There’s an awful lot of handwringing around equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) - and plenty of organisations have the will to be better. It’s the way that’s the problem. 

At Milton Keynes College, in association with the Education and Training Foundation, we have set up FE Voices, a series of panel discussions and question-and-answer sessions trying to get to the bottom of the way racism affects our sector. We’re hoping as many people as possible will join in with the staff, students, experts and businesspeople because only when we share our concerns and ideas can we hope to make progress.

But it’s not just about talking, it’s about doing. To understand why an organisation can’t recruit or promote more diversely, for example, it is necessary to delve deeply into its processes. It’s all about the data and until there is a clear understanding of how such systems work there will not be any meaningful progress.

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As the recently appointed equality, diversity and inclusion manager at the college, I’m delighted to be able to say that we’ve just signed up to the Race at Work Charter, run by Business in the Community. It commits us to five courses of action; crucial among these is to capture ethnicity data and publicise progress.

Tackling the ethnicity pay gap

The first and most obvious element of data capture is to discover and publish the extent of our ethnicity pay gap. Many organisations believe they have a problem in terms of remuneration for black and ethnic-minority employees. Doing the sums allows us to identify precisely the scale of the problem and to be able to compare each new year’s figures to measure progress. Senior leaders are often squeamish about voluntarily sharing such information because they fear it makes their organisations look bad. However, surely it creates a better impression to say “we have a problem and we’re not afraid to admit it because we’re committed to change”, rather than to hide away from reality and do and learn nothing?

One of the things most often said when talking about EDI is that people from diverse backgrounds just don’t apply for jobs when they are advertised. 

Firstly, is it even true or is it just a perception not based on the facts? The data needs to be properly examined and the numbers crunched before any judgement can be made about what’s really going on. If it is true, is it to do with the language of the advertisements? Has there been any attempt to vary the wording to see what construction provokes a more diverse set of people to apply? Do current application forms actually make it possible to gather the information needed? 

I have lost count of the number of times when such forms asked for my ethnicity where I ended up having to tick “other”. If “other” is a category people are selecting, all that can be learned is who they are not, not who they actually are. It is vital to make sure when gathering information that there is as much room for clarity and nuance as possible.

Not so long ago, education jobs all used to be advertised in sector-specific outlets like Tes. If you didn’t know to look there, you wouldn’t know there was a vacancy. To attract a more diverse set of candidates, it’s essential to advertise on channels that can reach people in different communities. To discover where these channels are, it’s really important for senior leaders to go out into those harder-to-reach communities to find out. 

However, to have an authentic relationship with the communities we serve, it’s not just about turning up to events, ticking a box and going away. Genuine commitment to dialogue is essential. For us, it’s about not just taking Milton Keynes College into the community but welcoming the community into the college. This whole area needs looking at from a different viewpoint. We often hear talk of “hard-to-reach communities” as if people in minorities are somehow hidden from view. What we should be doing is thinking in terms of: “Is ours a hard-to-reach organisation?” It’s not about making people more accessible to us, but us more accessible to them.

We all need to confront our own natural desires to surround ourselves with people who are like us - the fight between meritocracy and mirrortocracy. Being diverse is not the same as being inclusive. It’s all very well to invite people to your table but hearing and valuing what they say when they’ve arrived is another step entirely. People from different backgrounds may have a place in an organisation but do they have the opportunity to thrive and progress and if not, why not? Are those pathways for promotion and career development there for everyone or are they effectively reserved for a few at the expense of the rest?

I’m hopeful that gathering and analysing all the data will help us to produce a reliable roadmap for Milton Keynes College so that we can make our wish to be genuinely more inclusive a reality. 

What would be really exciting is if other schools and colleges took a similar path. The bigger the numbers the more instructive the data becomes. If we could amass significant intelligence like this from across the education sector, how much more could we learn and improve upon?

Arv Kaushal is the equality, diversity and inclusion manager at MK College.

For free tickets to FE Voices, please click here