Exam periods are not only a source of stress for young people, but how your teen responds can set the mood for the whole household. During the pandemic, my kids were working towards their GCSEs and A Levels respectively, only to have them replaced by teacher assessed grades. This year, while one is coming towards the end of her second year at university, the other child is preparing for A Levels. Of course, for their school cohort, these will be their first public exams and the stakes feel higher than usual.
As a parent, here are some ways you can help your child during this seminal moment:
Remember, their experience is gospel
As parents, we have the benefit of hindsight, but if there’s something I have had drummed into me by my children, validating their experiences is the most supportive thing you can do. Even if you know this too will pass, understanding that the first few times you experience something, it feels huge and you need to be allowed to fully feel whatever it is that you feel. This is why for example young people report as the most lonely of any age group – when you get to my age, you know what periods of loneliness and isolation feel like, and you know what you can do to mitigate them. But to young people, this is a terrible new sensation and it can feel like this will be the rest of your life! Yes, it can be reassuring to have a parent tell you that in the grand scheme of things, things will be okay, but there are ways to do this without dismissing their real feelings of anxiety, doom, panic, comparison with peers and a lack of self-confidence. Think: what can you say that reflects back what they feel and also reassures them? Consider asking your child what they would find reassuring and then say that.
Ask what they need
Giving advice and helping with exam preparation practicalities can be brilliant, but only if they are receptive at the time that you give advice. Also, what worked for you, back in ancient times, may not feel relevant or helpful. So ask them first what they need right now. Perhaps you can suggest that when they feel ready, you can help them plan a realistic revision timetable, or maybe they would like some help with devising revision techniques, or maybe to join you on a trip to buy some nice flash cards, coloured pens and other stationery to help get prepared. Give them a written list of things you could help them with and let them know exact times of the day, evening and weekends when you will be available to help. When they are ready, they can book you in for whatever it is that they want your support with.
Feed and water them
It sounds obvious, but making sure that your child is eating well and is hydrated makes revision go more smoothly and can help keep them well throughout the exam period. Healthy snacks and drinks can help with concentration and staying power, and can also make your child associate pleasure with learning. If I see my child working hard, I will bring them a nice pint glass with a drink, some ice and a straw, a plate of chopped fruits, and a handful of nuts and quietly slide them into view by way of quietly saying “I see you, and applaud your efforts”. If I’m on my way home from work, I might pick up something they particularly like as a treat and surprise them as a reward for keeping on track with their work or as a commiseration if things aren’t going too well.
Go there, even if it feels counterintuitive
Young people can feel immense pressure to perform and aim for high grades. They can also be extremely fearful of failure and of disappointing their teachers and family. Dismissing this as nonsense or adding to the stress by nagging or pushing them to work harder are never good strategies. In my household we say, ‘Let’s go there and see how it feels’. By this I mean, we will talk through what the options are in different scenarios. ‘You don’t make the grades you need for your next step, what are your options? Can you appeal? Can you re-take? Are there other pathways that interest you?’
Having a plan B is important, and visualising yourself having not made the grade but still having options is empowering too. Allowing your child to imagine the feelings of shame, disappointment, upset and jealousy of peers who have aced their exams in a safe space as just one option, is cathartic. It is also an opportunity for you to show that you will walk with them, whatever happens.
Collective social responsibility
Remember that your child is not alone in their efforts to study and reach their goals. Their friends will be having their own experiences and homelife dynamics. Create a collaborative study space and invite them to host study sessions as a group, or perhaps they can all go and work together at the library nearby. Remind them of the advantages of working together, preparing revision materials and testing each other as well as the fact that not every child has a space at home to study. Modelling to your child the collective social responsibility we have, empathy for others and the benefits of social interaction rather than competitive self-absorption is crucial, especially in an often individualistic society.
Use technology
There are so many wonderful technology tricks and apps that are readily available and either free or that the school will subscribe to:
Plan a realistic revision timetable using the calendar attached to your child’s school email account, or if you have Gmail, set up a shared one so you can help them stay motivated and make sure they build in breaks, time with friends and rest time. You can also use software like Notion or Trello and create a basic project plan or a to-do list with Todoist. My favourite is Asana, not least because you get galloping unicorns if you complete a string of tasks!
Digital flashcards apps like Quizlet are great for revision. You can also find lots of revision sets already created that you can adapt. Children in the same class can make the workload manageable if they divide up different topics and create shared revision sets for all to benefit from.
Online learning platforms, lessons and explainers are things that some schools will subscribe to like Hegarty Maths for example. But there is a lot that is free and publicly available. If your child is confused by something or perhaps missed the class when that topic was being taught, catching up online can be a great relief.
Timers setting an alarm to start and finish a revision session is a good idea. Taking breaks and building in down time can all be managed on a smart phone.
Background sounds using apps like Spotify for music can help. You can download pre-made study music or create your own playlist. There are apps like Rain Rain with a huge range of white noise from crackling fires, to freight trains or waterfalls which can really help with concentration and mood. These can be useful for helping wind down before bed or if your child experiences anxiety-related sleep disturbance and needs soothing in the night.
Stop motion video might sound bizarre but one of my children uses this as a motivator. They will film themselves studying on stop-motion or slow mode and then it creates a speeded up short version later. The longer they study, the more satisfying the video as you see, perhaps the sun go down in the background, or people passing by through the window and so on. Even though she’s a young adult and manages her own time away from home, we occasionally receive one of these via WhatsApp and it’s a nice way to elicit coos of encouragement from her parents and sibling.
The final advice is take care of yourself too. As a parent, you need to be rested, calm, centred and present during this challenging time so build in space for your own nutrition, exercise, off-loading onto listening ears outside the home and so on. And take your own advice, when the going gets tough know that this too will pass!
Just when we thought that schools couldn’t possibly absorb any more of society’s most complex needs being driven through their already heaving agendas, the crisis associated with the Coronavirus pandemic over the past 6 months suddenly focused a more harsh spotlight on the way in which increasing divisions between the haves and the have-nots determines outcomes for children and their families, not only in terms of academic achievement at school and beyond, but now in terms of health, employment and life-expectancy in the face of a global pandemic. Stark divisions which have already become entrenched during prolonged austerity, have become even more acute in the face of national lockdown measures, forcing many families into precarity they never imagined would touch them, and pushing the already vulnerable deeper into poverty which seems fitting for Victorian England, not 2020.
We have seen schools step up to the challenge without hesitation, sourcing food parcels for the families they serve, reinventing teaching through online lessons, providing devices and internet access for those that need it, producing work packs for home delivery where technology just isn’t going to be an option, rallying round and making sure that everyone is okay, learning, connected in one way or another to the school community. On the backdrop of so much activity, care, and action, the gross injustices of racial discrimination seemed to suddenly rear up into focus as well, as the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in the USA resonated with so many people worldwide, as a sign that enough is enough.
The grassroots organisation, The BAMEed Network, has been working with schools throughout the pandemic to ensure that the needs of staff from Black and Asian backgrounds in particular, have been adequately taken into account through producing a risk assessment and guidance document specifically for these staff members. Although statistically, Black and Asian colleagues are at higher risk of illness and death from Covid-19, nothing had been produced to safeguard them as frontline workers in schools, in the way that the NHS had accounted for their staff members’ needs as key workers. We were glad to be able to close this gap and produce the guidance for schools ourselves in a timely manner. Part of the guidance document’s purpose was to support schools to do more to see the needs of their staff members that are from Black and Asian heritage, and to start a conversation with them more widely about their lived experience of class, race, and discrimination within our schools, workplaces and society as a whole. The focus on racial justice by the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder has made this conversation even more relevant and important and it has helped to bring a new lexicon and new understanding of the issues for many, that were oblivious.
It is one thing to consider the importance of racial and social justice on the workplace conditions of adults in our education system, but how do we ensure that this extends beyond ticking boxes of the legal duties of the Equality Act and takes the form of meaningful change over time? Where do we start to ensure that we all improve our awareness and education on these important matters? When is it the right time to start to learn about racial and social justice? One thing that has come to light as a result of the focus on inequities and structural racism endured by Black people and other minoritised people of colour, is that our education system has somehow simultaneously been seeing itself as a great equaliser, while perpetuating structural inequalities through its own practice. Part of the cause for this is the focus on quantifiable, measurable outcomes to come above the more intangible and yet vital ‘soft’ skills of critical thinking, empathy, a sense of collective social responsibility.
It was interesting to see the surge of emotion and the subsequent urgency to take action that ensued from the George Floyd incident and which emulated from the education sector. The BAMEed Network inbox has been inundated with requests for support from every level, be that CEOs of major education organisations, leaders of teacher unions, senior staff at local education authorities, multi-academy trusts or diocesan boards of education, as well as from headteachers and leaders from individual schools, and individuals from within the junior ranks of school staff, or parents, governors and even young people themselves. Across the board, people are looking for answers and seem ready and willing to take steps to ensure that their own practice is inclusive and actively anti-racist.
There’s nothing new here, so what has changed? Questions of race, racism and teaching are not new and have been debated for decades. One primary site for anti-racist practice is to consider the curriculum. The MacPherson Report, published 6 years after the racially motivated murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, strongly suggested that inclusivity and diversity in the curriculum can improve social cohesion, prevent racist attitudes taking hold and instil the value of cultural diversity from an early age in young people. Improvements in the content of the curriculum is vital for many reasons, not least to provide a balanced view of history, and of the contributions of people from a variety of backgrounds who have lived side by side in Britain as the result of migrations from far and wide since the middle ages as well as more recent migrations as a result of our colonial past or the displacement of peoples connected with our involvement in wars in more recent times.
Looking beyond formally taught subject matter, discrimination in education is also enacted through disciplinary practice. For the decades since the MacPherson report recommendation to do so, schools have been dutifully recording racist incidents, monitoring the numbers and self-defined ethnic identity of excluded pupils, and these are published annually on a school-by-school basis. There are a range of practices which underpin Black students’ exclusion and which impact on their educational attainment for example, which are starkly detailed in the DfE Timpson Report on school exclusion of May 2019 and which result in Black British children of Caribbean heritage being more than 1.7 times more likely to be permanently excluded as compared with their white British counterparts.
What seems to have shifted, and potentially divided educators along the way more recently, is the notion of institutional and structural racism which is inherent in every element of society and not least, school life, and which runs like a stick of rock through our practice unless we make particular efforts to seek it out and adjust what we do, accordingly. At the end of the academic year of 2019-20, two major Charter School chains in the USA, Uncommon Schools and KIPP, denounced their own use of ‘carceral’ or ‘no excuses’ discipline techniques as racist. These were practices that had been the cornerstones of their educational philosophy. These techniques have been much lauded by a number of schools in England, and these schools have not subsequently re-evaluated their position, adamant that any less of an iron grip on children’s bodies, gaze and mouths will result in destruction of their lives as disadvantaged young people. The interesting thing is that both camps in this schism around discipline, believe that they are acting in the best interests of the young people from disadvantaged backgrounds that they serve. However, what is clear from one methodology, is that it is about ensuring that young people get the grades, sometimes at any cost, that will take them onto educational pathways for the future without questioning, disrupting or skilling up young people, or their teachers, to see or tackle the socio-political causes for the disadvantage, inequity and structural discrimination which creates such deep divisions in society in the first place – or indeed why the the gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students has stopped closing. And this is the key dividing line that has seen the initial surge of interest in making changes go through a further self-selection process. After the public statements of intent were posted on websites, or circulated by letters home to parents, some driven by guilt or alarm, and others by an emerging or enduring understanding of racism, it is clear which organisations are willing and able to see that structural racism needs to be dismantled at every level, and which organisations have retreated to tinkering around the edges, at most perhaps creating some better optics and remembering some more pressing issues they might focus on right now. And there are many pressing issues for the education sector right now.
Looking at whether a sharper focus on racial justice in the form of anti-racist practice should be enacted in schools or not is one heck of a question. There are a growing number of programmes, awards, charter marks, organisations, formal change management structures and guide books which are emerging that can support schools to map their pathway to dismantling structural racism in their curriculum, employment and staff development policies and practices, discipline, hair and uniform policies, and in supporting teachers’ professional understanding and practice in the classroom and beyond. However, alongside these developments, there seems to be growing pressure on schools not only to not disrupt the status quo, but with what some educators see as sinister suggestions that doing so may be treading a fine line between enacting the Equality Act and breaking the law for standing up for equality in a way many witnessed during the time of Section 28 only 30 years ago. At the start of the academic year 2020-21, new DfE guidance on the teaching of relationships, sex and health education has become the site of specific instruction to schools around the potentially extreme political stances held by the very resources and external agencies they seek support from to deliver this statutory curriculum area. In this document, such extreme stances include: “divisive or victim narratives” and “selecting and presenting information to make unsubstantiated accusations against state institutions”. Around the same time that this guidance was published, a letter to headteachers and SLT was circulated by a new organisation which sees itself standing up to anti-racist discourse, and specifically Critical Race Theory, as divisive, rife with so-called victim narrative, and potentially illegal, supposedly going against the 1996 Education Act and Teachers’ Standards which state the need for teachers to maintain political neutrality. By shifting the focus in this way, the anti-racism narrative stops being seen as about creating greater race equity, and instead about anti-white sentiment, or is seen as an expression of political leanings rather than a desire to understand the historical and societal causes of inequalities which have played out over generations in terms of educational progression, health outcomes and life-expectancy for Black and Asian British citizens. This group advises teachers that to regard the acceptance of structural racism as fact, to challenge inherent bias, or have any association with Black Lives Matter is politically motivated and therefore should be viewed as indoctrination. In their view, discussion of anti-racism will make teachers, children and their families feel guilt and that actively seeing race is a way to divide us.
What’s the core purpose of education? When considering whether teaching racial justice and equity has a place in our primary schools, we need to think carefully about the core purpose of education. For the proponents of the ‘no excuses’ education and the charter schools movement, it has been about moving children through the testing process with as much skill and knowledge necessary to ensure that they compete with their more privileged peers and reach the next stage of their education with comparable test scores. Until these tests explicitly contain questions about racial justice and equity, there is no place to learn about it. Our testing system in itself is inherently flawed as it requires one third of children to fail for the two thirds to succeed. In the words of Daniel Koretz in The Testing Charade, “When test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. That is exactly what happened when high stakes testing became the core of education ‘reform’”.
In modern complex society such as ours, we need to be able to give children something that will serve them as powerful adults with agency in their own right. Learning is as much about agency as it is about knowledge retrieval, and there is a strong body of evidence to suggest that the work that schools do now to prepare their students for the 21st century, should include a consistent and high quality focus on knowledge and understanding, skills and attitudes. Gert Biesta’s work suggests that what we do in the classroom can make the biggest difference to children while they’re in our schools and the way in which we guide them to ‘meet the world’ will serve them now and beyond their schooling. We need to connect education to our core purpose, which cannot simply rest on passing tests.
There are several good examples of schools serving the same kinds of underprivileged cohorts which may receive no excuses, rote-based learning in some circumstances and yet which deploy an entirely different framework for learning and discipline. School 21 in Newham for example, is an all-through school which educates the ‘head, heart and hand’, seeing the aim of school to educate for knowledge, values and attitudes and also manual skilled tasks such as craft and handiwork. Inherent in their curriculum will be what they call ‘Real World Learning’ about social justice, and developing the critical skills to know, think and to talk coherently about history, politics, societal structures, inequalities and more. Students are engaged in answering complex questions in partnership with organisations such as the Justice Department and the Metropolitan Police, such as ‘With the continual restrictions on legal aid, how can we ensure wide-ranging and fair access to justice?’ and ‘Does the Met Police effectively engage with young people and what could we do differently?’
At primary, Inspire Partnership Trust serves disadvantaged areas Greenwich, Medway and Croydon. Their curriculum structures itself around similar lines to School 21 with a focus on the cognitive (head), affective (heart) and psychomotor (hand) domains of learning. Academic engagement is rooted in relationships, and is about students’ own commitment to being a learner, social engagement as an active participant in school life and intellectual engagement in the learning. The curriculum framework is rooted in core texts which have been carefully selected to be contemporary enough to allow pupils to engage deeply and critically with a range of complex issues, linking to an outcome which has a social justice element and supports children to make sense of a modern complex society with strong and robust knowledge which will help them develop the skills they need to navigate some of the challenges they will encounter in life. For both these examples, the journey of learning is what makes the outcome strong and there is absolutely a place to give the children the knowledge they need to understand the past, the present and to imagine a more just and equitable future, which they will be active agents in creating. In this way, providing children a way to make sense of themselves as learners, a focus on themselves as meeting the world but not the centre of the world, gives them and their teachers the opportunities to be trusted to explore complex societal problems such as inequity, race and racism, gender, climate change and more. Schools like these should and absolutely do see themselves as equipped and adept at teaching racial justice and equity, without fear of straying from their core purpose. In the words of Paulo Friere, “Education is a political act. No pedagogy is neutral… Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world and with each other.” And so it stands that while racial injustice and inequity exist in the world, so must learning to dismantle them exist in the education of both teacher and student.
It is clear that there is an acute and snowballing issue around recruitment and retention of staff in our schools’ workforce. Schools are considering many proposed solutions, including promises to reduce workload, challenging the traditional reticence around flexible working practices and job shares, and the DfE has even launched a jobs board platform aimed at reducing the costs for recruitment that are often crippling for schools. Successive education secretaries have declared that far more teachers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are needed in schools to be role models for their pupils. Since the recent brutal killing of George Floyd, and the subsequent soul searching that seems to have happened for many white people around their relationship with the structures and systems which impact on Black people’s life chances, the BAMEed Network has seen a flood of requests from schools and multi-academy trusts asking for support to diversify their workforce.
Teachers from BAME backgrounds have been marginalised in a system that seems to have changed little since the 1980s, back when theSwann report identified that ethnic minorities were underrepresented in teaching. Research since has confirmed that BAME educators are consistently the victims of systemic racism, which sees them overlooked for promotion and undermined. This is enacted not only through policy and practice around curriculum design, recruitment and performance management, but also through daily examples of microaggressions and behaviours from their colleagues – all of which serve to discredit them as teachers and leaders. We are all becoming familiar with the term “unconscious bias” to try to explain why this might happen, but we have seemed less committed to finding ways to seek out and cull the practices which perpetuate this bias. Structures of disadvantage in education are untouched and continue to perpetuate stereotypes of ethnic groups. Saying it is “unconscious” has proved to even give us an excuse that it may not be within our power to change. This is, of course, a damaging fallacy. Acknowledging the forces of socialisation can be a start to bringing the seemingly unconscious into the conscious domain and ensuring that the outcomes of our behaviour and actions, policies and practices are not damaging.
Why recruit for diversity? It may seem obvious especially now, but it is surprising how many schools and other organisations are still not clear on the reasons for their own commitment to diversity. Many colleagues believe in the mantra “we just recruit the best person for the job” and won’t question why those so-called best people all seem to look and sound the same. While we must always recruit the best person for the job, in doing so we are often blind to our own inherently biased perception of what that person looks and sounds like, what background and experience they should have had, and rule out the best person not for lack of skills and experience, but for other, more insidious reasons that are masked by seemingly innocent statements like “team fit” or “team culture”. The bottom line is, that if your team is not diverse in its make up, you most likely have not recruited the best person for the job. Excellent recruitment practice will naturally lead to a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences, styles, perspectives, opinions and so on, and that can’t possibly mean a cookie cutter version of the same person. A word of warning here, no-one wants to be recruited for the colour of their skin, their gender or sexuality to fulfil a Top Trumps spectrum of perceived diversities that look good. However, just as addressing the bias that holds women back in the workplace shouldn’t be left exclusively to women to champion and work towards, so too must colleagues, school leaders and system leaders from all backgrounds educate themselves around the unnecessary barriers that face their marginalised counterparts. It is the recruitment practice, coupled with a commitment by the organisation to learn, iterate and change that practice that will lead to recruiting and retaining a successful, diverse team.
Another practical reason to recruit for diversity is that it is proven to be good for business. We know from research such as theMcKinsey Report, that having a diverse workforce leads to better teamwork, and more successful decision-making. If we are to see a change in attitudes and the subtle and not-so-subtle trappings of systemic racism, we need role models from Black, Asian and other minoritised groups for our fellow colleagues of all backgrounds, for governors and trustees, and for students from non-BAME backgrounds too. If we are to accept people from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds as credible teachers and leaders, we need to see these colleagues at every level in our schools’ workforce.
Finally, many schools believe that they should recruit staff that reflect the population they serve, if that population is itself seen as ‘diverse’. While it is true that children should be able to see themselves in the people who are their role models, there are two important points to highlight here. The first is that the colour of someone’s skin doesn’t make them able to understand all humans that have a similar skin colour. Diversity is intersectional – it includes class, gender, heritage, and more. Be careful with assumptions here. Secondly, it could be argued that schools that serve a predominantly white population will also absolutely benefit from seeing strong and capable role models from stereotypically undervalued and marginalised communities – this will be of benefit to staff, students and the whole school community alike.
If we want to address the recruitment issues we face, and if we want to retain and develop our best leaders from diverse backgrounds, there has never been a better time to commit to this.
Preparing your organisation to be friendly to all humans
Looking inwards before looking outwards For a campaign to ‘recruit for diversity’ to be successful, it’s worth taking an honest look at your organisational bias, and seeing why it may not yet be friendly to all humans. This is important because the last thing you want to do is recruit new people from more diverse backgrounds than you are accustomed to, only for it to be experienced as a hostile environment lacking the self-awareness to understand why only certain people will be able to thrive there.
To do this, you will need to commit some time and budget. You may benefit from some outside help to set the strategy with you, but you must carry out any work on this, as part of a committed whole-school learning process, even when you have external support. You will need to commit time to undertake reading, re-educating yourselves and un-learning some practices you have considered normal. It is also important to have an educated grasp on what systemic racism is, and not frame racism as many schools do, as just dwelling in notable incidents and overt acts of racist abuse.
The first place organisations usually go is to what is commonly known as “unconscious bias” training. Be careful with this, as one of the criticisms of quick-fix unconscious bias training is that it can have an opposite effect. Research shows that in terms of changing attitudes, it can often lead to people becoming more entrenched in their bias, and even concluding that because the bias is unconscious, it’s not possible to do much about it. That said, good training will help you understand what bias is, when it is useful, how it can be harmful, how you can own your bias and see it clearly, and interrupt it at the point before you may have enacted it previously. Good organisational culture around bias will mean that there is a safe space for colleagues to talk openly about situations where they can see their own bias surfacing, and can work together to acknowledge and mitigate the impact of that bias. Staff should be trained in things like microaggressions so they can avoid them, and learn how to be a reliable ally, learning to see, articulate and call out discrimination should it occur. Many schools are often not encouraging of critical thinking, challenge and straight-talking, so this may be quite a culture shift. It will be up to all levels of the organisation to hone their skills at spotting, naming and reducing bias and discrimination. Be warned though, the mark of an organisation committed to change and anti-racism may be one that once you have learned to see it, you see it everywhere! This can often be the marker of the shift from being ‘not racist’ to being ‘anti-racist’. Change takes commitment and time.
HR and policies Once you have learned to spot bias and systemic or structural racism, you can carry out an internal audit designed specifically to hunt out and change places where bias and structural racism tend to lurk. HR practices and school policies are often sites where discrimination takes place. Again, you may be tempted to use a template or a service to help you with this, but make sure that you are skilling yourselves up to do this effectively in an ongoing way, so it doesn’t become an external bureaucratic exercise but instead becomes part of the culture of the organisation at all levels.
The UK has 9 protected characteristics, set out in the Equality Act 2010. These are:
Age
Disability
Gender reassignment
Marriage and civil partnership
Pregnancy and maternity
Race
Religion or belief
Sex
Sexual orientation
There are 4 main types of discrimination under the Equality Act:
Direct discrimination
Indirect discrimination
Harassment
Victimisation
Any audit you carry out should be a critical look at your HR practices to ensure that there aren’t elements which are discriminatory. You’ll note that class and nationality are missing from this list. Again, none of this should be purely procedural or bureaucratic so it’s important to have training and regular robust and open discussion about these issues, as they are both complex and emotive. For white people such discussion may cause discomfort. This is a small price to pay in exchange for reducing the deep trauma racial discrimination inflicts on people of colour.
When looking at policies, it is vital that this extends to policies which affect the students and their families. These include home-school agreements, homework, hair and uniform policies, behaviour and exclusion policies and more. There is much research and writing about how these policies can be the sites of racial and other discriminatory action that can be subtle or blatant. A school that is friendly to all humans, needs to ensure this is true not just for staff working there, but also the whole school community. Staff cannot be expected to enforce policy which isn’t inclusive and which is discriminatory.
The most vital and perhaps challenging part of this work will be allowing a culture of identifying and challenging racism, both from staff as well as students and their families. Baked into all line management culture, 1:1s with staff, meetings with students and their families, should be the ability to have meaningful dialogue that is sensitive and courageous, so that racism can be named and framed without those raising the issue fearing being silenced or disciplined for their words.
Curriculum matters Here again, if your curriculum doesn’t reflect the reality of both modern Britain, the global world and an accurate picture of history and the diverse voices which have always been part of our country, you cannot be a school which will be fertile ground for diverse voices to be heard and valued. Take a look at your curriculum offer, and draw on the huge number of resources available to support decolonising the curriculum and how it is taught across all departments. We speak volumes to our staff, students and the school community through our curriculum choices.
Optics are important but not as a stand-alone You need to see it to be it. If you’re hoping to attract staff members who are from a wide variety of backgrounds, you need to make sure that they can see themselves as valued in your school website, on the walls around the school, in the prospectus, the curriculum and more. When looking for diverse imagery, be mindful that you aren’t unwittingly perpetuating damaging stereotypes though. It’s all too easy to fall into this without some work on your bias. As Adrian Rogers, CEO of Chiltern Learning Trust, says, “ensure anyone considering applying looks in on your organisation (websites, social media) and sees that it welcomes diversity in its leadership and management. It isn’t tokenism, but it’s about making sure that the outward signal is ‘its good to work in this place, they value me as a person and a professional, regardless of colour or protected characteristics’”.
Remember, if you are early on, in your journey towards diversity in the school staff and leadership team, be upfront and honest about this. You know that candidates will check your website and may be confused by your statements of intent around diversity not matching reality when they see your all-white, mainly male governing board, or senior leadership team. Be prepared to have that conversation from the get-go in an appropriate way.
Get out Not only do you have to ‘be it to see it’, but you have to ‘see it to be it’. Leaders of any organisation, multi academy trust or school should make a huge effort to attend community events. This is also an opportunity to learn more about the communities you serve. Again, in his experience from Chiltern Learning Trust, Adrian Rogers says, “BAME is a very broad term, and not all communities are the same – there will be huge religious, cultural and ethnic differences. However, if you are a white leader, in a school with a high percentage of Black or Asian pupils, it is even more important to show you care about that community and want to work with them and want the best for the young people in that community. In turn, this means you will gain the trust and friendship of that community and break down barriers – with the spin-off that people from your local community will want to work for you. This also extends to delivering CPD and supporting BAME leadership courses and development even if you yourself are white – it means you network with ambitious staff.”
He goes on, “as leaders, make opportunities to speak about BAME staff in your school in terms of the knowledge, skill and expertise that they bring to your school. It is easy to fall in the trap of seeing BAME staff as simply representatives of the ‘community’, rather than talented individuals in their own right. Leaders, governors and trustees should be restless and relentless in asking ‘is there more we should be doing?’ or ‘can I ask someone why we don’t get BAME applicants’. Leaders should be curious and reflective. A great way of demonstrating the accessibility of leaders is providing an open day for local people that may be seeking employment, and senior leaders meet prospective candidates without the formality of an application or interview.” It’s also a great way to test out the scoping of the roles you may wish to recruit for.
Advertising the role
Scoping Now you are ready to advertise the role, start with scoping. Often a role can be carried out by a broad spectrum of levels of experience and expertise, qualification and commitment to learn. Make sure the recruitment panel has clearly mapped out a continuum of possible imagined candidates from the finished product to the ‘grower’. Be clear which bits are non-negotiable must-haves and which bits, if missing, can be solved through coaching, training or further on-the-job qualification. This will help you with the wording of your advertisement and will also make you hold yourselves to account to recruit for what you say you need, and not go on “feel” at the end of the day.
An important part of scoping is to map out which parts of the process will really test fairly what you are looking for. Assuming there are several stages to the process, from written application, a task-based assignment, a face to face interview and perhaps a chance to see that person in action, have you covered off every element you say you are looking for in your recruitment pack? Can each element be seen in more than one way?
Placing your advertisement If you do things the same way, you will get the same result. So think about where you would like to place your advert and what other methods you can use to recruit good candidates from a wide field. Advertising is key, if your community and school has a diverse population, advertise locally and you will probably get a diverse workforce. This support in your community shows you embrace both the community and its diversity. If your community is not diverse, think about publications, platforms and other ways to reach further.
From his experience, Adrian Rogers suggests asking BAME leaders either in your organisation or that you know, to actively support your recruitment – they are role models and could be most effective in promoting your organisation to people of colour. This may help people of colour feel comfortable about applying to your organisation, and see they are valued. Use different and wide ranging social media or media to advertise on. Local radio, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can be good places to advertise. Test what works for different groups and tweak accordingly. Adrian Rogers’ MAT is in Luton, and they found, for example, that local radio and LinkedIn helped them get a significant number of Black or Asian applicants. On the other hand, they noted that applicants through Facebook were predominantly white, and Twitter wasn’t significantly different for any group. Aureus School in Didcot was a brand new start-up secondary school. The headteacher at the time, Hannah Wilson, managed to recruit her entire leadership team without placing one ad, and instead used Linked In and Twitter to attract not only a wide-ranging diverse and highly skilled team, but many of whom re-located in order to work at the school and with the team she brought together.
Your diversity statement matters It has become standard practice to place a generic diversity statement on job ads. Think about what yours says that accurately reflects the place you are in now. Be bold about addressing the elephant in the room if this will be in fact your first person of colour to join an all-white team. Writing this diversity statement should be exciting and easy, provided you are well on your way with the work described above to make your organisation friendly to all humans.
The recruitment process
Seen, felt, heard The most important thing during the recruitment process aside from ensuring that you have tested for all of the elements you hope to get in a new recruit, is how you make people feel. Too many organisations make the recruitment process overly bureaucratic and impersonal, and also don’t offer flexibility over how they engage with candidates. This in itself can throw up unnecessary barriers for some candidates. Many organisations are not cordial and respectful about people’s time, often making them come for several stages of an interview at what seem like random times, when these could be rolled into one day. Consider also that women may often be juggling child care, or if they live in intergenerational households, may have responsibility for elder care and therefore may not have flexibility on what time of the day they can attend. This may sound sexist and of course men may face this issue too but statistically this remains stubbornly the domain of women in most cases. This might act to exclude them from the process unless you are openly discussing the best times of day for them to attend a face to face interview.
‘Blind’ recruitment Many organisations employ ‘blind’ recruitment of varying degrees to the process. This means removing elements which may identify the person’s gender, age, heritage, where they were educated or previous employers. You can either ask candidates to do this themselves, or get your HR department to do this before sharing applications to be sifted. There are pros and cons to doing this:
Pros
Blind hiring can promote greater diversity in the workplace because you can’t screen for candidates who look like you
It is considered more “scientific” because it provides the same assessments for every candidate. The more the interviewee is in situations where they reveal personal information, the panel makes subconscious decisions based on biases. If those selected for the final interview process are selected fully on the objective assessments, the top 3-4 candidates will actually be those on top of the job requirements
Blind hiring eliminates the “who do you know” practice that is often used, and, instead, opens up the field to other candidates who may actually possess higher skill levels
Cons
Blind hiring can be seen as just a fad and that, in the long term, will not have staying power
It can actually hinder diversity in hiring. Many organisations seek out BAME candidates in the hiring process as part of their commitment to diversity. When recruiters do not have the option of knowing personal information, they cannot actively pursue diversity
Blind hiring does not take into account the type of work environment in which a candidate has been successful or unsuccessful previously
Blind hiring could wipe out the often-used practice of referrals. Many organisations announce within their networking associations that they are looking for someone to fill a position. They put great value on the referrals they get from colleagues and usually interview such individuals. Of course, that referral alone provides a bias so should be treated with due caution
Written applications One trap that many organisations fall into is judging candidates on their ability to write, when the job itself may not require you to be an excellent orator or writer. Aside from writing ability, the panel should be clear with themselves and each other on what is a non-negotiable and what can be solved by training, coaching or on-the-job qualification.
The interview itself
Watch for performance over ability Similarly, many organisations come unstuck when they employ someone who performed impressively at interview, but then proved lacking in motivation, skills, confidence or ability in the day to day once they take the job.
Think also about how to put people at ease during the interview process. If there is an element of observation, many schools will now find going to the candidate’s school to see them in front of a class that they know and have built rapport with, tells them much more about the person, than bringing them to perform in front of a class of strangers. When a candidate comes to interview face to face, think about how you make them feel the warmth and reality of day to day life – some organisations will organise a cup of tea and an informal chat with a member of staff, where they can ask any questions they like. That member of staff will not have seen the candidate’s application or know any information, but can spend 20 minutes in friendly conversation and give the inside track of what it’s really like to work at the school.
How you invite the candidate into the interview room, the make-up of the panel and the positioning of the panel and the candidate can have a huge impact on how people feel and perform in the interview. The candidate should be comfortably seated, offered refreshments, the room should be adequately heated and ventilated. If you are conducting a remote interview using video conferencing, make sure that time is given for technical support, and to get used to the situation.
Think about how you probe on the candidate’s actual qualifications and what they entailed. We can exercise huge bias by assuming that someone who went to a Russell Group university would be better equipped, without asking what they actually learned that could be useful now in their job. Similarly, we are often quick to dismiss qualifications that are from abroad without knowing anything about the quality or content of their studies.
The interview panel Make sure that your panel is diverse. If you can’t for some reason, you had better be extremely alert to your own bias, and be able to have a robust, challenging discussion about this when deliberating about the candidates! Be honest with the candidates, whatever their background, that you are lacking in diversity in terms of race and gender and this is something that you know is unsatisfactory and which is being addressed.
While interviewing, the panel should take notes and be ready to discuss, explore and explain their reasoning around why they found a candidate suitable or unsuitable. Agree in advance that in your deliberations, you will not accept statements without evidence. So, no mention of “getting a good feeling” or the candidate being “likeable” without acknowledging and recognising where bias may be creeping in. This will aid not falling prey to “mirror-tocracy” or hiring in our own image.
After the interview
Unsuccessful candidates Remember that you want candidates to feel excited, included and positive about your organisation. They should come away from an interview feeling that they had ample opportunity to show themselves at their best. They may apply for another role at the school if they were not successful on this occasion, and they may tell others about the school if they liked what they saw, thereby becoming a valuable ambassador.
Consider how you let people know that they were not successful in their application. Try to personalise this as much as possible rather than firing out a generic email. If your interview notes were robust, you should be able to have a few useful pointers to talk through on the phone and capture that in a paragraph of feedback for any candidates that would like it. Make sure you offer the chance for verbal feedback.
Successful candidates Let the candidates know as soon as you can, and gauge their level of excitement carefully. If you have the right candidate, they should sound pleased! Be clear about next steps and make sure you have a clear and supportive system in place to ensure their success. This will include a staff handbook, an induction process, a buddy who can support them to get orientated and perhaps some kind of first day introduction and mini-celebration.
Make sure the team is informed clearly about who this person is, what role they will have and what their strengths are that they will bring to the team. Create as much opportunity for this person to feel wanted, welcomed and part of the team. This will be the test of all of the groundwork you have done in the organisation to make people aware of bias, committed to being reliable allies and anti-racist in every way.
Learning and growing
For your own learning as an organisation, capture throughout the process, what went well and what could be “even better if…” Capture useful statistical evidence to see how well the different places you advertised perform, to explore at what stages candidates drop out and are rejected and to ensure that you are gathering learning and checking your own biases throughout the process. Consider getting feedback from the candidates that didn’t make it as well as those that did so you can learn and improve the processes going forward.
The following post is a summary of a keynote presentation I gave to open a wider INSET day on closing the gaps at a secondary school in the south west of England. The stated aims of the session was to unpack what cultural capital means and to challenge some of the assumptions about cultural capital as it is often being deployed in schools.
How do I come to stand before you?
I am not an expert in cultural capital. I do see myself as someone who can challenge and support effectively, and this is my aim with this piece. Many of my experiences, from being the only free school meals child in my class at grammar school, teaching in primary and secondary schools in Jerusalem, returning to work in a start up environment in the UK after 12 years away, I have experienced the dissonance of feeling that my set of cultural norms and values, base knowledge and experiences, even my language and gestures are at odds with the norm. I have also been able to see the patchwork of cultural references and knowledge as useful in my survival toolkit in many situations.
My activism work with The BAMEed Network and lately the Haringey BAME Achievement Group, being Chair of governors at a Tottenham primary school and on a multi-academy trust board in Greenwich has also informed and fed my fascination with this notion of cultural capital.
Who are you?
Picture by Mona Chalabi
Ask yourself: who am I? What do I bring to the table? Why? Where do I get it? What parts am I proud of? What parts are seen as valuable to others and why? Does this change depending on what context you are in at the time? Would you give a different set of responses to colleagues around the table at an INSET day compared with the one you might give to friends over a meal out or at a job interview?
What is cultural capital to you?
In schools we use this term freely, but do we know what it means and where it comes from? What do you think you bring in terms of your cultural capital to the students you teach? Have you built in anything around what they bring to you as a teacher?
What is cultural capital, actually?
In his “Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction” (1977), Pierre Bourdieu coined the term Cultural Capital. He was interested in French education system in the 1960s, which saw itself as purely meritocratic – the belief that offering the same opportunities to all students was the same as creating equal opportunities for all students. Bourdieu wanted to explore why, despite this, working class students consistently had worse outcomes than their more privileged peers. This led to his understanding that some students come with a set of culturally valued experiences and prior knowledge which give them access to the curriculum more readily.
The phrase cultural capital refers to the tastes, manners, skills and credentials that are sometimes earned, but more often received from your family environment, are particular to your social class and social interactions with others in daily life. If we accept the notion of cultural capital uncritically, we will be unable to see how inequality is created from the get-go. The cycle is such that if you have the ‘accepted’ cultural capital, you are more likely to have wealth, and if you are wealthy, you are more likely to have greater cultural capital.
According to Bourdieu, cultural capital manifests itself in a number of ways:
The Embodied State – this is the knowledge that is acquired consciously and inherited passively through socialisation, through our culture and tradition. It is not something that can be inherited like physical assets but it is certainly impressed on our character and way of thinking, which in turn leads us to seek out and become more open to similar cultural influences.
The Objectified State – this is how cultural capital manifests itself into material, physical objects such as property that are indicators of social class – for example the clothes you wear, the food you eat, your car, and which can also extend into the way you walk, stand, talk and so on.
The Institutionalised State – this is the way in which society measures social capital – for example doctoral degree has more perceived capital than a expertise in a handicraft or being streetwise. I can’t help wondering which one has more actual worth in time of need – being able to stay alive, or having a high degree of philosophical knowledge.
We know what is valued, but why?
Picture: the sorting hat from Harry Potter movies
This picture is a great example of differing cultural capital. To me, it is the sorting hat from the Harry Potter movies. To my partner, who although he has a PhD, is an associate professor at a London university, came to the UK in 2007 and therefore on sighting this in my presentation slides said “oh my, is that a pile of poo?” Our cultural capital differs on the matter of the sorting hat.
If I ask you to do a quick sorting activity, how would you rank the following?
Universities: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Berlin University, Harvard, Exeter University, Oxford, Brighton University, Durham University
You can play this game and find out so much about how our minds work, what we are socialised to believe and how assumptions around cultural capital come into play. Trying this out on a room of over 100 teachers, I saw that they had no problem setting to work on the task. A few asked for more criteria but on the whole we generally agreed that the supermarkets could be ranked on a scale with Lidl and Aldi at one end of the scale and Waitrose at the other. Interestingly, if you compare the same basket of items from Lidl and Waitrose, the costs will be wildly different, but the actual quality and even source of many of the products will be identical or equal in comparison. Go figure.
The same with the university exercise. For many employers, overseas university equals assumed lower quality, unknown, impossible to perceive as valuable to the same degree as a UK one. Many people immigrating to this country with degrees in medicine, teaching, and so on, are told they need to re-qualify without any exploration of what they actually learned on their courses and whether this maps onto the requirements for the job. This can be further divided into racial assumptions – we are happy with teachers from Canada, Australia and New Zealand taking up teaching posts, but if your teaching degree is from Delhi, Cameroon or Nigeria, objections being raised are far more likely.
The Ofsted framework
The Ofsted framework states that no institution can be rated good unless its curriculum gives “all pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils…the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.”
The schools inspection handbook has linked cultural capital to the national curriculum, introduced by Michael Gove, in setting out “the essential knowledge pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said”.
The best that has been thought and said. We are judged as schools on this. But do we really understand what it is, and what is the best that has been thought and said? This is a place to pause and think again about the uncritical engagement with the term and concept of cultural capital. This is especially vital as the new framework has such a clear focus on curriculum. We are going to have to make decisive value judgements about what is the best that has been thought and said. We are going to have to decide what the things are that every child should learn in our school, in each discipline, across the curriculum as a whole. We are going to have to decide what counts as ‘knowledge’. (If there was ever a time to start understanding the importance of decolonising the curriculum, it is now – more on this later).
Year 1 Acorns; Brer Rabbit tales; continents; English civil war; jungles; Machu Picchu; Mexico; AA Milne; musical pitch; Henry Moore
Year 2 Tap dancing; Louis Pasteur; rabies; mosques; Hansel and Gretel; Atlantic Ocean; extinct animals and fish; Great Wall of China; dinosaur bones; Roald Amundsen
I have so many questions. How do you define what is essential knowledge? Should you define and dictate what knowledge is before you start? What is culture and what is the cultural capital that is valuable to children in your school? Is your school’s culture different to another school’s culture? How do you define that? What is included and what is excluded? Who decides?
Things that personally slowly dawned on me as someone of Jewish heritage growing up in the UK were things like, ‘how come the only thing we learn about Jews is the Holocaust and Shakespeare’s Shylock?’ Later in life, my own cultural experience of this when compared with Israeli Jewish cultural representation was fascinating. The experience you have of your self-worth as a Jew in Israel is radically different to that of a child growing up Jewish in the UK secular school system. Many of my esteemed colleagues, my own partner and children, all of whom have immigrated to this country often share similar experiences of the dissonance between their learned self-worth and what self-worth they are now afforded by those around them.
Bourdieu’s work should help us to see that compulsory education was created as one big sorting hat, designed to divide along clear lines – sorting the workers from the owners of the means of production and those that are used as the means of production.
What do you notice from just these few topics listed as essential knowledge for children in the early years of their education? There are no women (unless you count Hansel’s sister Gretel of course). To me it seems like the memories of a very specific, white, middle class experience of a 1970s childhood. And who was a child in the 1970s? Well I was, and despite the free school meals status and Jewish heritage, much of this is deliciously familiar and often subtly useful. But more significant is that the people in power and determining education policy now are largely from white, middle class backgrounds firmly rooted in that era either as 1970s parents, 1970s children or the children of those that had 1970s middle class, white, childhoods.
Back to the sorting hat
Let’s relate this concept of cultural capital back to our education system as a whole. What has changed since the industrial revolution?
Let’s acknowledge again that our compulsory education system was designed to be a sorting hat channeling children to be either the owners of the means of production, or the workers earning the wealth for the ruling classes. Therefore, there had to be a dividing line. Not much has changed today. The British education system is the most divisive in the world. Thanks to the education reforms of the last decade, it is now the most fragmented in the world.
Cultural capital and wealth go hand in hand now as much as they did during the industrial revolution. The harsh truth is that 7% of children are privately educated and they hold 94% of all elite jobs (judges, CEOs of FTSE 100 companies, the cabinet). A person from an underprivileged background with a 1st from Oxbridge is not as likely to hold one of these elite jobs as someone who has any class of degree from any university and who is from a privileged background.
Even if we have thought through carefully what is the ‘right’ cultural capital to give our children so they have a fighting chance of the achieving the goals that we see as important to ‘success’, the part of cultural capital which we cannot give young people are networks, the sense of entitlement and the wealth that gives privileged young people a place at the front of the queue. More than this, without a critical examination of cultural capital, and the curriculum, we are constantly communicating to groups of young people that they are not entitled, that their cultural capital is neither culture nor capital. We do this through a myriad of ways.
Loaded terminology
With this in mind, let’s consider what we are portraying to students with some of favourite edu-lingo terminology. We often talk about these buzz words, alongside discussions about gaps for certain groups, cultural capital and curriculum, as if we know what they mean.
Aspiration – is this about financial wealth or is it about aspiring to have the embodied, objectified and institutional states that are deemed worthy?
Mini case- study: a headteacher at a school in coastal Essex told me it took him years to realise that they were labelling students as lacking in aspiration because they preferred to take on apprenticeships with their family members and stay in the same postcode than leave family, guaranteed work, property ownership, good quality of life and education for their children in exchange for a university degree, at a time of the highest post-graduate unemployment rates, £50k debt and isolation from support networks and family. There is no logic to selling this to young people, unless you absolutely believe that gaining the ruling classes’ cultural capital is worth such a huge gamble not only financially but also at the expense of your own cultural, social and societal values.
Social mobility – this goes hand in hand with aspiration and seems to mean moving away from and turning your back on where you’re from. You can see more about my thoughts on this in one of my first blog posts way back when here
Disengaged – what does this mean? Have you asked students themselves what they need? Do they feel valued as the people who are going to be running the show one day?
Mini case study one: People often get irritated with examples from Finland, so I will temper this with a UK one too! Young people I have heard speaking about their education in Finland see education as a great privilege and see their teachers as preparing them to be the rightful future leaders and shapers of tomorrow. The only time we seem to hear about young people in our country are the jumping-for-joy photographs on results day, derisory articles about them skipping school to moan about the environment, and polar opposite tropes of evil-gang-youth and a snowflake generation. Disengagement might just be a function of self-preservation with messages like these.
Mini case study two: Inspire Partnership MAT is a group of primary schools in areas of high deprivation in SE London and Kent. The Junior Leadership Team is a group of children of all ages that takes an active part in all aspects of school life. When I met them recently at one school in Medway, we heard about their work looking at feedback and marking across the school. They were able to identify a gap in consistency in one year group’s books and when investigated more closely, it transpired that this was a year group with newly qualified teachers – they realised that these teachers needed a bit more support from the senior leadership team to ensure that the children had more effective feedback and marking. How great is that for showing the children their worth, engaging them and ensuring that they not only are heard, but also understand the intricacies of learning and teaching in its wider context.
Context – No education takes place without context. We desperately need to decolonise our curriculum. We need to question Black History Month vs history which includes Black history in this country every day. I would also add that while it is of course important for children from diverse backgrounds to see themselves in the curriculum and in the teaching staff, it is vital for white children to see people of colour as holders of power and influence lest we believe the pervading post-colonialist narrative of what is commonly accepted as “the essential knowledge pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said”.
The value of education – That Essex case study says it all. We do need more critical thinking skills from an early age though, rather than leaping straight to more vocational education as the answer to the students who we see as not understanding “the value of education” as it is first served up to them. We can revisit the streetwise vs. PhD question here again too – which one is more likely to keep you alive? Teenagers always ask how will what I’m learning help me in life? Do we ever discuss with children why they are learning what they learn?
Parental engagement – this is another favourite term when we are thinking about cultural capital and “closing gaps”. There are some really crude assumptions made around how parents engage in and therefore we assume, value, their children’s education.
Mini case study: A headteacher of school with 98% Bengali parents once gave a fascinating case study at a NCSL conference that I will never forget. He explained that he and staff were tearing their hair out trying to get parents into the school. It was only when he actually spoke to students about their families, that he understood that their parents would never speak directly to a teacher as this was seen as disrespectful and interfering. They trusted the teachers to educate their children. The bridging from assumptions and cultural bias took a long time, involved careful dialogue, and ensuring that a more suitable method of interaction and involvement was pursued. The headteacher set up an internet cafe at the weekends, where parents could come in and see what their children had been up to via a parent-school communication platform that many schools use to engage parents that are working or otherwise unable to come into school frequently.
Role models – Again, schools often only start thinking about this when we have “students from visibly diverse backgrounds”. But have you considered carefully who are the role models among your staff, the texts you use, your library books, the pictures on the walls. To put it blandly, does your science lab feature all white men on posters? Are all your senior leaders and decision makers from the same kind of background?
It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it
Policies aren’t just pieces of paper – What is valued as cultural capital is communicated beyond the curriculum and it’s important to consider what your policies actually communicate. For example, “extreme hair” policies often class Black children’s hair as extreme for just the way it grows out of their heads. Think carefully about blanket bans on certain styles and cuts or more subtle expectations about what ‘professional’ looks like for staff.
If you have considered what your staff team looks like and discovered that all the powerful positions taken up by white middle class men, do you need to revisit your recruitment policies?
Decolonise the curriculum – We need to go beyond the ‘dead white men’ curriculum choices but also be wary of falling into the trap of thinking you have diversity nailed without seeing that all the diverse texts you have chosen feature people of colour as oppressed, weak, underdogs, deviants or exotic for example.
When and how do you engage with parents? Look carefully at the assumptions you make about so called disengaged parents. Please assume this: ALL parents want the BEST for their children. No-one wants their child to fail or have a bad time at school.
Do you ask parents (and students) what they want, when and how? I have sat through so many parents evenings that are full of acronyms and edu-speak that even to me as an educationalist are impenetrable and serve to distance me from feeling included. For most of us parents, we are happy to trust you with the education of our children if you can respond positively and honestly to the question, “Do you like my child? Do you see their potential?”
Supplementary schools – You can’t do everything, especially in our over-scheduled school day, but one clear way to value cultural capital that is broader than the scope of what school can offer, is to give space, time and honour to typically marginalised experiences by inviting supplementary schools to operate on your premises after hours as part of the educational offer. The knock-on effect can be incredible for your students’ feeling of self-worth, engagement and celebration of cultural capital.
What’s your strategy? You have to be strategic. Do you have an achievement strategy that is about what YOU are going to change and not about interventions that extend the child’s already extended day? You can see a good example in the Haringey BAME achievement strategy
Over to you
Cultural capital is “the cultural knowledge that serves as currency that helps us navigate culture and alters our experiences and the opportunities available to us”.
What can you take away from this? What will you do next?
I gave a presentation at a session on Pupil Voice alongside Joe Pardoe from School 21, chaired by Ed Finch at the NEU Celebrating Education conference on Saturday 30th March 2019.
I knew that Joe Pardoe would most likely be outlining the fabulous work done at School 21 on pupil voice and so I wanted to take the conversation to a different direction and to try and ask some provocative questions of the attendees. The following is an overview of my presentation.
As educators, we need to ask ourselves some challenging questions about the voices that are heard in our schools.
Children and adults need to see a range of people and voices. The curriculum needs to reflect a diverse range of voices, and that includes a diverse range of speaking styles and opportunities. We might need to practise switching from Shakespeare to slangspeak and back again, depending on the situation. (But should we be switching Shakespeare into slangspeak? Probably not.)
Children need to experience a diverse range of speaking styles and opportunities, and they need time for reflection and discussion that is built into the school day. This is exactly the sort of thing that is the golden thread that runs through School 21’s head, heart and hand curriculum for example.
There’s a lot of emphasis on teaching children vocabulary (or more cynically, teaching year 6 children the vocabulary we think will come up on the SATs paper, or technical terminology we think is needed for GCSE exams). But what about engaging children in etymology, and exploring where words come from, as part of our curriculum, and how they got there in the first place. You’d be surprised how many every day words and phrases have come into our language as a result of our colonial past, for example, let alone the myriad migrations to Great Britain over the centuries. (If you want to know more about this, I highly recommend the Our Migration Story resource put together by the Runnymede Trust here). We desperately need to decolonise the curriculum!
Diversity is good for business We know from the McKinsey Report that diversity works & is good for business – so ensuring there are diverse voices being heard within the staff team, from our clients, the children, and from the local community, will lead to a more productive and happier school. The McKinsey Report found that diverse teams make better decisions, are more productive and the more diverse the voices included in the decision-making process the better. That includes a range of voices from the shop floor right up to senior management – which is why we need to include children’s voices in schools’ decision-making around policy and practice where appropriate.
Lack of diversity is dangerous – seat belts and space suits Up until far too recently, women and children were suffering massive injuries or dying in car accidents despite wearing seat belts. This is directly related to the fact that the people designing these seat belts were men, testing them on themselves, and not considering others outside their own assumed “neutral” position, not realising that women and children would also be using these seat belts while not being the same height and weight to benefit from the design.
If you can’t see it, you can’t be it – role models for children and adults A lot of people like to say that Black children need to see Black role models in schools. I do agree with this adage that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. But I also strongly believe that white people, those people that are traditionally used to holding positions of power in our society, need to see people of colour in positions of power and authority too. We are socialised to believe that the logical leader is a straight white man. We can’t unlearn this without ensuring that we all have experienced role models that aren’t white and male.
There are ways that you can ensure that you challenge your own biases, and the simple first step would be to join the activity of grassroots organisations like the BAMEed Network, WomenEd and LGBTEd.
We are all so conditioned to accept the white man in charge that we become immune to, or at least tolerant of, incompetence when it is plain to see. How many times have you waited for someone to step up, and then wondered why they are in charge when they are obviously completely under-skilled and overconfident? This short explanation shows just why incompetent men fail their way to the top and what we can do to stop being complicit in this.
We need to change the narrative about what a leader looks like. We need to change the narrative about what people in power look like. We need to change the narrative around who gets to be heard. We are peddling a narrative that “neutral” is white and male. Have you ever tried to buy a plaster? What colour are they? “Skin” colour? Whose? Back to those seat belts and space suits, the lack of plasters, make up, hair care products, lack of understanding by healthcare professionals and more…
We need to give opportunities for children to identify what they have in common and what is different, to look at different possibilities for identity and to identify with people who are the same and different. One way to do this is through the excellent resource produced by the Finnish organisation, Lyfta. You can see a short clip here that explains how this is used at Aureus School in Didcot, for example.
Politicise them. When do children learn about politics except if they do Politics A level or if we absolutely have to, for example when there’s a general election or we need to explain to them about Brexit (not that any of us know much about that except that it is an absolute ominshambles). Schools like The London Academy of Excellence in Tottenham oblige their students to spend a compulsory half day a week on social activism and community work as part of the curriculum.
Socialisation and stereotyping should be explained and unpacked for students at as early an age as possible, and should be revisited regularly.
Enquiry-led models of learning like the Finnish phenomenon-based learning, or the Canadian Spirals of Inquiry can help students to understand about making choices and taking informed risks.
When we speak to our students, what do they hear? When we include or exclude things in the curriculum, what does that communicate? When we talk about pupil voice and we talk about the curriculum, we need to understand how inherent bias works too. Bringing Black role models for Black children is important but it isn’t enough. Teaching all children about stereotyping and prejudice is one step, but it doesn’t take away the damage that is done by implicit bias i.e. what is communicated to people of colour, for example, in explicit and implicit ways throughout their lifetime. The Doll Test is a painful and real expression of how strongly these messages are heard and internalised by children from a very young age. You can watch it here
This is one of the many pictures from the newspapers on the children’s climate change march that happened recently. The condescending attitudes to children who went on strike and marched for climate change by the media, by some adults, and among them educators, was mind blowing and yet a true reflection of our disdain of young people and youth in general.
Compare ours with social attitudes to youth and childhood in Finland and you will see a country whose youth are consistently told that they are the next leaders, that the weight of responsibility to learn today what is needed to run the world of tomorrow lies with them.
In our system, education is about numbers and letters, not even whole sentences any more.
Try taking the questions I posed at the beginning and conduct a one-day exercise using them as an audit tool at school.
Check your own bias! Be honest about where your own starting point is and think about how you build your own curriculum of learning to get to a point where you can start to implement some changes, and for the right reasons. You might find the resources on the BAMEed Network website useful.
Think about recruitment practice in your school, especially to senior leadership positions and put in a plan of action to ensure that there is diverse representation at every level in your school.
Sign up to Lyfta and the British Council training for free. You can find out more about that here
Join BAMEed, WomenEd, LGBTEd and take action. Develop your own voice on this, be heard and amplify the voices of others that need to be heard loud and clear.
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