The Five Ws of Developing an Equality and Diversity Charter

The first step in developing an effective equality and diversity charter is to ask: Why.

Our trust serves communities in Leeds and Bradford. These include relatively wealthy market towns and inner city areas with some of the highest levels of deprivation in the country. The percentage of “white British” pupils in our schools varies from 81 per cent in one to less than 4 per cent in another.

These inequalities are repeated throughout society and throughout the sector. This means it is important for all our schools to focus on equality and diversity.

However, it is perhaps even more important in schools that serve communities that unrepresentative the rich diversity of modern Britain.

Bottom-up approach

Like all good initiatives, the development of our Charter came from the bottom up.

A student leadership group from each of our schools (which includes representatives from both primary and secondary schools) met for a day to discuss how their schools and their trusts can best support equality and celebrate diversity.

It was their idea to introduce a national charter that would set out our commitments, ambitions and actions.

Our directors agreed that this would be a great idea. However, we knew that we needed to ensure participation and ownership at all levels in order for the Charter to achieve real results.

Therefore, our next step was to organize professional training for all staff, including the central team. The event provided an opportunity to provide advanced training on EDI and at the same time gather employee views on what the charter should include.

The staff approached the task with energy and enthusiasm. They generated a variety of ideas that we found could be grouped into six key areas of action: leadership, culture, curriculum, anti-bullying, equal opportunity and community engagement.

Ownership from above

The charter then underwent several changes as it was reviewed by school and trust leaders, always taking into account suggestions from students and staff.

To avoid making the document too long and/or unreadable, the final version included a detailed list of activities under each of the six headings. This ensured that there was enough detail to “bring to life” what each obligation would entail in the day-to-day running of the trust.

The next step was to engage governors and trustees, which we did at our annual trust strategy event. This brings together senior leaders, local governors, trustees and members to review and celebrate the trust’s performance over the previous 12 months and consider next steps in the development of the trust.

Once again, we took the opportunity to provide advanced training in EDI for those involved in management. We then introduced them to the charter and, in particular, to the activities that were most relevant to their role.

For example, they have a responsibility to ensure that policy and practice systematically take equality and diversity into account and that this aspect of our work is a priority when planning for school improvement.

The charter also requires governors to consider how recruitment and development ensure equality of opportunity, and to examine how we can deliver on our commitment to develop systems to monitor and address under-representation.

We have a takeoff

We then turned our attention to the launch. To do this, we reached out to our students and organized an event where choir members from each school came together to sing and celebrate the commitments set out in the charter.

Parents, carers and members of the wider community were invited, and our ambitions were reflected in press releases and social media posts.

Our challenge now is to keep the Charter alive, so that it does not become just a piece of paper, but brings real benefits to our communities. This is due in no small part to the sense of ownership that has engendered our extensive consultation process.

To support this, we have created opportunities to regularly remind everyone of their roles and responsibilities in implementing the Charter, and have set milestones to identify and review our progress.

From the very beginning Why ours has arrived WHO, What, When And How. They may be different for everyone Wherebut as belonging once again takes its place at the center of our educational discourse nationally, there can be no doubt that it is necessary work for all of us.