Commitment

“New year, new me!”

Written by Andrew McGeehan

Andrew (he/him) is a trainer/consultant based in Singapore that loves talking about anything DEIJ related and/or cats!

A phrase that all of us hear a lot every year right around this time. I know I have said it (and non-ironically!). This year, I’m asking myself (and all of you reading this) – what will actually be new? What am I planning to do differently this year? How am I planning to spend my time, energy, resources, and money? How will I commit to uplifting others, pushing for justice & equity in the world, and naming hurtful behaviour in my community?

And in the end, will the new me take the time to reflect, look inward, and identify the ways in which I also contribute to marginalisation and oppression?

Every time a new year comes, regardless of the calendar that we use to mark it, it is a time for renewal. There is that surge of energy that comes with seeing the whole next year laid out before us and the possibilities fly through our minds. We imagine who we might become, who we might meet, what new opportunities we will have, and a whole new life can flash before our eyes. But before we know it, we are back to work, back in our lives, back to the same old routines we always had, and within a month, we are left wistfully wondering where that excitement for the new year went.

I will challenge you today to not let that happen!

I challenge you to make empathetic, inclusive, and justice-oriented commitments to yourself and others and to follow through on them.

I challenge you to question yourself constantly.

I challenge you to have conversations you’ve never had before that are difficult and nuanced.

I challenge myself too.

I am a queer white cisgender able-bodied man doing diversity, inclusion, and equity work in Asia. There is a lot for me to continuously unpack about my cultural background, my perceptions of reality, my understandings of privilege and power. I am constantly learning and interrogating what it means to be a white person and a cisgender man and talking about these issues. I’m clarifying for myself where and what my role should be.

If you are interested in solidarity work, allyship, advancing racial & gender & orientation & disability & religious (& more!) equity, and seeing the world take more rapid steps towards equity and justice, I’ll invite you to make these commitments along with me.

1.Do the internal work – When we want to work towards justice and equity, our interest and passion for the topics aren’t enough. There is a lot that we need to accept about ourselves, socialisations to try and unlearn, and reflection to be had. I often work with folks who prefer to skip this step – in trainings, someone might say “Can you just tell me what we should be doing to make our organisation more inclusive?” And yes, I could do that. But without any understanding of our own internal worlds, we won’t be effective advocates for justice.

What do I mean by this? Spend time uncovering your own biases, accept that we are all brought up to believe negative stereotypes about people who are different than us, analyse your social circles, identify who you gravitate towards to at work and who you avoid and why. We don’t need to be perfect people in order to engage in justice & equity work, but we do need to be aware of what we are walking into the space with.

2. PLEASE move beyond awareness – Awareness is over. There is so much information out there via mass media, pop culture, research, memoirs, peoples’ lived experiences, surveys, etc etc etc! Awareness isn’t a bad thing; but for many people and organisations, it’s the only thing. Awareness without action doesn’t change anything. Having a work event to celebrate International Women’s Day and share information on the wage gap is fine – but it ultimately rings hollow if there isn’t follow up within the organisation to actually reduce/eliminate it within the organisation.

3. Name harm with your friends, family, & colleagues – It’s time to start doing the hard work and talking about these issues with the people closest to us (or at least those we spend a lot of time with). Especially for those of us with a lot of privilege, it’s necessary to name the racism, heterosexism, ableism, sexism and other harms that we see within our families and friends. Naming it and discussing it doesn’t have to be a big conflict, nor does it mean that the person called out is a bad person. We all do things that are hurtful at times, and if we aren’t held accountable for it, we won’t be able to understand and change our behaviour.

It might be easy to start with something simple, like saying “I don’t think comments like that about gay men are appropriate” or “I don’t think jokes about immigrants are funny.” If feeling generous, we may take more time to explain how the actions might harm us or make us feel or provide more resources for them to do their own learning.

4. Commit to making lasting change – Systemic -isms persist because the systems haven’t changed yet. There is tons of value in changing our internal worlds and educating our friends and family. It’s also extremely powerful to work to change systems. In many cases, our capacity to change a system will be in the workplace. We can advocate for policy changes, required trainings, targets for inclusive leadership. These changes can be difficult to make and sometimes run the risk of seeming “boring”, but they create change that lasts beyond our tenure in any organisation. For instance, an organisation celebrating Trans Day of Remembrance and encouraging staff to share their pronouns is great, but does that same organisation have trans-inclusive and affirming healthcare?

If you are part of an Employee Resource Group/Network Group, this is a great space to start considering what institutional changes need to happen in order to create an environment of affirmation and comfort for all. An easy way to start is by reviewing company policies – is the language gender-inclusive? What is the parental leave policy? Are there flexible arrangements? How are neurodiverse staff supported? Does insurance cover mental health?

5. Read & learn about it from those who know (and believe in their knowledge of their own experiences) – There are many amazing activist writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers out there. Learn about them, learn from them, and buy their products! If you are a majority race person and you don’t know about racism in your country/region, there is surely a book about it written by someone who experiences that racism daily- read it with an open mind. If you want to understand better the experience of a person who lives with a disability, find research that talks about the workplace challenges folks face.

And when you read, listen, and watch about these experiences, believe them. Folks with marginalised identities know what they have experienced. Sometimes we want to dismiss what we hear because it makes us uncomfortable or because we know that we have participated in similar hurtful behaviours. Lean into that discomfort and try to identify where it is coming from without being defensive. I know this is hard and I still struggle with this sometimes, but it is so necessary. Just pause and ask yourself “what about this is making me feel this way?”

Some Singapore-based starting points:

“What We Inherit: Growing Up Indian” – True stories of Indian women’s experiences in Singapore
“Queer Singapore: Illiberal Citizenship & Mediate Cultures” – Highlights the complexity of queer existence in Singapore
https://transformativejusticecollective.org/ — Learn more about the work being done to shift justice away from the death penalty and towards transformation

6. Expand your social circles – So much of my own social justice learning has been through relationships I’ve built with people. I was very lucky to go to graduate school with an extremely diverse cohort and build wonderful relationships across race, gender, religion, and more. Our familiarity with issues brings us greater empathy, and many people care more about issues that affect someone they know. Inclusive access in a city may have never mattered to someone, until their partner becomes wheelchair bound and then they will notice all the ways in which cities are not built for folks with physical disabilities or mobility challenges.

As a word of caution, I do not advocate expanding your social circle in a way that is tokenistic (i.e., I should find a gay friend! I don’t have one of those!). But think about ways that you can expand who you interact with, through social media, connections from other friends, or volunteering. Take a look at who you already know- what is the makeup of the people you spend time with? During my trainings, I always ask people to consider who they go to lunch with at work and who they see other people go to lunch with. My personal experience in Singapore is that many foreigners take lunch together and many locals take lunch together. Could there be unconscious bias at play? Could people be more comfortable sticking only with what is familiar? I don’t have an answer, but it is worth investigating what this looks like for us individually and see what patterns we observe.

7. Try, fail, apologise, and try again – Whenever we engage in work related to justice and equity, we will invariably make mistakes. When someone tells you that you have hurt them, or done something that is racist/sexist/homophobic/etc, apologise for causing harm. If possible, have a conversation to make sure that you understand what it is that was hurtful (but don’t force the other person to share this with you). Think about how you can do better next time and maybe reflect on the experience with a trusted friend.

Maybe you want to become more comfortable naming microaggressions at work – you won’t do it right all the time. But you will be able to refine your technique and enhance your comfort level as you practice. As with any skill, we need to practice it to get better at it. Working towards justice and equity are no different. Do your best and approach this work with a lack of ego and the knowledge that you will make mistakes and that is ok.

8. Understand what you have to gain – Greater justice, equity, and inclusion in the world benefits everyone. People with privilege often feel like they are “losing” something, but that is not the case. There is enough equality to go around. Understand that advocating for gender equity creates new opportunities for people of all genders, including men. We are not diminished when others have the same opportunities that we do; but we are diminished when others are held down by systemic oppression.

Along with this, we have to know and understand our own “why.” Why are you doing this work? Why do you care? I often see organisations and individuals who are doing D&I work because it is seen as trendy or required in the contemporary era. This is a surface level connection to the work that won’t go beyond some token improvements or remain mired in awareness-building. Think for yourself about what your personal commitment is and act from there.

I am pledging myself to the above as well. I am continuously interrogating my place as a White American man in Asia talking about diversity, inclusion, equity and justice. I reflect on how privileged I am to be able to be hired by companies to do this work. I mess up in my trainings and apologise to participants when I’ve cause harm. I work to continue finding research and pedagogies that do not have a US-centric lens and are context-specific to Asia & Singapore. I can and will continue to refine and nuance my approach towards this necessary work.

It’s a journey that we are all on. I hope that you will come along with me in 2023 and consider which of the above items might be part of the “new you.”

The issue with “high expectations”

Written by IncludEd Diagnostics

IncludED Diagnostics support local authorities, academy trusts, and individual schools with their work to increase inclusion, reduce suspensions and reduce exclusions. More information is available at www.includeddiagnostics.co.uk

If you are sanctioned for failing to meet an “expectation”, it is, in fact, a “condition”.

For a long time I have been interested in why deprivation and poverty are associated not just with academic outcomes, but with behavioural outcomes, and on my journey to understand this I came across a researcher called Sendhil Mullainathan and his work on the concept of scarcity. In his view, scarcity is a much more wide-ranging concept than poverty (an arbitrary threshold of income), i.e. we can have a scarcity of time, health, family support, relationships, cultural input, etc. – all of which can impact our outcomes. In describing the impact of scarcity he uses the analogy of packing into a smaller suitcase, and inspired by the #IncludEd2023 conference today, I’d like to start with this.

Two pupils are going away for a week, one packing into a large suitcase and one into a smaller suitcase. The suitcases can be seen as strict metaphors for disposable income (family income in this example), or in a broader way as availability of lots of different resources… but they both articulate a difference in experience.

The pupil with a smaller suitcase (i.e. scarcer resources) has a smaller capacity for items, therefore…

They are forced to operate with more conditions

Their items have to be folded smaller and packed away better than the pupil with a large suitcase. They have to make more “either/or” decisions on what to pack, whereas the pupil with the larger suitcase can pack more with less efficiency.

Could you list all the conditions / expectations children must meet to engage fully in your school? When we put pressure on parents/carers to immediately provide a new pair of school shoes, do we consider the scarcity that so many are living with? Less time because of childcare or multiple jobs, the cost and time of travel to get the shoes, the cost of the shoes, and what is the “or”? What isn’t being bought, what isn’t time being invested into?

Decisions have to be better!

Not only does the pupil packing into the smaller suitcase have to make better, not equal but better, decisions because there are more conditions, but any errors they make will cost more. If both forget their phone chargers, one may buy a new charger with relative ease, one may not. If packing is done badly and an item gets damaged, the same applies.

Living in scarcity means a “lack of slack” for mistakes – we all make mistakes but they don’t cost us or impact us all equally. There is very little flexibility for this within most school behaviour systems as the consequences appear superficially the same – the same detention time is given. The actual impact – socially, emotionally, educationally – may vary widely.

Triggering reminders of scarcity means we have less “bandwidth” for the process [not our inherent intelligence / cognitive capacity but how much of it is temporarily available]

There is research to support this – using food-related words in word-searches prompted dieters to be significantly slower in finding the following words – and the implications are profound. The implications are that the concentration, focus, and attention needed to actually pack the suitcase is more limited for those affected by scarcity when that has been consciously triggered (i.e. I wish I had a bigger suitcase like other people!) Wouldn’t that make this pupil more likely to make mistakes? Ones which cost more?

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What prompted me to write about this today was hearing from two speakers who have experienced the care system. Consider the conditions we place on children in school, then consider the size of the suitcase a child in care is packing, i.e. the multiple levels of scarcity they may be experiencing. We have conditions on appearance and equipment – coat, black socks, bag, colour of pen, PE kit, pencil-case, etc. We have conditions on behaviour – a consistent requirement to accept adult authority and direction, regulate level of activity, attention, and emotional response. Even peers come with conditions for integration – they could be clothing, games consoles, cultural references, a similar capacity to spend time together outside of school. Some of these may feel impossible for a young person to achieve… Lemn Sissay OBE described it so viscerally today when he recalled “the smell of people with families”.

The speaker before Lemn was Jade Barnett, which is a name you will come across again in the future. Her educational journey travelled via two managed moves, a pupil referral unit, a move into care then a move into a care home at the opposite end of the country. Jade is a model of the most positive outcomes – today she held five hundred minds in her hand purely because she speaks with such intelligence, articulacy and power. But, as a child, she was forced into a situation where she was packing into a small suitcase. And the schooling system places yet more conditions on her, and others like her. Nowhere in her speech did she imply that those conditions were helpful; where many, such as Lemn, feel like they don’t belong already, the consequences of failure to meet these “expectations”/conditions must only reinforce that perception. At their least useful, they make engagement and access to education harder for some of the most vulnerable.

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To return to more typical language of schooling, high expectations can no longer be a cover for just describing a very large number of conditions. And we need to stop painting such conditions as supportive to young people by their mere presence. That is to confuse equality of expectations/conditions with equity, but that isn’t equity at all. In reality, we may be both ignoring the smaller suitcase and expecting more of the child who is packing it.

High expectations of academic progress are crucial to all children fulfilling their potential, and these are genuinely “expectations” because they come without sanction. Without them children may not be taught to their full potential. Alongside that, adult understanding of the difficulties that some children face is a critical factor in making sure children belong and can thrive. For school and education leaders, it is worth considering what is within your control and sphere of influence to mitigate the impact of scarcity. Is the pupil premium grant being used to best effect? Also, please do consider when thinking about the rewards and sanctions in your school how do you make things fair for those living with scarcity?

Two Years On: Where are we now?

Written by Hana Malik

Hana Malik is currently an Associate Senior Leader, Head of English with a passion for social justice, diversity and equity.

We decided, after the murder of George Floyd in the US, that we wanted our educational organisation to join the movement against racism and we turned our school towards the necessary work it took to be anti-racist. Now, two years on, I find myself asking where we are and what we’ve achieved, if we’ve made any positive changes to the lives of our staff and students and if our DEI work has moved us forward.

We have heard it before, and it is key to achieving success: DEI work is circular – it is evolving and the work is never ‘done’. It is vital therefore to reflect on progress and ensure the evolutions keep happening.

Ella Washington, an organisational psychologist and founder and CEO of Elevate Solutions (a DEI strategy firm), helps to clarify the ‘five stages of DEI maturity’ and how we might evaluate the work we are doing. The five stages are: aware, compliant, tactical, integrated and sustainable. She explains this in her upcoming book as well as for the Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2022/11/the-five-stages-of-dei-maturity She has also spoken about the three Ps of DEI evaluation.

Purpose

The most important place to begin is with the why, especially because there is (not yet anyway) no standard of DEI in an educational setting against which you can measure your organisation. No teacher standards (although meeting the needs of learners is often cited as DEI adjacent) and certainly no Ofsted criteria under Quality of Education or Personal Development. I consider our school and think about where we were in 2020. Why did we join the movement? Did everyone know where we were going and why we were going there? Did everyone feel safe in joining the journey?

There were great successes in this area, especially in 2020 and 2021. Now however I must admit that our commitment to DEI has become something of an ‘extra’ improvement priority. Not because we don’t believe in DEI, but because, like all schools, the reality of exams, Ofsted, sky-high bills, mean that we are juggling countless balls and it has been hard to hold on firmly to the DEI one. Most important perhaps is the question of whether our why has changed and if as leaders we can be courageous enough to acknowledge that and realign the vision.

Pitfalls

This can be difficult, but honest reflections and consideration of barriers and pitfalls will contribute to successful and sustained DEI work. Were leaders vulnerable and open about why we’d started this journey thereafter building confidence and trust in the staff body? Did staff have a secure and shared language about DEI? Were changes manageable and sustained?

We’ve fallen into some predictable pitfalls. The one that is arguably most challenging is that we have stopped communicating our vision and goals for DEI. Is it still on our school improvement plan? Yes. Do we all know why it’s there and what change might entail? No. Secondly, the work of DEI cannot fall to one person. A DEI champion is great, but what happens when they leave? We know how important middle leaders are in delivering change, and it is in that room we can ensure that DEI is sustained.

Progress

The all-important ‘this is progress’ stage. The curriculum, the outcomes, the senior leadership team. We want to see progress across all elements of our organisation. So, what does progress look like? What does it look like in the short term and the long term? How can we find out where we are now and where we need to go next?

We do have a more diverse and representative SLT. We do have a more inclusive recruitment process from blind CVs to diverse panels. Our students do learn about a wide range of topics; from kabaddi in PE to reframing migration. There are boxes we can tick now, that is true. But we know our work is far from ‘done’. We will need to return to the question of what progress looks like for us and go from there. If schools are microcosms of the society we live in, we need to think carefully about what DEI in a socially just and equitable world looks like. We can then build the change we want to see.

Diverse Educators: A Manifesto - Book Review

Written by Madeleine Spink

Madeleine completed a PGCE in Citizenship at the IOE after studying at the University of York and Goldsmiths. Madeleine now teaches Sociology, PSHCE, Oracy and History at Langley Park School for Girls in Bromley.

Diverse Educators: A Manifesto is edited by Hannah Wilson and Bennie Kara, with contributions from over 100 educators, structured around the Equality Act 2010.

It starts with a quote from Maya Angelou that “diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of the tapestry are equal in value no matter what their color.” The books format is best described as a tapestry. It is made up of ten chapters, one for each of the nine Protected Characteristics (Age; Disability; Gender Reassignment; Pregnancy and Maternity; Marriage and Civil Partnership; Race; Religion and Belief; Sex; Sexual Orientation) with a tenth chapter exploring intersectionality.

The book is collaboratively produced and mixes personal and professional experiences. Educators generously sharing their experiences and learning include primary and secondary teachers from all age groups, backgrounds and life experiences. The book develops the readers empathy to the diversity of educators, as well as the diversity of opinion of people within each protected characteristic. For example, the chapter on disability includes personal experience, the need for disability in RSE, practical tips to involve students in curriculum planning and data on the permanent exclusion rates for disabled students. It feature’s ACT’s own Lee Jerome on Intersectional Citizenship as a status, a feeling and a process. The chapter on Transgender inclusion is also insightful and talks about Lucy Meadows, whose death should not be forgotten by teachers who have followed her into the profession.

Deep questions are asked throughout, and the contributions informed my thinking about whose responsibility inclusion is, whose work it often ends up being and whether inclusion work is for the long term or ‘en vogue’. I would have loved to have seen a chapter talking about working class teachers existing in the middle class school environment, and how this identity intersects with the protected characteristics.

The variety of editing and writing styles did make the manifesto lack cohesion and feel inaccessible at times. The structure takes time to get used to, and can be navigated either by starting with the editors overview and selecting the sections that appeal to a particular interest, or by focussing on the key takeaways and ‘contributions’ to the manifesto at the end of each chapter. This changes depending on how the chapter has been edited, and some chapters are referenced while others lack referencing. It is a tapestry of a book, to capture such a variety of perspectives is a huge achievement, but not everything will appeal to everyone.

Diverse Educators is a book to dip in to, reference and use as a guide to practical steps that can be taken to inclusion. It would be a good choice for a staff book group and comes with a reading guide and questions. There’s a lot of ways this resource can be used and shape teaching, learning and the school environment.

Why Don’t We Talk About Intersectionality in Schools?

Written by Dr Jo Trevenna

Dr Jo Trevenna has over 20 years' experience of educational leadership from early years to post-graduate level. Her ongoing academic interests centre on Leadership and EEDI. Her company, Potential Education, offers leadership reviews, support and training and EEDI-focused school support.

There can’t be many of us still thinking that human identity is singular. Right? Aren’t we a combination of diverse characteristics that create and impact on our existence? Expectations and assumptions around combinations of characteristics are increasingly illuminated in societies, with light thrown on those who experience multiple discrimination and shade thrown on those who discriminate against those with different combinations of characteristics. The complexity around identity is foregrounded in explorations of intersectional discrimination. Yet intersectional disadvantage is not generally a focus for English schools.

Why?

Is it a lack of understanding and awareness or the lack of external accountability?

The Law

Critical awareness of the vulnerabilities faced by those with exact combinations of identity characteristics was first associated with the legal work of Kimberlé Crenshaw which looked into the discrimination experienced by African-American women in terms of ‘intersecting patterns of racism and sexism’ (Crenshaw 1991, p1243). Crenshaw asserted that anti-discrimination legislation in the United States did not actually protect African-American women because, when making legal claims against an employer, this particular group had to choose between a focus on either their race or gender, even though the discrimination they faced came at the ‘intersection’ of these two identity characteristics.

Section 14 of The Equality Act (2010) recognises the potential for discrimination pertaining to ‘combined discrimination: dual characteristics’ (Legislation.gov.uk 2010). The focus here is limited to direct discrimination against the combination of only two characteristics. More significantly, Section 14 has never, in fact, come into force. It just sits there in provisional status.

As it stands, therefore, the law does not adequately protect against intersectional discrimination and, in terms of English schools, there is no legal imperative to tackle intersectional discrimination.

Publicly Available Data

Published performance table data is hugely significant for schools. The first stage of the high profile ‘school and college performance measures’ website offers only a single-axis approach to pupil data. Some basic intersectional data is available on the ‘Explore Education Statistics’ section of the platform relating to ethnicity and disadvantage, disadvantage and gender, SEN and ethnicity. However, the data remains on cohort numbers and does not provide any information which may indicate the impact of those intersections on pupil academic performance, exclusions/suspensions and attendance. FOI requests can be made and the GOV.UK website also offers the facility for researchers through its new Grading and Admissions Data for England (GRADE) service. This service may be a significant step forward in terms of higher level transparency but it does not provide readily accessible data to the public on intersectional discrimination affecting pupils.

Data revealing the intersectional factors affecting pupils is available to school leaders and governors, local authorities and Ofsted via the ‘Analyse School Performance’ (ASP) secure access platform. Filtering mechanisms enable reports combining specific pupil characteristics, eg: boys with SEN, and scatterplot graphs make it relatively easy to identify patterns of underperformance because of key combinations of protected characteristics thereby highlighting potential impact of discrimination and flagging up need to address. Another school performance document is the Inspection Data Summary Report (IDSR), which is accessed on the secure ASP portal. The IDSR is a key document for Ofsted Inspectors when preparing to inspect a school and informs initial discussions with headteachers. Like the ASP tool, the IDSR does provide schools and Ofsted with a retrospective mini intersectional tool in its coding on scatterplots of the progress and attainment of pupils by binary gender classification and SEN status and deprivation status. However, there is no public access to this data.

To sum up: disadvantages experienced by pupils with specific combinations of identity characteristics in English schools are not readily flagged in publicly published school data. Perhaps Ofsted, which does have access to this anonymised intersectional data via the ASP and IDSR, has the potential to be the driving force in helping schools engage with intersectional discrimination.

Taking a sample of 68 Ofsted Section 5 inspection reports published in a six month period (not including those which inspected an already ‘Good’ school), there are only references to single-axis identity characteristics. In this sample, Ofsted, as the key inspection mechanism for schools, does not engage with the impact of intersectional discrimination on pupils. The lack of referencing in this sample of reports is not surprising given that Ofsted’s School Inspection Handbook only relates identity characteristics on a single-axis framework.

As it stands, then, there is no legal accountability, no easily accessible public data to enable transparent exploration of the impact on pupils and little Ofsted engagement with intersectional discrimination and disadvantage. Right now, without the external accountability structures, it is the choice of school leaders whether or not to adopt an intersectional approach to their schools. Given that most of us agree that identity has multiple components, it is surely time to explore how an intersectional approach can throw light on intersectional disadvantage and discrimination and therefore help schools to tackle it head on despite the lack of an external accountability framework.

Desire to study diverse drama and playwrights in schools not matched by current educational landscape

Written by Margaret Bartley

Editorial Director for Literary Drama at Bloomsbury. Since 2002 she has been the Publisher of the Arden Shakespeare and now has editorial responsibility for Bloomsbury's digital platform Drama Online, the Methuen Drama imprint, and the Arden Shakespeare. She is Bloomsbury’s representative on the Lit in Colour Advisory Board and sponsor of Bloomsbury Academic’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion working group.

90% of drama texts taught at GCSE and 96% at A Level English Literature are written by white playwrights

New research released today by Bloomsbury Publishing, through its Methuen Drama imprint and as part of its Lit in Colour programme, illustrates the popularity and contradiction of teaching drama texts for English Literature at GCSE and A Level in today’s secondary schools in England and Wales.

Drama (excluding Shakespeare) is not compulsory in the GCSE English Literature specification, yet 93% of teachers who responded to Bloomsbury’s survey choose to teach a drama text to a GCSE class. Under 2022 curriculum specifications, drama texts by white playwrights account for 90% of drama texts taught at GCSE and 96% at A Level English Literature. This contrasts with 93% of teachers who said they would like to see a more ethnically diverse range of writers offered by exam boards. This desire from teachers is met with student demand. Of the teachers surveyed, 65% said there was a demand from their students to study more ethnically diverse writers.

Launched in 2020 by Penguin Books UK, alongside race equality think tank The Runnymede Trust, the Lit in Colour campaign aims to support UK schools in diversifying the teaching of English and to increase students’ access to texts by writers of colour and from minority ethnic backgrounds.

Bloomsbury’s Methuen Drama imprint has a world-class play portfolio and playwright relationships that complement and expand on the original Lit in Colour campaign. The programme’s aim is to introduce new plays to the curriculum, offering students access to more diverse, representative and inclusive work, opening up the ways in which all drama texts can be studied, creating new ways to explore plays and contributing to wider discussion and representation in the classroom.

Other findings from the research illustrate the important role drama plays within English Literature at secondary school study:

- There are currently just 2 drama set texts by Global Majority writers available at A Level English Literature
- With the right support and resources in place, 84% of respondents said they would be likely to choose a new drama text for GCSE English Literature
- We asked teachers about the support they need when teaching drama set texts: the top three resources listed were recordings of performances (67%), model student answers to exam questions (65%) and resources on social/cultural context (57%)

66% of survey respondents said they would like more support to teach texts that tackle issues relating to race or ethnicity

- 0% of students answered an exam question on a play by a Global Majority writer in England in 2019*

In England in 2019*, 79% of GCSE English Literature candidates answered an exam question on a drama text, 349,337 students (65%) answered a question on An Inspector Calls in 2019 assessments

Margaret Bartley, Editorial Director for Literary Drama at Bloomsbury, commented: “The landscape of teaching drama in English schools has remained largely unchanged. Our research shows that there is real appetite for change and that publishers, theatre makers, examiners and teachers need to work together to deliver change to the curriculum. If we empower teachers to switch texts with confidence, students can continue to benefit from the positive impact and influence of studying plays. In the future, those plays will better reflect the student cohort and ensure students see themselves represented in the texts they study. Bloomsbury is committed to playing our part in delivering this change through our proactive programme of new play text publishing, supported by the resources teachers and students need to study and enjoy them.”

Change is coming – what should the future look like?

Real change is coming. Just two years on from the Lit in Colour campaign, efforts are being made by all five major awarding bodies in England and Wales to diversify the set texts within both GCSE and A Level specifications for English and Drama. By 2025 English Literature students in England and Wales will have the option to choose from 10 new modern play texts by writers of colour at GCSE and A Level.

The importance of live performance

Drama can be more accessible than other genres and many enjoy the interactivity that the format brings. A 2015 curriculum change to English Literature removed the necessity for a student to watch a live production, leading to systemic changes in the teaching of drama texts as part of the English curriculum, which are difficult for teachers to counter.

Teaching drama as an experience through live performance is critical in the successful introduction of new plays. When diverse texts are performed in theatres and included on the school curriculum, more could be done to engage with the playwrights themselves. There needs to be more opportunity for playwrights to talk about their work and context, and for schools and teachers to engage with playwrights directly.

Having access to staged performances through services such as Bloomsbury’s Drama Online, which has collections of filmed live performances including those from the National Theatre and Shakespeare’s Globe, is vital to bringing teaching to life, inspiring debate and illustrating what the author or playwright is trying to convey.

Empowering teachers to take a different approach

The research shows a clear desire among teachers to expose pupils to a diverse range of literature, driven by the need to reflect the student cohort and ensure students see themselves represented in the texts they study. There is also a desire to share diversity of thinking and hear voices other than their own. Importantly, this needs to represent a variety of backgrounds and to portray a range of lived experiences including, but not limited to, race-related issues.

Introducing new play texts to the classroom is a big undertaking and requires time and energy from teachers who are already stretched and time-poor. It is clear that teaching a new text is a significant undertaking for teachers who need to create new schemes of work and lesson plans, and research the text’s critical and performance history. Research responses show that teachers prefer to refer to past papers and evidence of the approach taken in assessment for benchmarking their teaching plans. This understandably means teachers often choose to teach the familiar and reliable options with which they have had positive learning and exam outcomes in the past.

Giving teachers the tools they need will empower them to teach new texts and approaches with greater confidence, helping them achieve the success they want for their students.

Teachers also told us that they have more freedom at Key Stage 3 (KS3) to choose diverse texts, as the curriculum is not limited by exam specifications. Teachers can therefore introduce drama texts from diverse writers at KS3 and build confidence in the teaching of these texts, before being limited by exam specifications at higher key stages.

There is also an opportunity to teach the familiar set texts differently, while they remain on the syllabus, by reframing how they are taught. Alongside new texts from diverse writers, existing texts can be taught through a different lens that resonates more with today’s students, such as gender, identity or class. Given the predominance of plays like this, reframing the way established canonical texts are presented offers teachers and students enriching ways to engage with them alongside newer texts.

Methodology

This report draws on research from multiple sources: a quantitative survey, in-depth interviews, roundtable discussion and desk research. Participation was entirely voluntary. Research was carried out by independent research company Oriel Square Ltd and supported by Insightful Research. The online survey, carried out in June 2022, targeted teachers of GCSE English Literature in England and Wales. Of the 141 respondents, 16.3% identified as Black, Asian or of Multiple Ethnic background, compared to 10.4% of teachers in England. Interviews were conducted with a sample of four teachers, selected either because they were taking part in the Lit in Colour Pioneer Pilot programme, ran in partnership with Pearson Edexcel, or because they had responded to the survey and agreed to take part. As a response to the teacher research, Bloomsbury, the National Theatre and Open Drama UK hosted a roundtable discussion with stakeholders from publishers, awarding bodies, theatre organisations, and practitioners, authors and playwrights to discuss how the drama and theatre community could support schools with the teaching of diverse drama texts.

*2019 assessment data was used in the research as the most reliable data, as COVID-19 interrupted live exams data and 2022 data is just being published

Media enquiries: to Ginni Arnold, Head of Corporate Communications at Bloomsbury on ginni.arnold@bloomsbury.com or 07968730247.

Editors’ Notes

Bloomsbury English and Drama for Schools list includes:

The popular Student Edition series and GCSE Student Editions and Guides featuring plays for more than 14 core set texts for GCSE and A Level English Literature and Drama such as Blood Brothers, A Doll’s House, DNA, The Crucible, and An Inspector Calls.
The Arden Shakespeare Third series for A Level and beyond, and Arden Performance Editions for performance and study.
The RSC Shakespeare series, including The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works and 36 individual play editions.
New Mermaids series for classic play editions including Doctor Faustus and The Duchess of Malfi.
The ever-growing Plays for Young People series which offers age-appropriate plays by a diverse selection of contemporary playwrights for young people to perform and study.

Find out more at Bloomsbury.com/DramaForSchools and @MethuenDrama

About Bloomsbury

Bloomsbury is a leading independent publishing house, established in 1986, with authors who have won the Nobel, Pulitzer and Booker Prizes, and is the originating publisher and custodian of the Harry Potter series. Bloomsbury has offices in London, New York, New Delhi, Oxford and Sydney.

About Lit in Colour

Lit in Colour was launched by Penguin Random House and The Runnymede Trust in October 2020. The campaign aims to ensure English literature better reflects contemporary culture and society, to increase understanding around racial equality and to give students access to a diverse range of authors and books.

Lit in Colour published a major piece of research: https://litincolour.penguin.co.uk/ Diversity in Literature in English Schools in June 2021 which reviewed the current state of play in English Literature education and made practical recommendations for change, carried out by an independent team at Oxford University’s Department of Education.

Find more information at penguin.co.uk/litincolour and @PenguinUKBooks

About The Runnymede Trust

The Runnymede Trust is the UK’s leading independent race equality think tank. We generate intelligence to challenge race inequality in Britain through research, network building, leading debate, and policy engagement.

Runnymede is working to build a Britain in which all citizens and communities feel valued, enjoy equal opportunities, lead fulfilling lives, and share a common sense of belonging.

In order to effectively overcome racial inequality in our society, we believe that our democratic dialogue, policy, and practice, should all be based on reliable evidence from rigorous research and thorough analysis.

@RunnymedeTrust |runnymedetrust.org

The 3 Cs of DEIB Work: Consciousness, Confidence, Competence

Written by Hannah Wilson

Founder of Diverse Educators

Our Journey

When I am running training on DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging) for different stakeholder groups, I suggest that they see this work as a journey. The DEIB journey is one we go on individually and collectively, personally and professionally. The journey is non-linear and quite messy – different people will go off on different routes to reach the same goal and people will get on and off at different stages. This journey is a marathon and not a sprint, so we need to pace ourselves and we need to sustain our commitment to the work.

Motivation to go on this journey is great, but it is the habits that we unlearn and relearn, that will enable the DEIB vision to become embedded into the provision. This is where we see impact and we can make change happen. Moreover, this journey has three parallel lanes. The 3Cs of Consciousness, Confidence and Competence are my way of breaking down the different things that we need to develop in ourselves and each other.

Our Consciousness

Def. the state of being aware of and responsive to one’s surroundings; a person’s awareness or perception of something.

We need to start here, fighting our bias for action as educators like to do and get busy finding solutions to problems. But we need to start with the being. We need to become aware of ourselves, of each other and of the environment in which we are existing.

Consciousness is about exploring our own identity, recognising our own bias and navigating our own power and privilege. We need to become conscious of what we have not experienced, of what we have not been exposed to, of who we do not know.

We talk about getting ‘comfortable with being uncomfortable’ because we need to do the ‘inner work’ before we can start the ‘outer work’. We need to start with understanding ourselves on a deeper level.

The call to action is to be able to look in the mirror and to understand who we are and what shapes our thinking/ behaviour.

Our Confidence

Def. the feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something; the telling of private matters or secrets with mutual trust.

With increased awareness, we recognise that we do not have all of the answers. So we need to get confident in acknowledging that we are not the expert and that we need to listen to and learn from others. As we grapple with new concepts and new language, we need to model that we are going to get it wrong, that we are going to need support and feedback, and that we will make mistakes, but we will learn from them.

Confidence is about getting curious and asking more questions. We need to listen to others, to their lived experience, in order to expand our own perspective. We need to have the confidence to discover some hard truths about our organisation.

As we become confident engaging with the subject matter, we then need to become more confident in what we say and what we do. We need to stand up and speak out on issues impacting our community, we need to call in and call out behaviour and language that is not inclusive.

The call to action is to be willing to be courageously open and vulnerable.

Our Competence

Def. the ability to do something successfully or efficiently; the quality or state of having sufficient knowledge, judgment, skill, or strength.

With consciousness and confidence, we can then start developing our competence. In order to do the work in realising our DEIB intentions and bringing our vision to life, we need to develop new skills.

‘We don’t know what we don’t know’ until we start the learning journey. By slowing things down we can be more intentional in identifying the gaps in knowledge and in planning the training to close these gaps over time.

Being competent means that we develop muscle memory, we practise until the new skills feel natural and automatic e.g. diversifying the curriculum/ library, reviewing policies/ processes and practices through a DEIB lens, holding courageous conversations, showing up as an ally.

The call to action is to invest time and resources into ongoing training for yourself and others.

Our Commitment

So as we head to the end of the year, we invite you to reflect on the journey you have been on with your DEIB work. Where have you become more conscious, more confident and more competent? And how have you cascaded this learning to others?

Inclusive Hiring

Written by Andrew McGeehan

Andrew (he/him) is a trainer/consultant based in Singapore that loves talking about anything DEIJ related and/or cats!

Hiring and recruitment processes need to be reviewed and updated with a lens towards affirmative and inclusive hiring. This is not something that will happen naturally – organisations need to take concrete steps to make it happen. Read on for some tips from Trident!

Pre-Vacancy:

Organisational Assessment/Analysis – one key component of inclusive and affirmative hiring is that an organisation needs to know what it is looking for. An assessment that highlights current staff demographics can help to identify gaps. This is usually done with an interest in specific identities, such as gender, nationality, race/ethnicity, and age. However, it is important to start looking at other variables as well, such as years of experience, seniority in the organisation, educational background, and salary. It’s possible to find that there is diverse array of experiences and identities in more junior staff, but that senior staff is still overrepresented by straight able-bodied men of majority racial identity. That overrepresentation could be due to those folks utilising their own networks when hiring at all levels, which usually yields people of similar mindset and identity.

The assessment will allow you to ask questions such as “why aren’t we getting applicants from neurodiverse people for senior roles?” “why are all of our out LGBTQ staff not getting promoted beyond middle management?” “how can we appeal to the broadest range of candidates with each vacancy we have?”

Job Descriptions – it’s time to take a good hard look at the way that positions are communicated to potential candidates. Research has demonstrated that certain words in JDs may encourage/discourage folks of different identities from applying. The inclusion of a non-discrimination statement may encourage folks from underrepresented identities to apply. Including information about insurance coverage, employee networks, commitments to inclusive workspaces, and flexible/hybrid working also encourage people with a variety of experiences and backgrounds to become interested. The exclusion of these items will leave people asking themselves whether or not the job is for them.

For instance, candidates who are part of the LGBTQ community would want to know upfront whether insurance policies extended to same-gender unmarried partners. Providing this information ahead of time would encourage members of this community to see themselves in that particular role; while omitting it (or not having same-gender partner benefits) would discourage this community.

Diversifying networks for referral – If the same networks are utilised repeatedly when searching for candidates, the same candidate profile will keep showing up. Ask around to identify what kinds of new networks haven’t been tapped into. Many industries have outside organisations dedicated to supporting folks of underrepresented identities. Google is a good friend here! Search for “women in STEM organisation” “LGBTQ bankers network” “people with disabilities in Education” or whatever is relevant for your organisation. Many of these orgs have job boards on their websites and that is a great way to diversify the candidates that will apply.

Simply relying on current employee networks and/or 1-2 major networks in the industry will not diversify the hiring pool. Think outside the box and post the job listing in as many locations as is feasible in order to get the greatest variety of applicants.

Once a vacancy is open and accepting candidates:

Resume/CV vetting & review – Unconscious bias in the review process is an undeniable reality that needs to be addressed. Study after study in various industries has revealed that just seeing someone’s name will alter perceptions of their hirability, competence, and experience. Unsurprisingly, women, racial/ethnic minorities, and folks who mention being LGBTQ or having disabilities in their resumes/CVs are viewed less favourably than those who don’t. Shielding first reviewers from names (and possibly educational background- there is also bias towards institutions/former workplaces with name recognition) can reduce the chances of unconscious bias playing a role in vetting candidates. Bias can also be reduced if each resume is vetted by 2 folks or candidates are grouped in a variety of ways.

For the greatest variety in an applicant pool, vetting should be done using a holistic rubric and approach. Simply creating a checklist for years of experience, educational level attained, and previous responsibilities again ensures that the pool will remain similar to staff that are already employed at the organisation. It’s important to consider broad categories as well as transferable skills. This doesn’t mean to interview every candidate, but there are many great candidates that are cut out due to rigid checklists and criteria that often cater to majority experiences.

Interview questions & process – The interview process will tell candidates a lot about the kind of organisation they may be entering. Interview teams should meet prior to any interview. Standard questions (perhaps with some room for deviation towards the end of interview) are a must. I have been part of interview processes where each interview felt completely different; this makes it extremely difficult to compare candidates to one another. A good fusion could be having 30 minutes of standard questions and 30 minutes of candidate-specific questions.

Questions should focus on the candidates’ skills and competencies, as well as getting to know who they are (within reason). It’s important to vet questions for anything that may feel non-inclusive or use non-inclusive language. For instance, asking candidates if they are married, have kids, want to have kids, have been divorced, etc should be strictly no-gos. This is not only intrusive to the candidate, but also can feel non-inclusive for LGBTQ folks; asking about children is often only asked towards women and can set the tone that the workplace is not parent-friendly.

There are many ways to make interviews more inclusive and welcoming. One suggestion I will always give is to provide candidates questions in a written format. I’ve had interviews where I walked in the door and was given the list of questions. This allowed me to follow along, review the question if I didn’t hear it well or got confused, and pace myself with responses. It is also more inclusive for those who may have difficulties with hearing or are visual learners. Depending on the organisation, giving candidates options to have written questions in a different language may be relevant too.

Interview panels – The makeup of an interview panel will impact the way that the candidate views the organisation. Walking into an interview and seeing people who all seem to have the same identity/background will make candidates feel less confident and it will be difficult for them to see themselves in the organisation. This doesn’t mean every panel needs to have every identity represented; but a variety of perspectives will also help ensure that unconscious bias isn’t creeping into decision making and treatment of the candidates.

Panels made up of folks with similar background/ identities will respond more strongly to candidates that also share those identities. Including folks at various levels of the hierarchy, different genders, different backgrounds, and different communication styles will create situations in which the candidates will get a more well-rounded experience and be seen from various perspectives. Unconscious bias is also something that is easier to notice in others, so a mixed-identity/background panel will also be able to monitor itself for this.

Post interview process:

Decision-making panels – Similar to interview panels, decisions-makers should also represent a range of identities, roles, backgrounds, and experience levels. This again helps to ensure that decisions aren’t made based on a group with a very similar outlook or set of perspectives. When making a final decision, it can be helpful to review current staff demographics and make-up on that particular team. This can help identify gaps in identity, skill set, type of experience, or any other benefit that the new hire can bring to the team. In general, having multiple staff be part of final decision-making is a good idea- leaving it up to the full discretion of one person allows for bias, stereotypes, and personal connections to distort the process.
Follow up – Inclusive and affirmative hiring can also include follow-up conversations, such as providing detailed and specific feedback to candidates who were not selected. For candidates who are selected, sharing immediately about the opportunities they will have in the organisation, such as same-sex partner benefits, access to employee networks, a mentoring program for women, parental leave packages, and whatever else the organisation offers can be a strong way to demonstrate the commitment to inclusion and help folks to feel connected to the organisation right away.
Mindset – Throughout all the above ideas, keeping an open and inclusive mindset is key. Inclusion may feel difficult at first, because many folks are not used to thinking in this way- try not to be deterred! The benefits far outweigh the potential challenges. Remember that the intention is to find the candidates who intersect as highly qualified for the role and for whatever contributions they can further bring to the team. This additional contribution may be in the form of their identity, their unique skillset, experience in another industry, or any other number of things.

To connect this back to my opening example, I felt that candidates 1 and 2 had further contributions in terms of being able to connect with a specific demographic of student that needed it. As there were already many other staff & faculty with candidate 3’s demographics, the need wasn’t as strong there. For me, that meant the additional push factor to higher them wasn’t present in the same way that it was for the first two candidates.

To sum up, inclusive hiring doesn’t just happen. It needs to be thought about intentionally and thoroughly. There are many ways to ensure that JDs, resume vetting, interview processes and follow ups are done in ways that are affirming and welcoming to all candidates, regardless of identity. This will help to ensure that most wide-ranging candidate pool is included in searches, which will yield more diverse teams; this in turn will bring more creativity, experiences, and connection to the organisation as a whole and help it to thrive.

What it really feels like to lead Diversity, Equality and Inclusion

Written by Zahara Chowdhury

Zahara is founder and editor of the blog and podcast, School Should Be, a platform that explores a range of topics helping students, teachers and parents on how to ‘adult well’, together. She is a DEI lead across 2 secondary schools and advises schools on how to create positive and progressive cultures for staff and students. Zahara is a previous Head of English, Associate Senior Leader and Education and Wellbeing Consultant.

When I was given a DEI Lead role, I genuinely jumped with joy. It’s my dream job and dream career long term. I’ve delivered workshops, I’ve written, blogged and podcasted more and more about the work I do and I’ve been approached by several people looking to do similar for their organisations. Then I hit a very long ‘DEI-esque’ break: maternity leave. The time has forced me to reflect, feel and be still in many ways about my work. Now that I return as Head of Whole School DEI and Wellbeing, here is a short account of what it really feels like to lead DEI for an organisation and a few tips for DEI and School Leaders looking to create and support this role in their organisations.

It’s overwhelming and underestimated

DEI is everyone’s responsibility because it affects everyone – quite literally. Yet, it’s only recently become a ‘buzz word’ or perhaps only recently has it been given the accolade it deserves; it cannot be ignored. The rise (gift) of wokeism and a Gen Z workforce means it has to matter more.

Needless to say, for many people in the workplace (older millennials like myself, Gen X, baby boomers…) DEI is overwhelming because we are being forced to unlearn or reconfigure what we’ve normalised and learned not just professionally, but personally through our own lived experiences; our personal truths, if you will.

In most cases in the workplace, DEI learning has to happen in a very small window of time, sometimes your own time and at double speed. With post-Covid, work-life imbalance and Adam Grant’s perfect explanation of languishing that many of us are experiencing, it’s safe to say, (un/re)learning about DEI may not be high on anyone’s agenda.

That’s hard work. It’s overwhelming for a DEI Lead who has the responsibility to navigate this change for an entire organisation. At best, they’ll get it onto your radar, at worst, the organisation will be accused of tokenism.

As a DEI lead in education, I purposefully and actively use the words ‘organisation’ and ‘workplace’ because often, people mistake schools for being anything but. Working across a few sectors has taught me schools have very similar ‘issues’ to any other workplace – albeit they’re not really profit making, they don’t benefit from increasing budgets, they’re constantly at the forefront (or receiving end) of any social change or adversity, and they don’t (in many cases) have specialised, on site HR (Trusts, the independent sector, FE all have similar needs and issues). You might say, it makes the work in education more complex and dare I say it, requiring more skill.

Doing this work solo in the first instance, with it still being regarded as ‘new’ (although I’m getting tired of this excuse now) can be justified, but is a big job. But let me caveat this: DEI is a strategic and leadership responsibility which needs its own entire infrastructure. Equally, that does not mean an existing assistant head, deputy or ‘lead’ in schools capacity (desire, interest, or expertise) to do it.

DEI is specialised work, which needs time, strategising, an infrastructure, money, respect and skill – it should be at the heart of your people strategy and at the centre of your safeguarding strategy. It cannot be an add on – it just doesn’t work.

You will always be wired and triggered

Glennon Doyle quite perfectly explains to go where you are triggered in her wonderful book, Untamed. The exact quotation is plastered all over my workplace to remind me of my purpose and ‘why’. Working in DEI is so rewarding – there is nothing more purposeful than making people feel seen, heard, important and real. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing people flourish. Equally, it is so uncomfortable and hard. Really hard. There is nothing more painful than seeing people struggle mentally, physically and emotionally just because of who they are. This takes its toll.

You constantly worry about missing important dates; you want to include everyone and fear missing out on anyone from your DEI strategy; you are at the receiving end of nearly every ‘people’ problem and issue the organisation may encounter. You have an overwhelming sense of guilt and responsibility all at the same time.

The paradox is that the ‘work’ should and almost needs to happen overnight, yet it is not an overnight process.

Intersectionality becomes how you read, translate and respond to EVERYTHING. uncomfortable conversations are your comfortable conversations. A safe space is always vulnerable. And, beyond all of this, you are strategising, leading, managing, and implementing valuable policies and practices to make life so much better for everyone around you.

Whilst navigating Organisational DEI, how do you navigate yourself?

This is something I had to learn fast.

Strategy and a timeline are key to keep you grounded, on track and suppress the overwhelm. You cannot do it overnight, no matter how urgent and pressing the work is. The top level work takes time and your Headteacher/Leader should give you time to listen, understand and identify key priorities, culture needs, opportunities and more to put a strategy in place. DEI cannot be checked off in a 1 hour CPD session, or even 3 hours of CPD. It cannot be addressed in a few lessons. It is a range of themes, a culture, a mindset and curriculum that needs to be integrated into your whole school and organisation strategy. Rest assured that the work is never done, it just gets better and better.

You cannot do it alone. Sometimes, schools and teachers (myself included) adopt a martyrdom approach – one person manages and does it all. They become the DEI ‘expert’. They become the go to for ‘everything DEI’ whether that be strategy, staff training, student activities, DEI in the curriculum, operations and more. This can lead to a breakdown in communication, stress, loneliness, workplace conflict, more stress and most importantly, limited impact. DEI can and should be the responsibility of many. There are several strands, areas and several skills that are needed to successfully implement DEI. Once you, as Head of DEI, have created your strategy and proposed the resources needed, reach out to relevant stakeholders; reach out for expertise and give the work the importance and infrastructure it needs.

Set your boundaries and know ‘your people.’ Leading DEI is a privilege. It is transformative for organisational culture at every level. There is so much to do and you will be pulled, pushed, challenged and propelled in every direction. In many ways this is exciting. In some ways, it can take over your life. Set your boundaries and always come back to the organisation’s vision and your strategy. This will help you set boundaries, manage expectations and make an impact.

Those who lead or specifically work in DEI are good people. They are intensely empathetic, compassionate, intuitive, just, human, brave and vulnerable (I’m biased, I know!). Identify your inner circle, the people you can trust, offload to, seek advice and guidance from. These people will fast become friends, your professional safe space.

Accept that you won’t get ‘DEI right’ first time and you’ll make mistakes, need correcting and need to keep learning constantly. This is a huge, transformative opportunity for you and your organisation – positively embrace it, no matter how scary it may seem.

In conclusion…

Would I change anything about being head of DEI? Absolutely not. I love my work. So much. It is meaningful, testing, and challenging, and I adore every impact it has. And, what do I love most? It’s about steady, meaningful change. It encourages people to confidently speak their truth(s), belong, be seen and be heard. It’s about kindness and respecting difference. It brings out the best in people – and as cheesy as it sounds, that’s the core of what we need for sustainable workplaces, better education and ultimately, good people.

For more support in leading DEI at your school or organisation feel free to get in touch and I highly recommend www.thegec.org and www.diverseeducators.co.uk for your DEI training and development needs too.