing strategies on how to respond to antisemitic abuse, as well as learning to facilitate “difficult” discussions on Palestine-Israel and helping students to stop mis- and dis-information.
UJS has also been asked to prioritise universities with incidents of antisemitism.
Last year, more than a dozen student encampments were set up at UK universities to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which the UJS reportedly said at the time created a “hostile and toxic atmosphere” on campus for Jewish students.
DfE to approve all content
DfE has set up a TAE content advisory group made up of up to five unnamed people plus the department itself to approval all content in the next six weeks.
Government officials will have ultimate sign-off, but the content advisory group will have to consider the department’s existing quality assurance process for material for the Educate Against Hate (EAH) website, rather than replicate it.
Within a month of signing the contract, the suppliers will have to produce a detailed delivery plan, which is subject to DfE approval.
Meanwhile, the DfE has published another procurement for a tackling Antisemitism in Education Innovation Fund this summer.
It intends to hand out £4 million worth of grants to facilitate small-scale initiatives and larger, strategic projects.
A market engagement event on the proposal is taking place on July 23.
Palace Yard and UJS were approached for comment.
NUS declined to comment.
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