Due-Diligence and Integrity in D&I work.
Recently, I came across a set of edutwitter tweets that included a set of selected screen grabs from a report by the IOE (Institute of Education). The report gave (not partiularly new) information and recommendations about the state of BAME teachers in England’s teacher workforce and ways to achieve equality. The selected screen grabs were being used to pour support over a supposed event on racial justice, hosted by a large teaching body, attached to a large multi-academy trust. – one that I’m yet to see media evidence of.
This I thought would have been worthy of widespread reporting, so I typed the words of that organisation and ‘racial justice’ into twitter to see when the invites were sent out and it came back with nothing. I then typed in ‘racial’ only and it returned a single tweet in which this organisation, along with a number of big names in education were launching the first in a series of ‘evidence gathering sessions’ on racial equality in the school workforce — The intention is to see what more can be done ‘collectively on this important issue’.
This brought up a number of issues for me. Not least the aforementioned lack of accessibility in finding when this event was held, but also the names of the institutions tasking themselves with finding the evidence that would be the basis of their recommendations and solutions on the issue. And finally, on the topic of equity vs equality… They mean two different things with one being more of an outcome, while the other is more of a process to get there — with not everyone being asked to the same things, equally.
One response to the initial tweeter gave good critique of the intention behind this, while cautioning the action of doing this. Identifying as a white woman, she stated that while its good to see this being addressed, there is a need to get to the stage where those most affected are leading on this work and not thanked for “coming along”.
I agree with this and want to outline some reasons why hyping up a high profile Diversity and Inclusion ‘event’, really isn’t the watershed moment of change that its being set up to be. It actually allows people to do the bare minimum, or when doing that little bit above it claim it as ‘an added extra’, — something they did as a favour to the conversation.
So in this pursuit of ‘collecting evidence’ and doing something with it, it’s worth considering:
1 — How far we as a profession (which is part of wider society) still end up dancing around the topics and placing a disproportionate amount of effort on ensuring the comfort of those with dominant and in-group identities than those affected by the historic continual systemic biases in favour of these very same groups?
I’d say both the institutions and those at the top of them would very much be both in-group to educational endorsements and platforming and dominant identities by their race, schooling and economic categorisations. So how do we ensure for diversity?
2 — Who are these reports and recommendations written for? Institutions or individuals? If there is no positioning of leadership in them, how far up is it really going to go?
‘Leaders should…’ is a decent start, but ‘Exec heads should’, ‘MATs should’, ‘All homogenous teams should’, would throw up other interesting returns. Especially with regard to who is being centred, who is not, who is willing to take up their role/position in doing the work for being called upon directly and who would prefer the anonymity?
3 — When thinking about ‘Diversity’ how far is diversity of identity invited to not just feed into the recommendation, but critique and appraise it afterward?
How often are you asking for intersecting identities to bring both/multiple lenses to the outcome? How many of these are people that are ‘already known’ or ‘endorsed/sanctioned’ by the very same institutions? That there are so many Black-grass roots organisations being created should alert some to the fact that they haven’t had ‘equal’ access to proximity of seats of power, much less sat in them.
4 — When thinking about ‘Inclusion’ how far will this go to supporting an overall feeling of inclusion and NOT assimilation?
What are all sides being asked to do to feel included? How is it seeking to include the dominant identities who statistically and anecdotally are less likely to want to shift/change for fear of loss of current circumstances?
5 — When thinking about ‘Equity’ how is it understood as being different from equality? If the outcome is equality, the input from all isn’t necessarily also the same.
Who knows this and how are they raising flags in appraising for this? What are people being asked to give up in order to come to a place of equity? Even plainer put, what are people being asked to ‘stop, start and continue’ to accommodate the process and facilitate the outcome? Not all identities will need to be doing the same thing.
6 — When thinking about BAME/IBPOC who is most and least satisfied by the intention to act? The actions themselves? Any progress (not)made? And the outcomes?
What are the reasons for this? Whose comfort is being more centred even in their ‘non-dominant’ identity? Why is this the case? How does racism show up as anti-Black or anti-Indigenous/anti-East Asian/anti-South Asian+Islamophobic? How would you know?
We’ve seen enough reports commissioned to support a dominant narrative that when challenged calls those who critique it for not being inclusive be rebutted with being called hostile or ungrateful.