My Experience as an Neurodivergent Student Teacher
Written by Catrina Lowri
Catrina Lowri is the founder of Neuroteachers and a neurodivergent teacher, trainer, and coach. As well as having 22 years’ experience of working in education, she also speaks as a dyslexic and bipolar woman, who had her own unique journey through the education system.
I hid my Neurodiversity in my professional life for many years, and here is why.
Student days
When I first started teaching, back in the 90’s, I had never met another neurodivergent teacher. I declared my dyslexia on my PGCE. The course tutor had no idea what to do with the information and told me, if I wanted to learn about Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), I needed to take extra courses. Our only training on SEND was half a day of project work where we produced materials to support different ‘needs’, then shared them amongst ourselves.
As I thought this was inadequate, I offered to give a half hour talk about my dyslexia.
Attendance was voluntary.
Only half the cohort turned up.
Afterwards, another student commented that “Dyslexia is a class issue. If you are working class, you are thick’ and then he pointed at me “But if you are middle class you’re ‘dyslexic’”. He made air quotes and rolled his eyes. Not the reception I’d been hoping for. After that, I stayed quiet about my dyslexia.
My first Manic Episode
I had a serious car crash at the start of my third teaching practice. My car flipped and rolled onto its side. My passenger, and I had to escape through the sunroof. Luckily, I was driving a second-hand Volvo. Both of us escaped without a scratch.
No harm done. Or so I thought.
I stood on the pavement, watching emergency services deal with the debris and seeing to the driver, whose car hit me, (and escaped with only cuts and bruises). I had an overwhelming feeling that I must be special to survive such a terrible accident.
I remember telling the paramedic that I was fine and
“Didn’t even skag my tights!’, and then giggling hysterically.
I started to stay up late, writing down my brilliant ideas. I wasn’t sleeping and was hallucinating. Although I was still going into my placement school, my lessons went on tangents, and I swung between excitement and irritation. I was sent home until I’d seen a doctor, but they put me on the wrong medication.
As a quick caveat, I am not anti-medication. Medicine can save lives, but I was given SSRI’s (selective, serotonin, reuptake inhibitors) without a full assessment. My doctor didn’t know that I was bipolar. I had no diagnosis. SSRIs can trigger manic episodes in some people, and that is what happened to me.
Surviving the accident ‘proved’ to my manic brain, I was impervious to metal. I stopped looking when I crossed the road and started taking other risks. One day, I nearly got hit by a car. Fortunately, my erratic behaviour was witnessed by a medical receptionist on her way back to work. She persuaded me to speak to a doctor, who assessed my need as acute and found me a bed in a secure ward.
I was in hospital for 2 weeks, then a day patient for a further 6.
I had to re-sit my final teaching practice.
Resitting
I started masking whilst re-sitting teaching practice (TP) at a lovely inner city secondary school in the North of England. I did much better because I was no longer manic. I also moved to a tiny house on the edge of the moors, and lived alone, far from distractions. This had two advantages; I couldn’t afford to go out, and I had no one to go out with, so I worked and slept.
Occasionally my ND got exposed; I’d make spelling mistakes, or misunderstood what my mentor wanted because of my auditory processing difference. Generally, no one noticed. I kept my bipolar at bay by going to bed early, then getting into school at the same time as the caretaker, so I could have some headspace. Then my tutor came in to observe me.
“You seem so different to the last time I observed you – what happened?”
I had lied to him. I told him the reason I went to hospital was due to physical injury caused by the crash and that I missed some of my TP because I was ‘a bit anxious’.
I didn’t tell him about the suicidal ideation or being impervious to metal. I felt like if I said this, he would say I shouldn’t work with children. I love my work, so I stayed quiet
I passed the course.
I’m not proud of lying, but I did what so many ND people do to get through life. We mask. Because we will have to, until the world changes to accommodate us.
Accessing accurate funding for your EAL pupils through the October Census
Written by Catherine Brennan
Catherine is the Director of Better Bilingual, a social enterprise based in Bristol, an EAL Academy Associate and active member of NALDIC.
One of the questions which often comes up during our Better Bilingual discussions with schools about developing EAL provision is funding. No surprise there…but what IS surprising is the absence of information and understanding about English as an additional language (EAL) being one of the 14 funding factors explicitly identified in England’s Schools operational guide: 2022-23
In this blog, I aim to explain what this EAL funding is and how schools may more easily understand – and hopefully access it – for the benefit of our many multilingual pupils, in relation to the Protected Characteristic of ‘Race’.
What is this EAL funding and how can schools access it?
This education funding guidance from the Education & Skills Funding Agency identifies English as an additional language (EAL) as being ‘an optional factor’ for local authorities to consider when they ‘plan the local implementation of the funding system’ – i.e. when they allocate central government funding to local schools.
The guidance specifies that ‘Pupils identified in the October census with a first language other than English may attract funding for up to three years after they enter the statutory school system. Local authorities can choose to use indicators based on one, two, or three years, and there can be separate unit values for primary and secondary.’
The means that each individual EAL pupil in a primary school could attract between £500 and £750 per pupil, whilst secondary funding could be between £1,500 and £1,750 per pupil.
This could be for 1 year or up to 3 years – all depending on how your local authority has decided to use this ‘optional factor’. So a considerable amount of money…
You can read an analysis of ‘how each local authority has allocated their dedicated schools grant (DSG) schools block funding for 2022 to 2023’ here: Schools Block Funding Formulae 2022 to 2023 (Education & Skills Funding Agency, June 2022).
Why is the October Census so important for schools’ EAL funding?
There are two reasons for this – firstly because this EAL data is collected only once each year through the October Census and secondly because the ‘first language’ definition is often misunderstood, meaning that many EAL pupils are not recorded correctly in the October Census. This can result in schools (and therefore their EAL pupils) missing out on funding.
So what does ‘first language other than English’ mean? Is it the same as ‘EAL’?
Before I answer the first question, I’ll answer the second – yes, it is. And the more we discuss and explore the definition of ‘EAL’ in schools, the better, as it’s important we have a shared understanding of it in order to develop an asset-based approach to EAL pedagogy.
As stated in the DfE English proficiency ad-hoc notice (Feb 2020):
‘Information on a pupil’s first language is collected in the school census. A pupil is recorded as having English as an additional language if she/he is exposed to a language at home that is known or believed to be other than English. It is not a measure of English language proficiency or a good proxy for recent immigration.’
That last sentence is important – ‘EAL’ does not indicate fluency and it does include those pupils who may have arrived some time ago or who were born in the UK.
It’s also worth noting that if there is more than one language spoken in the home – which includes English – the DfE requests that the language other than English is recorded.
Why might this be a positive thing? Well, if only English is recorded, then the additional language (and the additional cultural richness and sense of identity associated with it) may not be acknowledged, valued and utilised in school for wellbeing and academic success.
How can I find out more about EAL funding?
Our Better Bilingual Guidance on EAL funding for schools 2022-23 gives further information about this topic and we recommend that you talk to your governing body and local authority to find out more about how this funding is allocated (and monitored) locally.
How can schools use this EAL funding to promote DEI in relation to multilingualism?
Every single pupil learning through EAL is different and every school has their own EAL context. At Better Bilingual, we recommend funding decisions are made after the SLT:
- looks closely at their pupil population, ensuring that first language data is accurate
- analyses which particular individuals or groups are doing well (or not so well)
- reflects on the strengths of (and needs re) current whole school EAL provision.
Whether the need is for initial pupil assessments, a New Arrivals Policy or CPD on EAL assessment, potential EAL funding accessed through the October Census could be vital in eliminating discrimination and promoting high attainment for ALL our EAL pupils.
Flour on my Face
Written by Siya Twani
I am a Motivational Speaker who speaks in schools and businesses, on Diversity, Equality & Inclusion, Resilience and Mental toughness.
My name is Siya and I speak in schools and businesses across the country and internationally. Like Nelson Mandela I am a man who stuck my neck out like a giraffe and spoke up against the Apartheid regime. This resulted in me being arrested, tortured, and put in prison for four years. I have a lived experience of facing, the odds, and reinvented myself by defying the regime in letting my voice be heard and recognised as co-equal. The struggle for belonging has been my life long struggle. I went to prison because I wanted to create a South Africa and a world where all of us as human beings can experience the joy of belonging, not just some but ALL OF US TOGETHER.
Our children are dual heritage. My children have struggled with belonging and acceptance or not being accepted for who you are.
My youngest son is Sipho. When he was about nine years old, Sipho and Megan were friends at primary school and one Friday after school Sipho went to play with Megan at her house. On collecting Sipho I noticed that he was covered in white powder, before I could enquire Megan said, ‘Look Siya I made Sipho white like me.’ I said, ‘That is so lovely Megan’, as she was just an innocent child, wanting a friend to look like her. All Megan’s dolls were white and so thought because all her world is white therefore Sipho as friend needed to be white. It was an innocent gesture and attempt of acceptance and inclusion. She wanted Sipho not to feel different.
Now fast forward to when we moved from Essex to Edinburgh. Now in Edinburgh one beautiful summer’s day, I decided to take my three beautiful children to a park to play on the swings at a local park. As we entered through the gate, myself and my children were subjected to racial abuse, called monkeys and told to get out of her you are dirty, you brown people. They taunted my children. They went on to say, ’You are not welcome here’, and my children broke down in tears. I approached these ignorant white kids who were never exposed to a people of different colour or background. They all ran out of the park. Three of the older teens came back to the park to apologise. I then took that opportunity to educate these young people and expand their horizons. I asked them, can you imagine what it must feel like being spat at, called names, being bullied all because I was different? Can you imagine the power of your words, attitudes, and behaviours towards my children? I went to ask them. One day how would they feel if their own children were subjected to racial trauma and abuse. They were stunned and all they did they kept apologising and their apology was accepted as I said to them. it takes a strong person to apologise for their mistakes.
I wish I could say that was the last time that my three little children were subjected to racial trauma and abuse. That incident is stuck in their minds as they often reminisce about it and how big daddy protected then form those empty-headed idiots.
In writing this blog I do not want you anyone of you as readers the impression that either myself or my children had persecution complex. It was our daily bread” our daily experience of being a dual heritage family in predominantly white village just outside of Edinburgh, called Black Hall and by the very nature of the demographics was predominantly white.
My daughter who was then 10 and my son who was then 8 were the only dual heritage children in the whole school. Again, the demon of racism that taunted me growing up in South Africa was now tormenting and terrorising my children and impacting on their mental health and wellbeing. I remember my daughter having cultural and racial identity crisis. One day she locked herself in the bathroom bleached herself because she wanted to be white like all the other kids in the school. She took the scissors and cut her hair off because it was not blond like her mums and the kids in the school. These two stories of my children’s lived experience and their struggle of belonging or not belonging is a real one to this very day. When people see my children, they don’t see white people first they say black children because they are not “pure white” like everybody else around them.
To this day my children live with this creative tension that, for white people they will never be white enough and for black people they will never be black enough. They are in no man’s land. I went to prison in South Africa so my children and my grandchildren could experience the joy of belonging and not have to go through what I went through because of racially divided South Africa. Not so long ago in this country there were signs in the 60s saying, No blacks, no Irish, no gay, no Jews and no dogs.
It was Dr Martin Luther King in his famous speech ‘I have a dream’……. who said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.” The question I ask myself is …why should they be judged in the first place whether they are black, white gay or not gay, trans or not, short, or tall?
The incident I related above of those young people in the park. They did not realise the impact of their words, attitudes, behaviour and the racial trauma my children suffered as the result of their ignorance. Because really, racism is a child of ignorance. They did not know how it would make my children feel for the rest of their lives. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ those words cut deep into the psyche of my children, and profoundly affected their mental health, wellbeing and sense of belonging.
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ― Maya Angelou
My passion is to educate, empower and expand young people’s horizons about Diversity & Inclusion That is why I speak in schools and delivery inclusion and diversity workshops and promoting mutual respect. Celebrating diversity and not seeing diversity as a threat but as a strength that unites all human beings. Because there’s only one Race …The human Race.
In my culture we do not have the concept of stranger danger. Every is potential friend or a friend you haven’t met yet. The word for community in Zulu is Umphakathi meaning we are together on the inside. No one is excluded or marginalised, picked on, we all experience the sense of belonging to one another.
In the stage play and movie HIGH SCHOOL Musical : After Gabriella and Troy successfully perform their song (“Breaking Free”), Ms. Darbus gives them the lead roles, making Sharpay and Ryan understudies. Both teams win their respective competitions, and the entire school gathers in the gym to celebrate (“We’re All In This Together”). Chad asks Taylor out, and Sharpay makes peace with Gabriella. We need to be curious, embrace, celebrate diversity and respect differences and not see differences as threat but as a strength.
This is what drives me into schools because as Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon with which we can change the world”.
As a passionate, engaging educator I have moral obligation to educate, empower and enthuse young people to make this world a better place to live in.
Instead of putting flour on my face… let’s put flowers in each child’s life so they can thrive.
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” – Nelson Mandela
Tackling unconscious bias within UK schools
Written by Sonia Elmer-Soman
Sonia Elmer-Soman has a background in both law and education. She is a qualified law lecturer and has many years’ experience working as a legal practitioner in two prestigious law firms in the City and now within a reputable law firm local to her home town in Essex. She is also a qualified primary school teacher and is a guest writer for professional journals.
This blog was written for the National Association of Primary Education (‘NAPE’) and Primary First.
What is Unconscious Bias?
If statistics are to be believed, the Gov.uk paper on School teacher Workforce – Ethnicity Facts and Figures (2019) revealed that 85.7% of all teachers in state funded schools in England were white British. 3.8% of teachers were from the White Other ethnic group, the second highest percentage after the white British group and 92.7% of head teachers were white British whilst only 65.4% of pupils are from a white British background.
Whether we like it or not, we all exhibit unconscious bias in some way whether deciding which friend to honour a dinner date with when we’ve double-booked or making application shortlists that reflect our own cultural experiences. Unconscious bias is about patterns of behaviour that affect our everyday decision making and which are influenced by shared background, culture, and personal experiences.
Surely it is time to address the implications of unconscious bias within UK state schools? Of interest is how biases drive high turnover and high attrition among black Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) teachers, in a system where BAME pupils do not see themselves represented in the ‘school community’ and the ‘school community’ does not reflect how wider society or ‘Global Britain’ looks today.
Experiences of BAME teachers
- Tereshchenko, Mills and Bradbury (2020) shows us that the proportion of students and teachers from minority ethnic groups is disparate, meaning that BAME students and teachers may not see teaching as a viable option without role models to inspire. Research participants stated that they regularly experienced:
- being ‘passed over’ in senior promotions and hitting a glass ceiling which may not have been obvious at the outset. ‘I look at the people at my school that have been promoted or given opportunities to learn and they’re all white British’;
- a ‘culture of toxicity which took the form of micro-aggressions, covert bias and injustices’. ‘It matters what the culture of the school is, how they view ethnic minorities and if one walks around a school on interview and they don’t see diversity reflected in the pupils or staff’, then they would be ‘more likely to opt for a school which had encouraged and supported this’;
- a revolving door resulting in BAME teachers having to move to more diverse and disadvantaged/SEN schools in London in order to advance their careers;
- feeling that ‘wider social inequalities are mirrored and reproduced in school power hierarchies which underpin and drive BAME teachers’ unequal career progression’.
Examples of Unconscious Bias
However, it is not just in education where we see unconscious bias being played out. Channel 4’s Hollyoaks aired a powerful episode on the subject.
In one scene, Martine, a black woman, attends a cancer diagnostic appointment and is first to arrive at the surgery. Tara, a white British woman, arrives after Martine for the very same reason. The receptionist informs the two women that the appointment has been double booked and that only one of them can see the Doctor that day. Tara begins to cry. Martine awaits the decision in silence. The receptionist chooses Tara and tells Martine ‘Tara is clearly upset’ and ‘Have some sympathy’.
It is not unusual for NHS staff to have to make these decisions against the backdrop of a system which is overwhelmed and underfunded. However, Statistics show black women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer due to systematic racism and misinformation (Morris, 2021). When Martine questions the receptionist, she is told to ‘ take a step back and stop being aggressive’. The writers skilfully make the point that the word ‘aggressive’ like intimidating are so often used against black people and people of colour who have ever dared to stand up for themselves. Seconds later, Martine tries to explain that ‘I have a lump too. I am terrified too’, but the scene ends with Martine standing outside in the cold whilst the two women make their way inside the surgery.
This will not have been the only problematic person or challenging situation Martine will have faced that day. For instance, where could she be in her job she wonders, if ‘it weren’t for so many barriers’. ‘The micro-aggressions are so subtle and covert it is hard to prove’. There is a sense throughout the episode that Martine must be’ strong’ and toughen up. Any injustice she feels must be borne with unflinching humility.
Parm Sandhu was the most senior Asian woman in the Metropolitan Police Force and the only non-white female to have been promoted to Chief Superintendent in the history of the Force. Her book entitled ‘Black and Blue – One Woman’s Story of policing and prejudice’ she tells of a challenging thirty year rise through the ranks of the Force where she faced racial and gender discrimination and spurious claims of misconduct after whistleblowing.
In her nail-biting account, Sandhu observes how persons of colour get the jobs and perform as well as, if not better in some cases than, their white British counterparts, but when they come to knock on that door for promotion or to raise a concern, the path is fraught with complexity and struggle and the rules are very different depending on who knocks.
So, could unconscious bias have played a part in the situation with Megan Markle? In her infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey, Megan spoke of the need to avoid polarising people and she found it hard being blamed for something ‘not only that I didn’t do’, but ‘that actually happened to me’. Megan’s quote ‘If you love me, you don’t need to hate her [Kate] and if you love her, you don’t need to hate me’ is the money sentence and will likely resonate. Megan felt she was often compared to Kate, with Kate usually coming off better because when one is faced with fewer battles to fight, they can concentrate on the battles worth fighting. One is far less likely to miss-step when not constantly on a back-foot.
What can Senior Leadership Teams and Ofsted do to improve recruitment and retention of BAME staff?
-
- Diversification of the workforce only occurs if there is an ambition and an appetite to make it happen.
- Look around your school. How many teachers or teaching assistants of colour do you see? Who sits on your leadership team and at the table of the Board of Governors?
- When advertising for teachers, try to advertise in two different demographics and avoid language as ‘will suit someone from the local area’, but rather you could advertise in such a way as to actively source and welcome applicants from the BAME community.
- Consider whether opportunities for training are open to persons of colour. What does that training look like?
- Is there a pattern as to whom you choose for advancement. As one of the participants in the earlier research paper commented ‘First level the playing field and then let’s talk about merit’.
- Move out of your comfort zone. Spend time with people from different cultures and backgrounds and see things from a different perspective. Less diversity means conformity of thought and exclusion.
- Ofsted could revise their reports avoiding language relating to demographic as being eg ‘mostly white British with lower than average children with EAL, a statement of need or pupil premium’ and they could also score schools according to if they have made some attempt to recruit and retain BAME staff.
- Provide opportunities to raise concerns with a diverse team. Use Gary Klein’s “premortem”. Imagine a decision or conflict leads to disaster and detail how it might have happened. Thus, search for overlooked problems.
- Be comfortable talking about matters involving race. Avoid language as ‘She is more English than us’ or ‘I don’t see colour’ as this only serves to invalidate a person’s background.
- Think about what social media platforms you share with your staff. Can you remain objective and professional if Facebook (staff) friends are commenting on every aspect of your personal life.
Conclusion
Schools roll out PREVENT training to staff, but do we really understand that those young people influenced into radicalisation are those who are in search of belonging and identity. However, we ‘prevent’ a sense of belonging when our institutions are not geared up to providing role models as part of a pupil’s lived daily reality. We are very good at teaching pupils about tolerance, equality and diversity, but we don’t show them what that looks like within the school environment.
In the wake of the George Floyd Killing, there was much emphasis on social media about ‘learning from it’ and ‘moving on’. Prima facie, this is an ideal but, in reality, how do you ‘learn’ and ‘move on’ if those uncomfortable conversations about colonialism, slavery and trade are not discussed in any meaningful way? This can leave young, vulnerable people grieving and in a situation which is inexplicable to them.
When we only look to recruit and retain those who conform to our own set of values and perspectives, we risk losing skills within the profession but also, we can inadvertently develop some negative and harmful cultures out of complacency, which can threaten the integrity of structural practices. If leaders only create other leaders in the image of themselves with replicas of models that already exist, what real steps have we taken to progress diversity and integration?
Senior Leadership Teams have a key role to play in making diversification of the workforce happen and in shaping the culture, vision and ethos of the school (see Benjamin Aishnine, who is Head of Equality, Inclusion and Culture at the British Medical Association and Racial Literacy at Integrity coaching).
References:
Aishnine, B. (2021) Aishnine. [Online] Available at: https://www.aishnine.com/
HM Government (2019) School teacher workforce. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/workforce-and-business/workforce-diversity/school-teacher-workforce/latest
Integrity Coaching (2022) Coaching & Leadership Development. [Online]. Available at: https://www.integritycoaching.co.uk/
Morris, N. (2021) ‘We are not listened to’: Why Black women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with late-stage cancer’, 27 April, Metro [Online]. Available at: https://metro.co.uk/2021/04/27/black-women-are-twice-as-likely-to-be-diagnosed-with-late-stage-cancer-14475521/
Sandhu, P. (2021) Black and Blue: One Woman’s Story of Policing and Prejudice. Atlantic books.
Tereshchenko, A; Mills, M; Bradbury, A; (2020) Making progress? Employment and retention of BAME teachers in England. UCL Institute of Education: London, UK
What DEI Metrics are you using to measure the impact of your strategic actions?
Written by Hannah Wilson
Founder of Diverse Educators
We are data rich when it comes to the students in our schools, but we are data poor when it comes to our staff.
Any organisation leaning into a DEI strategy and action plan needs to consider the data that they have, and the data that they need to have, to inform the why, the how and the what of their approach.
I find that the CQ framework helps us to think about the cyclical steps we need to take to gather, interpret and act on our DEI data:
- CQ Drive: Why do we need to gather DEI data? Are our intentions clearly being communicated?
- CQ Knowledge: What do we need to know about our workforce and workplace? How psychologically safe do employees feel?
- CQ Strategy: How will we gather meaningful data? How will this data be handled and shared?
- CQ Action: How will this data be used to inform our next steps? How will this data make our workplace more inclusive?
DEI Metrics in a school / trust thus need to include:
- Baseline data
- Benchmarking data
- Progress data
- Qualitative data
- Quantitative data
- Stakeholder engagement data
- Stakeholder feedback data
- Recruitment, retention and promotion data
- Salary data
We need to remember that this data is about human beings.I once heard a school leader say, we need to focus on the ‘names not the numbers’ in our data trackers in schools. Each piece of data is thus a story, a story about a person.
So this data needs to be handled with care. DEI data is asking people to share their identity, their lived experience and to disclose personal details. This can only happen in a culture of intentional trust and psychological safety.
Moreover, the data needs to be handled in an intersectional way. We need to look at trends within groups but also across groups, for example, pay progression for men v women, pay progression for white v black employees, pay progression for white men v white women v black men v black women.
Recruitment and retention data is a great place to start:
- Who are we attracting?
- Who are we longlisting?
- Who are we shortlisting?
- Who are we interviewing?
- Who are we recruiting?
- Who are we promoting?
- Who are we retaining?
- Who are we losing?
Some other questions for us to discuss before we create and send out a staff survey.
How do we measure diversity?
Conventional measurements rely on counting the number of people within an organisation who belong to each of the protected characteristic groups, as identified by them.
How do we gauge how people feel about the culture of their workplace?
Employee feedback is one of the most useful data sources for measuring inclusion, especially when leaders can use a “pulse,” a quick survey, to check in with employees without adding to distractions. The challenge, however, is in first establishing the right metrics and then asking the right questions.
How do we frame a DEI survey?
To create a DEI survey that captures employee attention and gets engagement, there are a number of factors to consider:
- Creating Inclusive Demographic Questions
- Making the DEI Survey Anonymous
- Making Questions Non-Required
- Being Forthcoming With Intent
- Using Expert Resources
What is a DEI dashboard?
A diversity, equity, and inclusion dashboard is an interface that provides companies with a visual representation of their current diversity, equity, and inclusion practices.
How do you create goals for DEI initiatives?
- Define goals using benchmarking data
- Measure outcomes, not just output
- Focus on retention, not just recruitment
- Review inclusion, not just diversity
- Use surveys to measure inclusion
How do you measure DEI effectiveness?
- Resources/ funds allocated to DEI strategy
- Number of diverse employees across the organisation
- Percentage of diverse employees in leadership positions
- Investment into development programmes for diverse employees
- Gap in pay between different demographic groups
- Length of time diverse employees stay with the organisation
- Feedback in exit interviews from diverse workforce
- Number of incident reports e.g. microaggressions
To help you think about the data you are, and could be, using we are hosting a series of free DEI Metrics webinars with some of our collaborative partners, so that you can find out more about their tools to help you measure DEI in your school/ trust.
3 teams, 3 platforms, 3 solutions:
- On Fri 21st October 12.00-1.00pm we will be joined by the Edurio team
- On Mon 7th November 12.00-1.00pm we will be joined by The GEC team
- On Thu 24th November 12.00-1.00pm we will be joined the Flair Impact team
Register to attend but also to receive a link to the recording of each session.
I’m not weird, I’m neurodivergent – masking as a ND teacher
Written by Catrina Lowri
Catrina Lowri is the founder of Neuroteachers and a neurodivergent teacher, trainer, and coach. As well as having 22 years’ experience of working in education, she also speaks as a dyslexic and bipolar woman, who had her own unique journey through the education system.
Early in my teaching career, I got good at masking. I felt I needed to do this because, at that time (late 90’s/ early 00’s) there was little understanding of neurodiversity. I’m dyslexic. I hid this because I’d get questions like ‘But how can you teach spelling and reading?’ I’m also bipolar. I didn’t know this at the time, even though I’d been in a secure ward. I wouldn’t get diagnosed until I was 10 years into my career. At the beginning I hid this unknown mental health issue because of the shame I felt. I learnt to mask so I could survive working in schools designed for neurotypicals.
The term ‘masking’ originates from the autistic community, but my straw poll of ND friends and family tells me that we all do it. This involves studying the neurotypical people around you and acting like them, whilst also hiding our ND in plain sight. It can be incredibly damaging. Masking takes a huge amount of energy. There is a possibility of fatigue. This can lead to burnout. Dropping the mask in such a fashion can be traumatic.
For more information, please read my blog here https://www.neuroteachers.com/post/it-s-like-her-shoes-don-t-fit-a-story-about-the-consequences-of-autistic-masking
Even though I have understood masking for years, I didn’t consider that it applied to me until, after 19 years of success, it all unravelled.
Carrying the mask requires perfect conditions; I control my sleep, have cut out all alcohol and caffeine. I draw boundaries around my working life so I can fully concentrate on it. This means I don’t indulge in trivial social interactions because I just can’t. If I do, I burn through the energy I need to do my job, which is what I’m paid for. Teaching is a social job. I use what little ‘social’ I must, to build relationships with the children and their families.
That doesn’t mean I don’t make friends at work, I do, I just need them to understand that I can’t/ won’t take part in the following activities.
- Banter, small talk, watercooler chat
- Group jokes/ threads about your pets/kids or memes shared via email or the office chat facility
- Any Christmas do\ Secret Santa\ carolling\ staff pantomime
- Going to a pub/ café for lunch during school hours
It’s not unreasonable to ask that I have 20 minutes out of the day, to sit quietly in the office and eat my lunch, without having to interact with anyone. I need decompression time to deal with the demands of your neurotypical world.
I’m not being weird or stuck up. I’m not a recluse or a nutter. I’m neurodivergent and I need to be allowed to remove the mask for a short while, so that I can do my job.
What is your school’s infrastructure for DEI?
Written by Hannah Wilson
Founder of Diverse Educators
I get asked a lot to work with schools to help them shape their DEI infrastructure. There is not a one-size fits all approach as it depends on the size of your school and staff/ student bodies. But a helpful way of thinking about it is to parallel it to the team structure you have for safeguarding – a named lead on SLT, a deputising team, an attached governor but an expectation that all staff are trained, vigilant and take collective responsibility.
As a former start-up headteacher, I apply the same concept to staffing DEI as I did to growing a school staff model year by year – map out what you want the long term staffing structure and stakeholder map to look like and use it as a shadow to capture what you have in place and set yourself targets by term, by year of how you will grow the team and distribute the leadership.
Some school-level roles to consider putting in place, over time to create the infrastructure to bring your DEI strategy to life:
DEI Strategic Lead (like a DSL)
This is the person who has DEI in their job title. Ideally they sit on the SLT so they can work with the strategic plans for the school.
DEI Operational Lead (like a DDSL)
This is the person who deputises for the DEI Strategic Lead. They often sit in the MLT and are part of the curriculum and/ or pastoral team. They might have a specific remit or share the responsibility and co-lead on the strategy.
DEI Governor (like a Safeguarding Governor)
This is the link person on the governing body. Someone to represent the governors but to also build the bridge to the school, furthermore to support and to be a critical friend to the DEI leader.
DEI Working Party
This is a group of staff champions and ambassadors, they can sit anywhere in the staff structure, but it is important to invite everyone and see who steps forwards. Non-teaching staff need to be invited and included as well so consider when the meetings take place.
DEI Student Ambassadors
This is a group of students who are the advocates and activists in the school. They might already be prefects, student council reps or involved in student groups like an anti-racist group or a LGBT group. It is a great way to create new leadership roles for students.
DEI Parent and Carer Champions
This is a group of parents and carers who are the advocates and activists in your community. They might already be involved as your parent governor, as your parent association or as your parent helpers. It is a great way to engage parents and carers who might be the critical friends of the school on these issues.
Some trust-level DEI roles to consider if you are working at macro scale:
A lot of trusts we work with are asking all of their schools to nominate/ appoint a lead for DEI and then they create a horizontal group across the group of schools to bring these representatives together to look at trust-wide DEI needs. There are some key functions to make sure you include in this group such as someone from HR who is looking at the people strategy and recruitment practices.
Some other things to consider:
The language used to frame each of these roles and groups is important and needs to be discussed at length.
- Are you using DI, EDI or DEI as your acronym? What are the nuances of each and how do they frame your commitment?
- Are you using leader, champion, ambassador, head of or director as the title? What are the nuances of each and what do they say about the power/ scope of the role?
- How are you remunerating the role? If you have not given time and money to this role, why not? Would you ask someone to be a SENDCO or DSL without additional allowances?
- How are you resourcing the role? Does the DEI lead have a budget that they are responsible for?
- How are you investing in and training the DEI team? Does the DEI leader have leadership training coaching and/ or mentoring in place? Are they being set up to succeed or fail in this role?
- How are you safeguarding the DEI team? Does the DEI leader have supervision in place to look after them and their mental health and wellbeing to mitigate the emotional tax of the role?
Some signposting for further support:
We have collated job descriptions and personal specifications for different DEI roles to help you frame them. Find out more here:
https://www.diverseeducators.co.uk/diversity-equity-inclusion-dei-leaders/
We have a DEI leaders network on different social media spaces including a DM group on twitter and networking groups in our Mighty Network community space:
https://diverse-educators.mn.co/feed?autojoin=1
We have designed and we deliver a 1 year DEI leaders programme, there are 10 monthly virtual sessions for each cohort. Find out more here:
https://www.diverseeducators.co.uk/our-dei-leaders-programme/
Accessing the voices of students with SENDs: barriers faced by a PhD researcher
Written by Klaudia Matasovska
Former SEND teacher. She worked for 16 years in London, specifically in the areas of autism and sight impairment. She is currently working as a researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London.
I am really enjoying my PhD journey and I wanted to share some of my key experiences here. In particular, I wanted to talk about the issue of access to students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) which I encountered during my recent data collection. My PhD research interests centre around LGBT inclusion with pupils with SEND. For those who have an interest in intersectional research regarding inclusion and equality in education, this blog might be of use.
Based on my previous practice as a former SEN teacher, the barriers to disabled students’ voices being heard are often there because of the attitudes of others. Sometimes the barriers are (openly) presented via the attitudes of those who are supposed to be on their side. I once had an ex-colleague, a senior leader in one of the schools I worked at, confiding in me that she did not regard disabled students’ right to information about LGBT as ‘important’ because she expected them to have no romantic lives due to their disabilities. Other barriers can be presented via fear rather than stigma. Research shows that there does appear to be a deep-rooted fear amongst educators that talking about non-heterosexual intimacy and relationships with students with SEND is somehow risky.
Research involving the actual voices of students with SEND is limited and I wonder if this is partially due to restrictions imposed on researchers by students’ gatekeepers. This has been my experience, too. Earlier this year, I organised a series of research trips for the Year 1 evaluation of the ‘Equally Safe’ anti-bullying project of the EqualiTeach charity. I worked with a sample of eight mainstream primary and secondary schools including faith and church schools across a range of areas. During my interviews with staff and focus groups with students, I asked about aspects of the Equally Safe programme, such as creating inclusive policies and tackling identity-based bullying using a whole-school approach. I was viewing this research project via an intersectional lens and therefore, the evaluation was also seeking to elicit discussions about the LGBT and SEND intersections amongst other things. The gatekeepers, members of the leadership teams, were asked to select focus group student participants representing a wider selection of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act (2010) and involve student participants who traditionally might not have a voice, such as students with SENDs. Unfortunately, as it turned out – there were no focus group participants present who had any recorded SEND.
I understood that this type of research project can feature sensitive information and there is a need to protect any vulnerable students, ethically speaking. Despite this, the gatekeepers’ efforts to deny those from the under-represented groups an opportunity to have a voice in a research project on identity-based bullying was surprising. In sharp contrast, the focus groups included other types of under-represented pupils. For example, they often (but not always) featured pupils who had come out as LGBT. This is an interesting phenomenon given the fact that the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988) is still impacting school culture in England. This is evident in misconceptions about what is suitable and ‘appropriate’ to teach which some educators can still struggle with. Often when I interview teachers about LGBT RSE topics or the SEND/LGBT intersection regarding their school policies and inclusive practice, I notice a hint of anxiety in their responses. They tend to stress that they follow the Equality Act (2010) and often mention having a considerable number of students with SEND. My experience with having no access to this category of students in these schools makes me question the cause behind this. Is this all happening because these schools just do not see these intersections? If that is the case indeed – why don’t they see them? Could the cause of this phenomenon be partially the result of the influence of Section 28? Do educators find dealing with certain types of intersections difficult and uncomfortable despite the law?
I will carry these questions into the second year of my PhD studies. It will be interesting to see if these issues with having access to students with SENDs will still be evident in the next sample of schools I am planning to visit. I would be interested to hear about your academic experiences in this area and any barriers you may have experienced in collecting data involving those who represent the ‘less heard’ category of students. Please, do not hesitate to get in touch with me.
What’s in a name?
Written by Elen Jones
Director at Ambition Institute. Former teacher in South London and West Wales.
As we start a new term and meet new pupils, families, teachers and colleagues, let’s take a moment and a little extra care towards each other and get each other’s names right.
My name is Elen Mair Jones. Aside from being quintessentially Welsh it’s pretty hard to get wrong. Often the ‘Mair’ becomes ‘mare’ as in ‘bear’ through an English lens. I can’t think of an English word that mirrors the pronunciation of the ‘air’ in ‘Mair’ so find a Welsh person nearby and they’ll give you a demo. Sometimes Elen becomes Ellen, it annoys me from time to time. However, when I moved to University and joined a welcome session with the college chaplain and I introduced myself:
“Hello, I’m Elen” with a big wide Welsh second ‘e’ as in the ‘ai’ sound in English ‘hair’.
I met the response:
“It will probably be Elen here” with a low second ‘e’ as in the ‘u’ in English ‘gun’.
It wasn’t a response that oozed welcome. I was an eighteen-year-old from a quarrying village in North Wales amongst the first generation of her family to attend university. I’d worked bloody hard to get there. It was a bit of a kick in the teeth. Clearly, I did not belong, and it seemed that I would have to compromise on some of the rough edges of my identity if I wanted that to change.
As we start a new term I was reminded of this incident. I have been meeting new colleagues, my children are off to meet new teachers and teachers are meeting new pupils. Learning each other’s names can take time, and we can all make mistakes.
When I started my teaching career in South London I met children with names that I had never encountered. My first response to this, one that I now regret, was to muddle through. I would either mumble something incoherent when I first called out their names on the register or make a guess. The guesses became more informed over time, but still, in the midst of new seating plans, timetables, resources and highlighters I didn’t take enough time to – carefully – learn my pupils’ names.
The risk is that pupils, colleagues and families end up feeling like I felt in that welcome session as an eighteen-year-old. Names are one of the artefacts of our identities: like hairstyles, pronouns and gestures. Some of these artefacts will matter more to some of us than to others, and that’s fine. In mispronouncing or misspelling someone’s name, often out of sheer haste and with no ill intention, we suggest that that aspect of their identity needs to be malleable for them to be a part of our class, our school, our organisation or community. I have never had to ask people to correct the pronunciation or spelling of my name particularly often, for those who do it must feel like a constant battle to assert their full identity. It is a position that people whose names have roots in languages other than English find themselves in more often than those whose names do not.
So as we start a new term, let’s take a little extra care with each other. Eventually, I would just ask the pupil how to pronounce their name if I didn’t know. They would tell me. I would apologise for my ignorance. Rightly. There are also ways in which we can take care of each other without placing a burden on those who have to fight this battle frequently. We can ask a colleague about how we pronounce a pupil or family name. We can take extra care with our spelling, even if we are in a rush, where we know a spelling is unfamiliar to us. Recently, I misspelt a colleague’s name twice in close succession and felt really bad, especially the second time, and so I should. Their name was similar to a very common English word and I was careless. There are reasons why we may all misspell a name – our brains are wired to find a familiar pattern. Allam can become Allen because our brain has sought the familiar and accidently missed the detail. We have to make that bit of extra effort to not jump to the familiar, and to be conscious of where we may need to exert that bit of extra effort.
So as we start a new school year, get to know new people, let’s do that with a little extra care, and get each other’s names right.
The Anti-Racist Journey of a Secondary School in Manchester
Written by Laura Morris
Laura Morris (@MissMorrisManc) is head of RS and Citizenship at a secondary school in Gorton, Manchester, with additional whole school responsibilities for SMSC and anti-discrimination. She has been teaching for 15 years. Her website is MissMorrisManc.co.uk.
Before the Black Lives Matter mobilisation of 2020, and all that followed, staff at the school I work at in Gorton, Manchester, would largely have felt positively about the work we were doing to celebrate our students, myself included. We went all out for Black History Month every year with relevant lessons across departments and external visitors invited in (as showcased in this video from October 2019), we had very few complaints of racist incidents from the students, and some work had been undertaken to decolonise the curriculum, particularly in subjects like RS, Citizenship, History and Geography. We could pat ourselves on the back for a job well done!
With all the work we’ve done since, and the huge changes that have been made, I now feel embarrassed to reflect back to pre-2020 when I thought we were already doing enough for our students. We weren’t.
Before we broke up for summer this year, I wrote a report detailing what we’ve done so far with the hope it could give ideas to other teachers and save them some time if they are starting from scratch. It’s been a process of trial and error and, while we’re still far from perfect and keen to collaborate with other schools to help us further improve, I am confident that we are now having a much more positive impact on our students in making them feel seen, appreciated, safe and loved.
In this blog I will summarise the most important parts from the report for people who are keen to improve the anti-racist practice in their school.
Named members of staff
Towards the end of the 2020-21 academic year, my colleague Ben Wilson was given a TLR to focus on anti-discrimination work in the academy and I was made associate assistant head with the same priority, which I realise puts us in a very fortunate position. Our head teacher included this anti-racist work as an objective in the school improvement plan and believed it was necessary to appoint people in posts to achieve our goals. I can’t stress enough how important it is for all schools to be willing to give time and money to staff doing this work and can only hope the example from our school will help other teachers feel confident to take similar proposals to their head teachers.
Staff groups
If I had to single out the most impactful elements of our process, it would be the staff and student groups. So many changes have been made but it’s hard to think of anything we’ve done that didn’t first come from conversations held in these spaces.
I realise how lucky I am to work alongside enough people who recognise the institutional racism present in education and were prepared to give up their time to do something about it, and that’s how the anti-racist working group (ARWG) was formed in September 2020.
We created sub-groups, each taking responsibility for a different area that we decided needed to improve, like the behaviour system and reporting incidents of discrimination, student voice, the curriculum, and staff CPD.
If you don’t feel as though you’ve got enough members of staff with the interest or time capacity to take on this work, there is no need to panic, as it is the students who have guided so much of what we’ve achieved. They are the experts and are invaluable to bringing about change.
Student voice
Student meetings started in early May 2020 during lockdown on Zoom with organisations like Kids of Colour (who still lead student meetings half-termly) and The Black Curriculum, and continued informally during lunch times when we returned to school the following academic year. It became clear how important it was for our young people to be given time to talk about their experiences of racism both in and outside of school.
At the start of the 2021-22 academic year we interviewed Year 11 students for anti-discrimination ambassador roles. They decide the agenda for the separate fortnightly KS3 and KS4 meetings, which are held during the 30-minute form time slot, lead the discussion, and, while I am in the room (to take back any pressing concerns to the ARWG), the ambassadors take responsibility for the meetings. Students discuss their personal experiences outside of school, what they believe needs to change in school, and anything that is going on in wider society that they would like to talk about. Any students who don’t feel comfortable reporting incidents of discrimination to teachers can go to the ambassadors who then feed back the details to Ben or me.
One of last year’s anti-discrimination student ambassadors said: “I feel like having this space for students is really important because we come together as a community to discuss issues that really matter to us and we think of ways to resolve it and deal with it.”
We have an annual anonymous anti-racist student survey, to help us identify issues that may be affecting students who don’t attend the meetings, and the student groups have delivered assemblies in response to the feedback to educate all students on discriminatory behaviour they might knowingly or unknowingly be perpetuating.
Towards the end of the 2020-21 academic year, Year 11 students wrote down examples of times that staff had said or done racially or culturally insensitive or offensive things. I recorded them reading out the statement of another student, to ensure anonymity, and played the video to staff during a CPD session.
Hearing the accounts woke up so many members of staff to the experience of the students, which has meant that all the work that has followed, that has resulted in an extra time commitment for pretty much everyone working in the academy, has been easier to achieve. There’s little room to question or complain about the need for change when you have student testimony to support the cause.
Discriminatory incidents
Discussion in the student groups highlighted the need for us to better deal with incidents of discrimination between students. Racism was very rarely reported but feedback from the student groups revealed this was down to the students feeling as though nothing would happen as a consequence, either because they had reported something in the past and hadn’t heard how or if it had been dealt with, or their belief that it wasn’t a priority for staff.
Ben created a reporting system (that you can read about in more detail in the report), which was trialled at the end of the 2020-21 academic year and put in place the following year, which has currently significantly increased the workload of staff who deal with behaviour incidents. But it has also meant we are in a much stronger position to educate and sanction students involved in discriminatory behaviour, as well as validate the feelings of, and bring resolution to, the victims. Different forms of microaggressions are the most commonly reported incident and students have responded incredibly well to the educational sessions they attend with Ben or me as a consequence. Victims are given the opportunity for a restorative conversation, once pre-restorative work has taken place with both students, and they almost always choose to take up this offer in the process.
The number of repeat offenders is minimal, if not close to non-existent. But the number of reported incidents has increased. Students now have the confidence in the school to respond appropriately to accusations of discrimination.
As one of last year’s ambassadors put it: “when I look back at when I was in Year 9, if someone said something racist to me I would just go home and cry. But now I would feel empowered enough to report it and I hope younger students feel that way too.”
Curriculum changes
All subject leaders completed The Key’s anti-racism curriculum review document, which identified areas for improvement for departments already on the journey of decolonising their curriculum and served as a fantastic starting point for teachers who didn’t know where to begin.
After being given department time to plan and create new resources, we’ve had a carousel format for whole school CPD sessions to share these across departments. Most departments now have a member of staff with an objective in their appraisal relating to diversifying their curriculum. During the carousel CPD we have a ‘speed dating’ format where staff spend a few minutes listening to the changes each department has made, and having discussions on the impact and any possible cross-curricular links, before moving on to the next department.
We recognised the need to better signpost these changes to students. Bennie Kara delivered a bespoke CPD session for our staff last December where she suggested posters to be placed around school. Now every classroom has a subject specific poster highlighting content relating to race (as well as sexuality, gender and religion) in our curriculums. Before breaking up for summer, subject specific PowerPoints were shown to all students too so they knew what to expect in the year ahead. Examples of what we teach can be found on our school website.
For more details on the processes above as well as other initiatives we’ve implemented, check out the report in full. Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter too!