Equality and Diversity in Leadership Fund

The leadership equality and diversity fund supports schools to develop local solutions that help teachers covered by at least one of the protected characteristics as defined in the Equality Act 2010 progress into leadership.

Regional hub lead schools have been appointed to manage grant funding for onward allocation to individual school projects. These schools have a successful track record of delivering equality and diversity leadership programmes over the last 3 years of the fund and have obtained a grant to help them increase the diversity of senior leadership teams in England’s schools.

North Somerset Teaching School Alliance, Cabot Learning Federation and Affinity Teaching School Alliance are working together as the South West's regional hub and we are now inviting applications from Teaching Schools across the South West to run local equality and diversity leadership programmes.

This information is for:

• Schools who would like to apply for funding from a regional hub lead school
  
• Teachers who would like to improve their leadership skills through a leadership, equality and diversity project

The NCTL Leadership Equality and Diversity Fund aims to develop a school leadership workforce which:

• Is reflective of the diversity of the teaching population within schools;
  
• Develops talented individuals from a range of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives;
  
• Supports equitable and fair access to opportunity.

The DfE School Workforce Census data (November 2015) demonstrates significant under-representation issues:

• Only 3.1% of heads are from black and minority ethnic groups (compared to 7.6% of all teachers)
  
• Just 62% of headteachers are female (compared to 73.8% of all classroom teachers). At Secondary level, only 38.2% of head teachers are female. (Source: School Workforce in England: November 2015 statistical first release)

This funding has been running for the past 3 years and there have been 70 projects to date supporting just over 1000 teachers.

An online participant survey in July 2016 showed that:

• 92% felt the programme had increased their confidence to apply for next stage promotions
  
• 67% had either already secured a senior post, or were applying for one

Download the application form and guidance on completing the form here: Application form and guidance

Please email your completed application forms to: EqualityandDiversity@nsta.org.uk

More more information please visit: www.nsta.org.uk/equality-and-diversity-in-leadership/