"It wasn't nasty" says a researcher who has shed new light on racism in Scottish schools.

The comment by Professor Peter Hopkins is aimed at teachers who assumed Asian pupils would be observing Eid or Ramadan, because they thought, wrongly, that they were Muslim.

Racism based on ignorance or lazy assumptions is often not directly 'nasty', but Prof Hopkins points out that it is nevertheless serious.

How can such a pupil feel part of a school community, when subjected to such major misunderstandings?

The prejudices of peers can be equally hurtful, not to mention baffling, such as the use of the racist term 'Paki', by children, to address other children from Somalia, India and even Eastern Europe.

Children can exaggerate and such surveys are always worth treating with caution. And it would be wrong to suggest this issue is not already wholeheartedly addressed in many Scottish schools. Most have adopted the Rights Respecting Schools scheme, and the ethos and community life of a school is foregrounded under A Curriculum for Excellence.

More than ever, religious studies classes attempt foster understanding of other faiths. This is particularly important when Islamophobia is a problem in wider society.

But more plainly needs to be done. Scotland's towns and cities have not had immigration at the same levels experienced in parts of England, such as Bradford and Oldham. By and large this country has been welcoming to new arrivals and that must continue. We need more migrants, to help boost the economy, and pay the taxes that help fund public services.

It is salutory that it took a Newcastle based researcher to expose these findings. We should be wary of complacency.

The Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford has reported that attitudes to immigration are most tolerant in areas such as Scotland, where numbers of incomers are low, and those such as London where they are highly concentrated. The areas in between, where immigrants are more visible but there is a lack of understanding, are those most likely to back cuts to immigration.

Scotland needs to be a welcoming place for incomers, and can be. But attitudes are formed early and schools must do more to tackle pupil ignorance and where necessary, challenging the attitudes of staff too.