We fully understand our Public-Sector Equality Duty (2010 Equality Act) to promote, as well as protect people in the nine ‘protected characteristics’ (PC) groups.  As a team, we represent a diverse cross-section of society and protected characteristic groups, including varied  gender  identities,  neurodivergent  community  members,  sexualities,  ages,  socio-cultural backgrounds, ethnicities and faiths. We are proud and open about our diversity and  our  ability  to  draw  on  our  own  lived  experiences  of  inclusion  (or  exclusion)  as  this provides us with a strong basis for supporting others. We model and promote inclusive practices in all our work.

By  way  of  example,  we  often  choose  reading/listening  tasks  to  explore  pedagogical practices  (like  active  reading/  listening)  that  are  written/  recorded  by  members  of  PC groups,  e.g.  a  text  on  supporting  autistic  learners  written  by  someone  with  autism  or  a video  on  linguistic  diversity  featuring  someone  originating  from  the  Caribbean. We understand that EDI promotion is often about making spaces for people from PC groups to  speak  for  themselves  and  opportunities  to  do  so  will  be  embedded  throughout.

When  running  courses,  our  PD  Leads  model  SEND/  neurodiversity  as  well  as  ESOL inclusion and always aim to explain/ elicit why we are using certain approaches to enable participants  to  process  this,  and  reflect  on  how  they  might  try  such  approaches themselves. We also have a culture where we are open about our own differences and encourage trainees to share their lived experience of what works for them (e.g. 1 in 8 we know will be in a neurodivergent group).

As well as the course below we can also offer live EDI courses (remotely or in person) so do contact us for more information.