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Partners: AMICS Looking in From
LOOKING IN FROM OUTSIDE INCLUSION MATTERS!
Tory Gillingham urges independent schools to avoid easily made assumptions and ensure that their marketing and admissions activity is truly inclusive.
How do you make sure your school marketing and admissions activities are inclusive? That’s the question AMCIS and the Girls’ Schools Association (‘GSA’) set out to address in a series of free webinars pecifi call ai e at t o e re pon i le for in epen ent school admissions, marketing and communications.
Appetite for practical advice
There is a huge appetite for practical advice on this subject and, while heads, teachers and governors have been grappling with diversity and inclusion for some time, I think correct in a in t i wa t e fi r t event to ive pecifi c support to admissions professionals. As I write this, we’ve t co plete t e fi r t we inar for ele ate
The content was expertly delivered by Claire Harvey and Helen Semple of the Schools Inclusion Alliance, with insightful input from individual parents and Black, LGBT+ and other organisations – including ACEN (the African Caribbean Education Network) – who gave us the unvarnished truth about their experiences.
Positive impact
There were so many takeaways it’s hard to know where to begin. The biggest, perhaps, was that this is something we must do for the health of our sector. Inclusive marketing and schools have a positive impact on everyone, not only marginalised groups. It’s what children want too. e learne t at t ere i no one i e fi t all an no overnight magic wand – we have to do the work. Every school and organisation – and I include AMCIS in this – must be honest and realistic about where they are and where they want to get to. Sticking a few images on our websites does not make us ‘inclusive’, though it can be the beginning of a process that leads us there.
Under-serviced
As anyone working in admissions and marketing knows only too well, making assumptions is a dangerous game.
the unvarnished truth
Perhaps the biggest assumption which a school can make is that a particular community is ‘hard to reach’. I loved the alternative description – hardly reached or underserviced – and the exhortation to think less about why certain families are not coming and more about what we are not doing to attract them. We were encouraged to consider what it is about our ‘front door’ that puts certain people off, to gather pertinent data, and to reach out to the communities we want to attract and engage with them authentically, in the spirit of building trust rather than one of quick transaction.
I loved the reminder about intersectionality, the fact that our faith, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, political views, physical and cognitive abilities are ALL at work in making us the individuals that we are. Of course!
Better representation
Finally, the call for better representation was loud and clear n in ee , ow iffi c lt it t e, loo in fro the outside at a prospective new school, if there is noone familiar there to show you that you’re going to be safe, visible and valued.
Anyone can watch the recordings of all three webinars and access a useful handout on the Resources section of the AMCIS website at amcis.co.uk. ●
TORY GILLINGHAM
is CEO of AMCIS, the Association for Admissions, Marketing and Communications in Independent Schools.
