PROMOTING EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN SCHOOLS

We speak to VISHALIE YADAV, of the Bedfordshire Schools Trust, lead teacher for equality and diversity, about how they have promoted equality, diversity and inclusion in their trust - and how you can do the same in your school

The Bedfordshire Schools Trust (BEST) comprises 10 schools - four lower schools, two primary schools, a middle school, two extended secondary schools, and one upper school. We also have five nurseries. Our trust strives to deliver great outcomes and opportunities for our students by offering them extensive curricular and extracurricular opportunities, because we aim to grow the ‘BEST’ in everybody.

I have recently been appointed as the lead teacher for equality, diversity, and inclusion across the trust - but I’m also the lead teacher at Samuel Whitbread, which is my base-school, for equality and diversity as well.

Ultimately, equality, diversity, inclusion mean acceptance. Acceptance of the idea that you can be whoever you want to be. My role provides me with the opportunity to work with schools across the trust to ensure we are celebrating and embracing our differences, and show that we are proud of who we are as individuals. So, ultimately, it’s the idea of acceptance and celebration.

Our trust aims to grow the ‘BEST’ in everyone. Equality, diversity and inclusion plays a significant factor in this because it helps to develop our students spiritually, morally, socially and culturally. We strive to provide an education that enables our students to grasp

the opportunity to explore their own values, and also to recognise that, throughout life, they are going to encounter people who have opposing or differing views, and that’s absolutely fine.

The Equality and Diversity Group is a group of leaders across the trust from all of our schools. It comprises senior leaders, headteachers, middle managers - all different types of staff working in our schools. We decided to put this working group together to look at how we can collaboratively develop those areas across our trust, and in our individual school settings.

We are at the beginning of our journey, and we still have a long way to go, but we’ve made a lot of progress in the areas we are focussing on. The group started by reviewing our policy, so that we are statutory compliant in relation to equality and diversity, and so we can build consistency across all our schools, making sure that we’re all effectively using the same guidance. Linked to this, we’ve introduced equality and diversity charters for each of our individual schools in order to promote a trust overview of how we are developing across the trust with the understanding that each school context will add to this.

We’ve begun to look at our recruitment process as we want to make sure that this reflects the diverse communities which we’re serving. Across the trust, we analyse our recruitment processes, the data of which is then shared with the principals so that they can see different trends.

On the educational front we have started to develop the curriculum, train staff and offer CPD opportunities so that staff feel confident to deliver on equality, diversity and inclusion to

their students and their communities. The CPD involves networking and being We decided to able to find professionals who are able put this working to come in and deliver on certain areas of the equality, diversity and inclusion group together agenda. The trust has also offered to look at how we programmes to promote women in can collaboratively leadership and ethnic minority leaders.

We initially sent out correspondence to all the schools to see who would be interested. I originally discussed it with my headteacher, who was keen to share it across the trust with other principals. We didn’t want to just keep it at a senior level; we wanted to have all stakeholders involved should they wish to be.

Both Gothic Mede and Samuel Whitbread Academies received the Inclusion Quality Mark award. At my baseschool, Samuel Whitbread, it was predominantly based on the provision that we put in place for our SEN students. The feedback we were given is that what we are providing for our students is brilliant, and that we should be looking at becoming a centre of excellence. The Inclusion Quality Mark was another opportunity for all the schools in the trust to collaborate and work together. It was great to have our SENCO and our inclusion lead work with the other schools to really bring together a provision that is open, fair and valued by our students.

Although it’s a new process that we’ve introduced to the trust, we’re already seeing the benefits of being able to work together. Over the last year we have managed to build consistency in equality and diversity across the trust. We have already established the equality and diversity policy, which all our schools used. We’ve also got the charter in place that allows for all schools to be consistent in their approach.

By working on equality and diversity we’re reviewing our curriculums and looking at the education we provide. We’re constantly looking to develop this so that it meets the needs of our students and our community, so that when students are leaving school, and they’re out in the wider world, they’re equipped with the necessary education and knowledge.

Another beneficial factor for the trust is that our students have been able to work with other schools, both locally and nationally along with other schools in our trust, for example, we have recently been involved in an international debate. At Samuel Whitbread, when we started our work on equality and diversity, the initial research involved us looking at the history of our school and where our school name originates from; it so happened that when we advertised this on our website we had a group in Scotland, the FJSS Group, who were looking into our history also.

We networked with them, and other trust schools (Robert Bloomfield Academy, Pix Brook Academy and Etonbury Academy) and it’s just snowballed from there. Further work has led us to recently holding an international debate with different schools across the world, including Zimbabwe and Nigeria. I think it’s key for us to be developing this work because we’re allowing our students the opportunity to be able to work with other, like-minded, students from different contexts and offering them an opportunity to collaborate on some important equality issues internationally.

I think the main factor for us, in terms of any challenges, is time. It’s being able to find the time to meet and work together as a group to develop an action plan. COVID has probably been the biggest challenge we have faced, because we’re having to meet at very short notice, and adapt and completely change our plans on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis. We are also a huge trust; we have 10 schools, all different stages of education - we’ve got nurseries and, at the same time, we’ve got an upper school with a sixth form - so consistency was something that was difficult, initially, and that’s why we’ve started a lot of work on having a generic Further work policy for each school with their own individual context and guidance linked has led us to to that. We’ve tried to make sure recently holding that everybody has the Equality and Diversity Charter, an international so that they’ve all got an action plan debate for their individual settings. Consistency is something that we really wanted to build.

I would say the most important aspect is being passionate. This isn’t a ‘tick-box’ exercise - it’s not about being tokenistic. To promote this, you’ve got to have that passion and drive. I would initially suggest to have a conversation in your school, whether that be with your principal or another member of staff, but initially have the conversation and find out who else may be interested and who would be willing to give up some time to form an Equality and Diversity Group.

Once a group has been formed, it’s about mapping out the areas of equality, diversity and inclusion you want to really start developing. It’s such a broad area, so it may be that you need to conduct a self-review of your school, your curriculum, your recruitment processes and your policies in order to establish if there are any gaps in any of these processes that you would like to you focus on.

The third most important step, from my experience - and how I’ve led things at Samuel Whitbread - is to seek your pupils’ opinions. You need to encourage your pupils to share what their views on equality, diversity and inclusion are because, ultimately, you want to develop a curriculum that’s going to allow them to be accepted, to feel valued, to feel welcomed and, most importantly, to learn.

So, to set the ball rolling, see if there are other members

of staff who are willing to help, form your Equality and Diversity Group, review your school in all aspects, and then listen to your students to learn their viewpoints so that you can actually put together an action plan.

Across the trust we’re still looking to ensure that, as an employer, we reach out to all sectors of our community. We’re going to focus on the recruitment process, making sure that we appeal to all the different representations we see in our community. I’m currently working towards an equality, diversity, inclusion quality mark, and I can use the information gained from this process to share with all the other trust To promote this, schools in order to help them to develop you’ve got to to a stage where we want them to be. have that passion Finally, I want to continue to develop the staff’s understanding of and drive equality, diversity and inclusion. We’ve already made a start by delivering an anti-racism session across the schools, to give staff the confidence to deliver relevant information to students in the classroom, but also to provide staff with the confidence to deal with those challenging situations that they may face. I would like to continue offering staff CPD sessions, and look at curriculum and see what else we can do, school-based, across the trust. There is a lot to do - but we’re making steady progress and taking slow steps towards that ultimate goal.