How does the National College promote diversity and equality?

The College is working to diversify leadership through increasing its understanding of school leadership diversity issues and taking effective action where issues are shown to exist. We are working with current and aspiring leaders, as well as increasing our collaborative work with other agencies.

We are working with our partners - including the Network for Black Professionals, Ofsted, Stonewall, the Institute of Education and teaching unions - to develop a shared strategic approach, and to lobby and influence stakeholders and decision-makers. It is crucial that we develop a collective understanding of how the system operates, what our respective roles are, and how we can work together to best effect.

At the same time, we are ensuring that our own provision supports our drive to diversify school leadership. We are taking steps to ensure that those who engage in our leadership development opportunities are drawn from diverse backgrounds. We take positive action where appropriate and ensure that our strategic initiatives are engaging with and promoting diversity in leadership. We also encourage school leaders to develop a more diverse cadre of future leaders.

Our Diversity and Equality Strategy has two high-level goals: to diversify the leadership workforce and to ensure a fit-for-purpose College in terms of our own diversity and equality. The strategy outlines the approach we are taking in order to rise to the challenges we face. It covers:

external activity - our role as an authoritative national voice on school and children’s services leadership issues
delivery - our role as a commissioner and provider
internal activity - our role as an employer

Our Equality Scheme and Action Plan, which sets out the action required to deliver this strategy, will be reviewed annually.

We have set overall targets for gender and ethnic diversity, and we aim to align the diversity of our programme participants and system leaders with the diversity of the teaching population.

College development opportunities

Training events

Following on from the success of our targeted support training - Asian women in educational leadership, Black men in educational leadership and Break through to success - we held four further events in 2011. These events reached over 130 aspiring leaders and provided practical assistance, inspiration and networking opportunities for teachers from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds. Eighty five per cent of attendees indicated that the events had significantly increased their aspiration to school leadership. Details about future events will be listed in our calendar.

Programmes

We run a number of programmes and initiatives to support leadership progression for under-represented groups of aspirant leaders. These are an additional offer in response to under-representation and are not a requirement before undertaking our generic professional development programmes.

Online networks

You can join the following online networks, which have been set up to continue the peer-to-peer support established during programmes and training events.

Regional activity

Since 2009, projects have been funded through grants to develop targeted local and regional activity that:

raises awareness of the importance of developing a more diverse workforce
addresses regional diversity challenges
brings regional collaborations together to diversify the school workforce

As part of this, we have published A guide to achieving equality and diversity in school and children's centre leadership. It is built around 8 questions and proposes 10 actions to support diversity in leadership.