Why DEIB?

On Friday we hosted our Hawks Night - an evening of school spirit, where we faced local rivals in a series of basketball fixtures. Facepainting, cotton-candy, music and dance showcases, raucous chanting ensued... it was a blast.

Our teams fared brilliantly on the basketball court. But the value in such community events extends far beyond sporting prowess - or even 'school spirit' in any simplistic sense. Such events are only the most visible elements of a diverse school culture dedicated to creating spaces where all students find their points of entry to feeling inclusion and belonging.

Our Academic Leadership Team are just beginning a team-read of Cleverlands by Lucy Crehan. It’s a title that’s been around for a few years, but its insights on culture-building are incredibly timely. In a very relatable and readable format - part travelogue, part research - Crehan visits ‘the world’s education superpowers’ to better understand the policy, history, psychology and culture behind these countries' top-performing PISA scores.??

Insights abound, but perhaps the most pertinent of these to our culture and our school came from Canada. Identifying how Canadian public education significantly out-performed its closest counterparts as Anglo-American liberal democratic exponents of multiculturalism - the UK and the US - Crehan asks what distinguishes Canadian public schools? She identifies the following, which then forms one of her key examples of evidence-based practices used by teachers in top-performing systems: students are more motivated and successful when they belong and are accepted.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging initiatives are being challenged by populist politics in the US and elsewhere globally. Rather than address this as an (all too often sadly echo-chamber oriented) ideological issue, perhaps the most compelling response to the skeptics is rather with respect to educational outcomes - after the Canadian model for success in the PISA scores.

In a related discussion concerning the case for multicultural globalism in the face of populist skepticism - Tony Blair made a simple yet effective argument in his recent interview with Amol Rajan: Efficacy. In essence (and whatever you make of Blair's politics, his commentary here is very realistic): it is hard to argue against globalism in our political system if it is working - click here for the pertinent section of the interview), if we are doing it well.

I suspect the same may be true of our endeavours in DEIB; where we are truly successful in these, they are synonymous with happy, motivated and successful students. And, where this coincides with an ideology that is congruous with our school's mission and values - all the better! In that respect, the sentiments here from our DEIB Co-Chair Guillermo Aguiar Esteban make for an apt conclusion.