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MITEY is a national network and campaign which works to bring more men into the UK’s early years education workforce, and support them once they are part of it. 

MITEY project lead Dr Jeremy Davies was Co-investigator on the ESRC-funded GenderEYE (Gender Diversification in Early Years Education) study, and wrote the GenderEYE Toolkit.

Just Like Us was founded for a simple reason: growing up LGBT+ is still unacceptably tough. To change this, we run the following programmes:

Our Ambassador Programme is a volunteering opportunity for LGBT+ young people aged 18-25 across England and Wales. We support them to use their voice in schools and in the media, to develop their skills and to find a sense of community.

Schools in England and Wales can also book a talk from our ambassadors, LGBT+ young people aged 18-25. Visiting schools in person or through an online platform, they educate on LGBT+ terminology, share their experiences and talk about allyship.

School Diversity Week is our annual celebration every June of LGBT+ inclusion within education. Reaching over 5,000 primary and secondary schools across England and Wales, the aim is to help schools to engage with LGBT+ inclusive education.

The Pride Groups programme aims to create safe and fun spaces for LGBT+ young people and their allies to come together and enjoy their time together at school. We support groups across the country by providing fortnightly educational resources, termly training and facilitate the sharing of best practice amongst a community of like minded educators.

Each of our programmes can be delivered in-person or remotely.

Our work has been recognised externally through a number of awards. These include winning a Business Charity Award and PinkNews Community Group of the Year award, as well as being runner up for a Third Sector Awards ‘Small Charity, Big Achiever’ Award and continue to produce research into the lives of young LGBT+ people, such as our 2020 Growing Up LGBT+ report found on our website.

Gender Action (GA), is a programme supported by Mission 44 and DECSY that empowers schools and educators to tackle gender inequality. At GA we offer free 1:1 training to educators to challenge sexism and stereotyping, in particular the underrepresentation of girls in STEM subjects. We support educators to create an action plan and set goals, enabling them to work their way up from GA ‘Supporter’ to ‘Beacon’ school, meaning they have made meaningful change to combat sexism.

We are an organisation run by educators with a wealth of experience from early years to further education. We take an intersectional and feminist approach to our work to ensure an inclusive and safe space for all those involved in the programme. We base our work on research evidence and as a team conduct our own research on social justice and have authored books on gender equality in education.

The aim of the website is to model lessons and bring together a variety of resources and links to help teachers successfully embed the values and knowledge of global citizenship, sustainability and antiracist education, into their daily teaching activities. Most of the resources are aimed at the primary Curriculum for Excellence framework, with suggestions towards the secondary curriculum.

Global citizenship is not a subject, nor is there any value in only holding stand-alone themed events around diversity. Instead it is an ethos that must flow among all the areas that we teach, and all the experiences young people have within the education system.

EduKit exists to help schools improve student outcomes by focusing on all of the things that children need to learn at school, that they can’t study in books. Positive wellbeing, mental health and self-worth are important areas of focus for us, and through our support students are empowered to understand themselves, their place in the world, their options after school and how they can change society for the better.

We achieve this through our EduKit Mobile app and the pastoral surveys that we offer to schools. The app empowers students to take ownership over the wellbeing and is packed with useful video and online resources to help them along the way. We also partner with a network of over 1,000 youth organisations able to help children to access impactful, life-changing support, training and guidance. We champion diversity, equality and acceptance and seek opportunities to showcase our fantastic partners who do the same.

Our ‘Girls in lockdown’ zine containing work by teenage girls created over lockdown – we’re looking
for entries from teachers for our next issue!

issuu.com/beherlead/docs/girls_in_lockdown_zine

https://www.beherlead.com/zine

The Square Pegs Education UK was established in September 2019 by Lizzy Swan to provide support to schools and their staff with mental health and well-being.

Through coaching and training we aim to remove the stigma from talking about mental health at work to help schools retain their best staff and teachers to sustain their well-being.

Our Director, Lizzy Swan, has 18 years experience of teaching in schools and 12 years at senior leadership level across a range of sectors including mainstream and special schools. Lizzy provides teachers and leaders with strategies and tools to support well-being and improve outcomes in school. We support staff and leaders with ‘difficult conversations’, managing workload, behaviour management, and setting healthy boundaries to avoid ‘burnout’. Lizzy’s coaching and training is embedded within the principles of positive psychology to enable all staff to flourish and be happy at work and in life.

We have been published in ‘The Secondary Curriculum Leaders Handbook’ edited by Roy Blatchford and published by John Catt Educational.

For Headteachers – Aspiring, current and former.

These are complex and challenging times for Leaders in education.  Increasingly Headteachers are feeling, and are made to feel, vulnerable due to short-termism, high stakes accountability and unethical employer behaviours.

Highly skilled, highly trained, highly experienced professionals, often with excellent track records in previous leadership posts and indeed in their current one, are leaving their posts.  Sometimes this is by choice, often it is not, placed in an impossible position by their employer, many feeling that they have no alternative but to move away from the school that they have dedicated themselves to.  Some manage to find their way back into education, many do not… lost to the system.

Now Teach recruits experienced professionals into teaching. We connect career changers and returners to work with teacher training providers. Collaboration with both throughout training ensures Now Teachers remain in the profession long term.

The Now Teach network develops dedicated teachers for schools, bringing diversity and valuable real-world experience to the class and to the staff room. We tailor our recruitment process to career changers and have developed a programme of wrap-around support for our network.

Founded in 2016, we are a not-for-profit charity with a vision to inspire talented people to bring their experience into education and help eradicate inequality of opportunity.

Set up in the midst of a teacher recruitment crisis, our goal is to normalise career change into teaching for the mutual benefit of pupils, schools and new entrants into the profession.

Since our founding, Now Teach has expanded to become an England-wide organisation. Since 2016, we have brought over 650 experienced professionals into Education, including the newest cohort of 144 trainees in 2022. Previous trainees have included MPs, CEOs, and a NASA scientist and return to work parents.

Mermaids supports trans and gender questioning kids and young people up until their 20th birthday. They also offer support to their parents and professionals involved in young peoples’ care. Their helpline, web chat and email service aims to reach kids and their parents when they need someone to talk to, and it’s open from 9am to 9pm, Monday to Friday. Local peer support groups, family residential trips and Pride events offer their families and young people a chance to connect with people experiencing similar challenges and triumphs. Mermaids also offer CPD accredited training to a variety of organisations, including schools, GP’s, businesses and more.

Through all their services, Mermaids aims to alleviate any stress associated with gender diversity for young people and their families, and create a safer, more accepting world for them.