Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in a school means making sure every pupil and member of staff can take part fully, whoever they are. Diversity is the mix of people you already have. Inclusion is what you do about it: removing the barriers that stop some of them joining in, learning or staying. Start with your leaders’ commitment and your own data. The poster can come later.
What does equality, diversity and inclusion mean in a school?
Ask a staffroom the difference between equality and equity and you’ll get a lot of different answers. Without a shared language, the work tends to stall at a display board.
Equality means giving everyone exactly the same: the same resources, the same support, the same time. It sounds fair, but it ignores where people start from. Equity recognises that people have different circumstances and needs, and shares out resources and opportunities to match, so the outcome is fairer. When people say “equality, diversity and inclusion”, equity is usually what they mean.
Diversity is a fact. It’s the similarities and differences each of us carries: race, sex, faith, class, age, disability, sexuality and the rest. Some schools are more racially diverse than others, but every school’s pupils and staff are diverse.
Inclusion is a choice. It means valuing difference, building a culture where it’s celebrated rather than put up with, and acting to remove barriers to taking part. You can recruit a more diverse staff, but if the culture isn’t inclusive, the people you’ve recruited won’t stay.
What does the law ask of schools?
The Equality Act 2010 pulled earlier laws on discrimination into one Act. It applies to schools as employers and as providers of education. It names nine protected characteristics: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation. In the parts of the Act that cover pupils, age and marriage and civil partnership don’t apply. All nine apply to your staff.
Schools in England that are public bodies, including maintained schools and academies, also have the public sector equality duty. You have to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, to advance equality of opportunity, and to build good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and people who don’t. In practice that means publishing information to show how you meet the duty, and setting at least one equality objective.
Where should a school start with EDI?
At the top. Senior leaders need to commit to EDI openly, give it time, money and training, and say so to governors, parents, staff and pupils. Without that, the work rests on one or two enthusiasts and fades when they leave.
Aim for a whole school approach. A single anti-racism assembly, or a pride society that ten pupils turn up to, isn’t one. Inclusion shows in your website, in forms that ask about “parents” rather than “mother and father”, in how you praise pupils, how you induct new staff and what you put on for families. That won’t happen in a term.
Before you set priorities, gather your data. Find out whether there’s a problem and where it is. Use surveys, and small group conversations too, and ask everyone: pupils, parents, teachers, support staff. (What’s the school like for your cleaners?) Look at bullying, at the language pupils use and at peer-on-peer abuse, at who you recruit and who leaves, and at how inclusive staff think the school is.
Pupils are usually very open once they can tell you’re asking because you want to do better. It can be uncomfortable. We’re loyal to our schools and we’d rather talk about what’s going well. But the data tells you where to start, and gives you a baseline to measure against in three years’ time.
How do you make the curriculum more inclusive?
A photo of someone with brown skin on a worksheet isn’t enough. A proper curriculum review takes time, so give it something like two years and set small targets inside that.
Train staff within each subject first. Then pick someone in each department to lead: the head of department, or a colleague who cares about it and knows the subject well. Start with one year group, Year 7 say, and look at it through different lenses. Whose voices are in it? Whose aren’t?
A religious studies teacher who did this found that almost every philosopher on her scheme of work was a man, and that “philosophy” was being taught as if Western philosophy were all there is. Sometimes the problem is smaller and more obvious, like a physics lesson explaining force with the example of a woman in stilettos.
Keep it about getting better, and pair colleagues up. Nobody should feel blamed.
PSHE is one of the best tools you have. It’s where pupils can talk openly about prejudice, identity and what’s in the news. Make sure pupils know which staff they can go to about these things, too. Schools are sometimes surprised to hear pupils say they have nobody to talk to, when staff assumed it was obvious.
Inclusive language: what if you get it wrong?
Inclusive language isn’t about policing what people say. It’s about making sure nobody in the room feels shut out, because a pupil who feels alienated isn’t listening or learning.
It isn’t fixed, either. Two pupils who share an identity may feel differently about the same words, so you build it through conversation.
Being curious about people is fine. Being probing isn’t. Asking a Black British pupil “but where are you really from?” tells them you don’t think they belong here. Chatting about families and backgrounds as you get to know someone is a different thing altogether.
And you will make mistakes, especially with names and pronouns when someone you know transitions. If you misgender someone, say sorry, say you’ll do better and move on. Saying “I don’t see colour” doesn’t help either. Differences are real, and you can’t fix a problem you won’t look at.
Where does neurodiversity fit?
Neurodiversity, the natural variation in how people’s brains work, is part of the diversity in every school. Many autistic pupils and pupils with ADHD or dyslexia may meet the Equality Act’s definition of disability, which brings the duty to make reasonable adjustments for them.
The same principles apply. Gather what you know about who’s struggling and why, look at the barriers in your routines and classrooms, and include neurodivergent pupils and staff when you ask how the school feels.
What should school diversity training cover?
Good training starts with shared definitions, then turns to the people in the room. One useful exercise is to list five to ten parts of your own identity and ask which you notice most and which you hardly ever think about. The ones you rarely notice often point to where you have privilege. That doesn’t make anyone a bad person. It means you may be in a position to use it well, and you may make assumptions about people who don’t share it.
It should also cover unconscious bias, and simple checks against it. Blind marking is one: if you don’t know whose work it is, your assumptions about the pupil can’t creep into the mark. Then there’s allyship. Being an ally means doing something, like calmly saying “that’s not acceptable” when a colleague makes a sexist joke, rather than tutting about it afterwards. Staff need to know the school will back them when they do. If you want one session that gives the whole staff the same starting point, our EDI course for schools covers all of this.
For more on leading this kind of whole school change, see our leadership topic page.
Our introduction to equality, diversity and inclusion in schools is led by a former teacher who spent 15 years at one school, finishing as its director of diversity and inclusion. It covers the language of EDI, the protected characteristics, privilege and allyship, inclusive language and unconscious bias, and then how to put a whole school approach together: gathering data, reviewing the curriculum and using PSHE. It’s for teachers, support staff and leaders who want a shared starting point.