This will be our first full-day event specifically for headteachers, building on the success of our annual events launched in 2021 which were held at Dulwich College, St Paul’s School, and City of London School.
Since our inception, we have trained tens of thousands of teachers and students, and collaborated with numerous schools on a wide range of EDI initiatives. While our expertise lies in racial inclusion strategy, we have also spent considerable time understanding the structural dynamics of schools.
As such, we have created this headteacher conference as our experience has shown a critical gap in structural change. While we regularly work with dedicated staff members, they often communicate that they lack the authority to implement significant institutional shifts. In addition, we’ve found that some insights are not fully understood at the highest levels of school leadership, leaving certain spaces psychologically unsafe for students and staff alike.
This issue is particularly pressing now, as many racially minoritised teachers, students and EDI leads feel their institutions see anti-racism as a completed task, especially against the backdrop of many competing priorities. However, these issues remain central to the sense of belonging and engagement with education for significant members of your communities.
The day will feature a panel of school heads, EDI leads, and most importantly, students of different races. These students are skilled at sharing their experiences and conveying them in a way that fosters recognition and understanding of how racial issues arise, and why they often go unreported.
ACEN will conclude the conference with a workshop designed to deepen understanding of the covert and common racial indignities that students often feel compelled to endure to access the education and community your schools offer. We will also shed light on the gaps and issues with current reporting mechanisms. By the end of this session, you will leave with actionable insights on how to make your schools safer and more inclusive spaces for racially minoritised students and teachers.
Through our training and events, our aim is to encourage attendees to reflect on the work they have undertaken to date, the order in which they have prioritised this work, explore where some students feel they have been forgotten in these efforts, and examine why some EDI efforts have seen little to no progress. To support this, we are scheduling significant Q&A time into each session so we can explore, as a collective alongside attendees, solutions to some of the challenges shared.
While we welcome and encourage the participation of EDI leads and those with safeguarding responsibilities, this event is specifically designed for headteachers. As a result, we can only accept registrations from these individuals if they are accompanied by a headteacher, unless there are unavoidable circumstances preventing the headteacher from attending.
We will publish a list of schools in attendance on request from our members.
For more information contact aisha@aceducationnetwork.com
