Recently I spoke with three London headteachers about diversity in their own teaching staff, and what the word actually means to them.
Your local school should have a diverse teaching staff. The pledge is official in the government’s 2018 Statement of intent on the diversity of the teaching workforce, that makes a particular case for seeing ‘more women and ethnic minority teachers’ in leadership, and undertakes to do ‘more’ for teachers from the LGBT community, and those with disabilities.
But national statistics miss the nuances of individual schools, where headteachers must appoint, develop, and empower staff who serve their own distinct community. Every teacher, parent and student must look at their own school and ask, have we got this right?
I spoke to three London Headteachers - Mouhssin Ismail of Newham Collegiate Sixth Form, Katharine Birbalsingh of Michaela Community School, and Dominic Bergin of the Elmgreen School – about the challenges they face.
“I personally like hiring ethnic minority teachers just because the kids are ninety-five per cent ethnic minority. If this were a majority white school then I might not be concerned,” Birbalsingh tells me. Perhaps hinting at the apparent decline in numbers of men in teaching, she adds, “And it would be a bit hard if all the teachers were men, or were all women. I suppose I would go out of my way at that point.”
The most recent available research shows white British teachers make up around eighty-six per cent of the workforce – significantly more than the rest of the working-age population – with all other groups proportionally less represented.
For Bergin, having teachers and students who share heritage means school can be a positive experience. “There are such complexities around these communities’ achievement, around their families’ experience of schooling and the rich cultural capital those families have,” he says. “The school should reflect that.”
Each believes it is about having adults who can share relevant experience, and for students to see role models they can identify with.
“I actually think it's less important when it comes to their teachers,” Birbalsingh says. “It’s more important when they see lawyers, doctors, management consultants and so on who come and talk to them, so they can imagine that those paths are also open to them.”
And Ismail adds, “It's important to have diversity of views and perspectives because it enriches the conversation. There are some students who don't think Oxford [University] is for them. Part of it is seeing someone who looks like them, but more importantly someone from a similar background, seeing that it is possible for them to do.”
None, though, has any explicit policy on the make-up of their teaching staff, and each echoes the others: “What's more important is that they're being taught by a good teacher.” (Birbalsingh). “For me, whilst diversity is important, the first thing is having talented people. I think sometimes we can get caught up with diversity for diversity’s sake, and miss out on talented people as a consequence.” (Ismail). “You can't just throw somebody in, or presume they think [ethnicity] is the be-all and end-all of who they are because it won't be. Every person is different.” (Bergin).
Bergin leads a school with affluent West Dulwich on one side and the estates of Tulse Hill the other. He sees the shadow of adults’ experiences of school in the 1970s and 1980s in these figures. Things are changing, he says, but it will take time.
“In an inner-London school the governance will often be overtly anxious about the lack of diversity in the staff,” he says. “Sometimes it becomes tokenistic. You have to build the right people, and it takes time for those people to filter through and not have had a negative experience of education, and for society to change.”
Repeatedly, Birbalsingh brings the story back to her students.
“In my earlier days I did surveys with kids, asking whether gender mattered to them, race mattered to them, and so on,” she says. “Every time, ninety-eight per cent of kids would say what they wanted was a good teacher. The black kids did not care whether the teacher was black or white, male or female; they just didn't care. What they wanted was a good teacher.”
In fact, each interviewee moves on quickly to address what diversity really means to them.
“It's not just about gender or race; for me it's also about socio-economic background,” says Ismail. “Social class [is] not really talked about much, which is a massive issue in terms of ‘glass ceilings’. On another level it's about diversity of thought. I want people challenging my thinking; if they don't, you miss things. Clearly, if you've got people with different viewpoints and experiences you'll have a more enriching education.”
And Birbalsingh looks at the wider societal issues as key to maintaining a balanced staff room, perhaps signposting recent attempts to measure political persuasion among teachers that show Conservative voters to be notably more rare than in the general population.
“Too often in education you can sort of predict what people think – on politics, or the environment, or which newspapers to read,” she says. “I would find it very difficult to predict what my staff think, and the school tends to attract diverse thinkers. You could have had a different job, come from a working-class background, or be from the countryside or the city. You want children to be exposed to a real variety of people.”
For Ismail, it is not necessarily the teacher’s background, so much as their commitment to the young people of Newham.
“It is about high expectations,” he says. “If you have an Oxbridge degree and you've had privilege your whole life, that's less important than if you have that passion and drive for supporting disadvantaged people getting to Oxford and Cambridge. You can say, ‘This is what my peers did when I was growing up, this is what you need to do to bridge that gap’.” And he continues, “I quite like the phrase meritocratic hubris – the idea that people get to certain positions because of their talents, and fail to realise it's other people supporting them. It’s important to say to young people, ‘Whether you're from a middle-class background, you're white, you're male or female, they're all there to support you’.”
Still, an individual headteacher is faced with choices when they appoint and promote staff, and ideas of ‘meritocracy’ recur. Given the agreement that diversity is important, I ask what levers, if any, they can pull. The makeup of Bergin’s staff room has changed markedly over his seven-year tenure; an organic result, he says, of the values expressed in “internal structures, how you advertise, and the language you use about the school”.
Ismail adds, “For us it's still about meritocracy. If there is an area where there isn't representation then we encourage more people from a particular group to [apply], if they have the talent and experience. Identifying gaps is one thing, supporting people to think they should be applying is another.”
And for Birbalsingh, the issue is a complex jigsaw with no correct answer.
“The problem with the phrase ‘appoint the best person for the job’ is people who say that tend to be somewhat disingenuous,” she says. “Actually, it's never cut and dried. You're weighing up a whole variety of things, looking for the right fit at that point in time. I would consider [diversity], just as I would consider whether I need more presence in the corridors, or stronger organisational skills. If you're a good leader you're thinking about how your team delivers as a whole.”
For each, it is about having the confidence of the staff they lead, and providing the best education of the students.
Bergin remembers, “I had been in post only a few weeks when I gave an assistant head job to a middle-aged white male. A science teacher came up to me – and she was not shy in voicing her opinions – and said, ‘I thought you were different but obviously not.’ I was talking to her last year and said, ‘Do you remember that conversation? What do you think now?’.”
He is proud of his record, believing the school is more diverse and inclusive now than when he joined. National averages and government mandates tell one story, but teachers, parents and governors must ask themselves if they believe their school truly represents their values, and, ultimately, if it does as well as it can by the students in its care. Responsibility lies with the headteacher, and good one will have their door open, and welcome being asked.
As Ismail tells me, “I come from bias in the sense that I'm focusing on the less privileged kids, the disadvantaged kids. All of my policies and discussions are with them in mind.”
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Further interview extracts will be published in Teach Secondary Magazine later this month.
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