With Community Cohesion high on the agenda for schools this September, Carly Chynoweth looks at the issue of the representation of ethnic minorities in this first of a series of three articles.
Many teachers returning to school this week will enter classrooms full of children and young people from a wide range of faiths, cultures and linguistic backgrounds. The schools themselves may well serve a community that is far more mixed than it was even four or five years ago. However, the chance that the staffroom reflects this diversity is relatively small – and it’s even less likely that the school’s management team will.
In January 2007, 17.7 per cent of secondary students and nearly 22 per cent of primary pupils in England came from ethnic minority backgrounds, according to data from the government’s annual school census. In that same year, only 5.4 per cent of teachers came from a non-white background. At the moment there’s not enough data available to say with certainty exactly what percentage of all school leaders come from non-white backgrounds but the research that has been done doesn’t look good. For example, 1 per cent of the primary heads and 3 per cent of secondary heads appointed in 2005/06 came from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds; a study from 2003 showed that 52 per cent of BME teachers stayed in the classroom, while this was only true of 29 per cent of white women and 35 per cent of white men; and a different study, this time by the old DfES, found that 12 per cent of white male teachers under 45 had been promoted while only 5 per cent of BME teachers had.
Matt Varley, the lead officer for diversity at the NCSL, says that this lack of data around leadership and ethnicity is one of the issues being dealt with at the moment. “The DCSF is working towards a school workforce census which will start to provide very fine detail which will start to give us real clarity,” he says. In the meantime, the NCSL is working with local authorities to collect data around this issue as well. This will give a national picture but will also allow analysis on a regional and local level so that figures can be looked at in the context of the local labour market profile, community demographics and pupils’ backgrounds.
Viv Grant is a former head teacher who is now the director of Integrity Coaching, which helps to support BME teachers move into leadership positions. “Anecdotally, with the local authorities that I work with, there are a couple who have appointed no BME head teachers – and they are in diverse areas in inner London,” she says. “Being from a BME background myself, I find that really disappointing.”
Why aren't there more BME school leaders?
So what are the barriers making it harder for BME teachers to move into headship? For a start, Grant argues, generic leadership training being offered to future heads is letting them down. “If [the programmes] were making a real difference we would have parity in the number of school leaders, and we really do not.” One-to-one coaching helps potential heads to address difficult issues, including those around race, without having to raise it in a group situation.
She also feels that BME teachers can get pigeonholed early in their careers, for example by being directed into ethnic minority achievement (EMA) roles. While these roles are important to the school and rewarding for the teacher, they provide only limited exposure to school-wide leadership opportunities, which doesn’t help them to develop the experience needed to move into a more senior position. “We know that to be a head teacher you have to do NPQH, and a requirement of that is that you have a whole-school responsibility with a strategic view, but if you are an EMA teacher or consultant you will not have this.” Current head teachers can help to manage this situation by ensuring that all staff have a development plan that encourages them to move to new roles that continue to stretch them professionally.
Other hurdles facing potential heads from BME backgrounds, identified by the NCSL, include self-exclusion, which is often underpinned by a lack of encouragement and support; a lack of the informal mentoring and “fast tracking” that can see white teachers being promoted to department head within two years of entering teaching; and overt racial discrimination.
What can be done?
The NCSL and individual local authorities have a range of schemes and mechanisms – such as coaching offered by companies like Grant’s and development programmes run by the NCSL – to support BME teachers to move into headship. Varley’s colleagues are also running a new shadowing programme in conjunction with Ofsted. This will see BME teachers who are in middle to senior management positions shadow inspectors as they work. “This is one way of engaging them and improving their understanding of the inspection process, and it becomes an extra item that they can put in their array of skills,” he says. Head teachers can also help, Grant says; for example, finding time to help all teachers create professional development strategies that are tailored to their specific needs will benefit all staff, not just those from BME backgrounds. She also recommends that heads make time to talk to BME teachers – those at other local schools, if there are none in their own – about their needs and aspirations, then act on what they learn. NCSL’s research suggests that BME teachers identify personal sponsorship from individual heads or local authority staff as particularly helpful. Interestingly, while some of the teachers and leaders interviewed for this research advocated customised programmes, most did not; they think of themselves as leaders first and black leaders second.
While schools and local authorities have a moral and legal duty to ensure that teachers from all backgrounds can progress in their careers, there are other strong drivers as well. One is the ability to reflect a school’s community and supply appropriate role models; this links closely with the government’s community cohesion agenda. “With diversifying pupil populations, clearly we need the right links with the community,” Varley says. Alongside this is the need to make best use of the pool of potential future leaders – critical given the shortage of head teachers that schools are already facing. The profession needs to draw on all its sources of talent to make sure
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Carly Chynoweth is a freelance journalist who writes about leadership and management in both the public and private sectors.
Next: It’s not just about the staffroom. We look at what’s being done to develop greater diversity on governing bodies and to encourage more people to get involved with the NAHT.
If you would like to your school’s work supporting BME teachers and governors to feature in a future article highlighting best practice, email: Carly Chynoweth
What do you think about this issue? If you would like to share your experience, or that of your school, you can post your comments below.
