“National Inclusion Week (NIW) is a week dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces. Founded by Inclusive Employers”

This year’s theme is ‘Time to Act: The Power of Now’. So we are looking at what recent changes we have made, and what’s coming soon. 

We support nearly 3000 colleagues, across a range of roles. Over the last year we have been looking at how we can make sure all our colleagues get the support they need. As a growing organisation we also need to be future-proofing our policies and procedures. 

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – An Anti-Racist Trust

We are continuing to build on the work that started last year to review and refresh our focus on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). Our EDI policy and equality objectives were updated, and an Equality and Diversity Advisory Group was formed. The group then created an equality action plan to guide our next steps. All our academies also created and published their own equality statement and objectives. 

We launched Equality, Diversity and Inclusion training with central and hub colleagues and Academy EDI leads using external providers combining online, and face to face sessions. Our work continues with Leeds Beckett University around creating a trust-wide an anti-racist curriculum. 

Policies

We’ve also been changing our policies, to ensure fair and equitable treatment for all colleagues. 

We’ve updated our maternity and adoption policies

• including improved maternity pay terms, to offer the same maternity (or adoption) pay and leave terms to all colleagues. 

We’ve looked at how we can support our Trans Colleagues

• Our new Trust Trans Equality Policy has been published 
• HR colleagues across the Trust have received Trans Awareness Training from charity Gendered Intelligence. 

Our Teachers Pay Policy has been reviewed 

• Improvements made from 1st September 2021 to improve the process for teachers to move from main pay scale to upper pay scale. This is currently where women and part time colleagues are less likely to put themselves forward for progression. In addition, from September 2022 we have separated pay from performance management.

Guidance for managers of menopause has been issued to help managers deliver essential menopausal support. 

• The guidance explains the symptoms and the severity of menopause
•  We have created a guide on supportive measures for colleagues. 
• We are looking at making Menopause Ambassador training available across our Trust.

But this is just the start! Moving forwards we will be: 

• Increasing usage of our integrated HR/Payroll system to enable us to report on our ethnicity pay gap, in addition to the gender pay gap which we’ve been reporting on for a number of years.
• Asking the Trust’s Equality & Diversity Network for input around potential ‘blockers’ to career progression related to both gender and ethnicity
• Researching the work being done nationally around flexible working within the schools sector, and sharing this with headteachers