Dear Bridget Phillipson, Secretary of State for Education
We welcome the Department for Education’s (DfE) commitment to recruiting 6,500 new teachers to the profession, which will bolster the teaching workforce and provide additional teaching capacity to schools nationwide. It is a positive step and fulfils a government pledge.
While BEO welcomes this overarching commitment, it is important that the recruitment of new teachers also takes into account the need to recruit and retain more Black teachers into the profession. We would encourage the DfE to involve key stakeholders such as the Black Equity Organisation (BEO) and others to help shape and refine a targeted approach to attract and retain Black teachers and educators.
BEO and others have carried out extensive research into the experiences of Black communities in education and captured the views of Black parents, students and teachers. All of whom have said that increasing the number of Black teachers would have a positive impact on the educational outcome of Black pupils.
BEO’s call for more proactive steps to increase the number of Black teachers and reform the education system to address systemic issues is rooted in the insightful analysis of its The State of Black Education in Britain – report.
Coming together as organisations we bring a wealth of experience in the field of education and equity and as signatories we believe that working with DfE we can create an equitable educational system representative of our society.
Through our collaboration we can shape the recruitment campaigns and explore targeted outreach that would support and expand the pipeline of Black educators. Utilising Black teachers, as spokespeople and visual role models to support campaigns will be highly beneficial.
We believe with positive action we can address diversity in teaching by targeting outreach initiatives and creating equitable opportunities which would align with the government’s diversity and inclusion objectives. We draw your attention to the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) report which found significant ethnic disparities in postgraduate ITT rejection rates among UK-domiciled applicants. Putting in place disaggregated data sets on the recruitment results would be a positive step towards the government measuring and monitoring its progress towards achieving its ambition of a diverse cohort of teachers.
We would appreciate the Department for Education’s assurance that measures are in place to actively target and retain Black teachers. We believe equality of opportunity can meet the government’s overall ambition to increase teacher places in line with your policy objectives around inclusivity.
Yours sincerely,
Timi Okuwa, CEO, Black Equity Organisation (BEO)
Jason Arthur, CEO, Mission 44
Professor Uzo Iwobi OBE, Founder & CEO, Race Council Cymru
Ebinehita Iyere, Founder & Managing Director, Milk Honey Bees
Matthew Johnson, CEO, Race on the Agenda
Aisha Sanusi, Managing Director, African Caribbean Education Network (ACEN)
Kemi Oloyedi, Founder, The Black Teachers Network
