Developing an anti-racist lens to an equality, diversity and Inclusion Strategy

The mission of our trust is to challenge educational and social disadvantage in the North. We do this by establishing high-performing, non-faith academies which maximise attainment, value diversity, develop character, and build cultural capital.

In 2020, our anti-racism action plan was developed. A key driver for this was the growing body of research confirming the importance of effective role models in improving student outcomes (e.g. Gershenson et al.,2021). Considering this context, tackling racism and historic under-representation of staff from diverse backgrounds, especially at senior levels in our schools, has been a top priority. We also created an anti-racism cross cutting team (CCT) as part of our strategy, recognising that it was important to listen to the reality and narrative of those who have experienced racism.

Over the last academic year, in addition to the work on anti-racism, there has been significant progress in creating a wider understanding across the organisation of our broader equality, diversity and inclusion (ED&I) agenda. Some of the key highlights include:

• The anti-racism CCT has led the way in the sector with one of its members, Funmilola Stewart, invited to speak at the Confederation for Schools Trusts conference on her joint thought paper with our Executive Director: Development, Jenny Thompson, around de-colonisation of the school curriculum.
• Executive, principals and central functional leads have participated in an equality, diversity and inclusion development programme delivered by external specialists. This included:
  – a senior leaders’ inclusion diversity and equality awareness workshop
  – mentoring sessions for our trust executive
  – group coaching sessions for all principals and functional leads
• A ‘Truthsayers Survey’ was conducted with middle leaders designed to gather both explicit and implicit affirmations in relation to ED&I. Unlike a traditional survey, it has a mechanism around implicit reaction time to judge if what a respondent explicitly states is what they believe. The findings have been used to inform our strategy.

We recognise that there is still much for us to do and we plan to be even more ambitious. We’re already seeing an impact with nearly 30% of teachers and 18% of senior leaders in our academies are now from under-represented minority groups.  We have also carried out some extensive work around lived experience and psychological safety with our leaders and have developed an ED&I health check process to facilitate conversations and drive more accountability. You can find the strategy here –https://www.dixonsat.com/about/equality-diversity-and-inclusion-strategy

We have also launched a series of short videos (measuring equality, EDI our plan for this moral and strategic priority and defining our strategy) on our approach, which can be viewed by searching ‘equality’ once you’ve signed up free. https://dixonsos.com/

https://dixonsos.com/content/1202-andy-cairns-staff-dat-this-weeks-os-equality-diversity-and-inclusion-our-plan-for-this-moral-and-strategic-priority-1202-andy-cairns-staff-dat-in-this-video-our-ceo-luke-and/

https://dixonsos.com/content/equality-diversity-and-inclusion-defining-our-strategy/

Contact person: Faizal Musa
Website: https://www.dixonsat.com/
Email address: fmusa@dixonsat.com