#BlackLivesMatter
We, the Fair Education Alliance, exist to fight inequality together. Inequality in society and education is a patchwork of disadvantage – including socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, gender, LGBTQ+ and geographic factors – that makes up the fabric of an unfair system.
The events of the last month have been seismic, highlighting longstanding racism that is embedded in our society. The need and opportunity for our collective work to tackle structural racism has never burnt more strongly.
We have heard Black leaders clearly state that ‘Black and Minority Ethnic’ must not be looked at as a whole, but instead show the nuance between the groups given the diversity of their backgrounds. Therefore, we are explicitly focusing this bulletin on tackling racism towards Black individuals and communities but will continue our work to explore and act on other areas of injustice.
"I have watched global protests, social media blackout campaigns and companies standing in solidarity. These unified efforts have put the spotlight on the matter of racism, police brutality and the individual prejudices that people hold. But my question is, now that the spotlight is on, how do we translate this into an impactful change? I would like to think that when this topic of discussion is raised a decade from now, we can all confidently say that we did our part to ensure we had made things better for the next generation."
Duro Oye, Chief Executive, 2020 CHANGE
At this juncture, collectively as the FEA, we unequivocally show our solidarity against systemic structures of racism not just in words and optics but in action:
This bulletin focuses on five areas. Please take the time to read:
Black community and leaders within the FEA
Creating space to talk about race
Holding ourselves to account as organisations
Centrality to our wider work of disadvantage in the education system
As individuals - lets continue to learn, donate and talk
This is a deep-rooted issue and we aware that we will get things wrong. However, we believe that inaction is even worse. We are committed to learning from, working with and being corrected by you, our members. We hope you can join a weekly Connection Call (Thursdays at 3pm) to share your experiences and insights. We gratefully welcome your guidance and feedback along this journey.
Sam and Gina x
1. Our FEA black community and leaders
We are proud that many FEA members are at the forefront of addressing race inequality in education. The FEA's approach is to bring diverse viewpoints together, amplify and support each other’s work and build consensus on the change we want to see so we can take collective action.
We commit to celebrating, platforming and amplifying the work of Black-led FEA members and those focusing on supporting young Black people.
Current FEA member organisations leading this agenda include Generating Genius, 2-3 Degrees and Reach Society. We have included a spotlight today on work from Naomi Kellman who is founder and lead for our member Rare Recruitment’s Education work. Soon to be a member of the FEA, JAGs foundation is led by its inspiring CEO and founder Tracey Ford.
Please take the time to read, listen and learn from these organisations and leaders. Other members leading this work, please get in touch.
Furthermore, we know there are many Black-led organisations tackling race inequality in education who are not yet members of our community. We have reached out to our networks and are extending an invite to more Black-led organisations to join the FEA. We have showcased some in today’s newsletter including 2020 Change, LIVE, Color in tech and Insight Education.
We welcome more connections and suggestions to strengthen Black voice in our Alliance.
FEA member organisation spotlight
Rare is is a specialist diversity recruitment company. With regard to education, Naomi Kellman, is Founder and Senior Manager of Target Oxbridge, Rare's programme to support black African and Caribbean students increase their chances of gaining places at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Naomi also leads Rare's work experience programmes for school and sixth form students, including PRIME programmes for a number of law firms. Naomi leads Rare's campus recruitment activity and work with Universities on employability programmes for widening participation students.
Naomi was recently interviewed by The Tab, and the article focuses on the issues for Black students in regard to education and university access: If you think that might be helpful to share, please do feel free.
Rare also has a podcast (Apple, Spotify), which was released recently, which is a good resource for students considering Oxbridge, and particularly helpful for Black students as it provides access to roles models.
Spotlight on Black-led organisations tackling race inequalities in education
2020 Change: I am Change Programme, led by Duro Oye. Duro has calls to action on how individuals can hold their companies to account on action on #BlackLivesMatter and is planning on holding a round table event with some of 2020 Change’s corporate partners who have already started their journey with the organisation. They plan to share best practice and hopefully create a network of corporate change makers. If you are interested in taking part, please email Duro here. See information about the I am Change Programme here. Duro has also shared a powerful blog you can read here.
LIVE (Learn, Inspire, Visualise, Elevate) is an organisation founded by Kike Adediji and Lamide Odanye. The purpose of LIVE is to bridge the gap between education and the working world by teaching young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds the soft transferable skills required in a work environment. To achieve this, they run mentoring programmes and workshops for students in Year 8-13 (12-18 year olds). The core values are Personal Growth, Support and Success. The work aims to decrease the rate of youth unemployment and increase the rate of social mobility. This video that explains more about what they do. Lamide says: “Follow us @live_mentoring on Twitter and Instagram or send us an email to find out more about our work”
With Insight Education runs Insight2Uni, a 10-month online mentoring programme that matches black-heritage A-level pupils to role model black-heritage student mentors who instil them with the confidence, knowledge and ability to successfully apply to top 1/3 universities.
Christine Kinnear, Founder and CEO says: "I think that this is an opportune time for universities to reconsider their outreach strategies so that it feels more inclusive and provides an honest space for prospective applicants to talk openly about race. Based on the feedback from the Insight2Uni programme that 91% of my 2019 cohort said that it mattered to them to have a mentor that mirrored their ethnicity, this will entail universities making a conscious effort to ensure that prospective applicants have access to students with a shared heritage. Expressing concerns can be daunting so it takes a relationship based on trust which is established through sustained contact.
I feel strongly that outreach work should be co-created with input from pupils across the racial spectrum. What are their challenges and concerns? What are their perspectives and preconceptions? What was their experience of interacting with the university? Through this multi-faceted lens, then the university sector can more effectively move towards the levels of racial diversity that we aspire our higher education to have."
Christine has published a full blog here on widening access to University and ethnicity. You can email Christine to find out more about her work.
Colorintech, led by Co-Founder Ashleigh Ainsley run programs which help to connect the underrepresented to opportunities in the tech industry. They run an annual education event (Should you want to connect his email is here) and have a number of further resources on Colorintech.org. Ashleigh has also shared this guidance for the FEA community to use in guidance on what we can do to support Black Lives Matter.
2. Creating space to talk
We need dedicated space to address these issues. At the outbreak of Covid-19 we set up weekly connection calls to give space to discussing work across the Alliance to mitigate impact of Covid-19.
FEA Connection Calls: We're dedicating June’s weekly FEA connection calls every Thursday 3-4pm for a space to discuss racial injustice. No need to sign-up. You can put it in your diary and we hope to see you there. Join on this link or dial in using +44 20 3855 5195 , Conference ID: 985 997 376#
Black and Minority Ethnic Social Entrepreneurs: Mayur Gupta, CEO of Career Accelerator, has set up a group of BAME entrepreneurs to talk about each other's businesses, the social enterprise space and ways to boost the BAME voice in entrepreneurship and society.
They work together on:
1) Developing thought leadership (e.g. putting out research to do with race and equality)
2) Maximising social impact (piggybacking on each others ventures)
3) Crowdsourcing suitable financial opportunities (for BAME entrepreneurs) as well partnering on joint bids
4) Having a space for BAME entrepreneurs to share experiences, opportunities and challenges with each other in a supportive space.
They are looking to expand the group to other BAME founders, so please email Mayur to get more information.
Workshops for your organisation: Gina ran two workshops in 2019 around ethnic diversity in the charity sector. She would be happy to share materials so you can run this ‘in-house’ or to co-facilitate a virtual workshop for FEA members interested in the topic. Let us know you’re interested and we’ll coordinate accordingly.
3. Holding ourselves as organisations to account
This moment also calls for looking in the mirror at our own organisations. We acknowledge that the Fair Education Alliance and our member organisations remain white voice dominated.
Many of our members are charities. #charitysowhite has sparked the important discussion of race in our sector. We challenge ourselves and all our member organisations to push ourselves further and more rigorously than ever on what we have done and what we can do.
Although nearly half of the FEA secretariat is from a minority ethnic background, we do not have any Black team members. We have recently appointed six individuals to our new board of trustees, one of whom is BAME. We are making a commitment for the seventh and final appointment to be a Black person. We are also establishing a Board of Advisors and make a commitment to diversity of race representation, including Black individuals, in the appointments. We accept we have not done enough and make a commitment to take action on this.
4. Centrality to our wider work of disadvantage in the education system
Covid-19 has exposed and exacerbated inequalities in many ways. EEF’s rapid evidence last week showed progress in the disadvantage gap is expected to reverse by 10 years as a result of the pandemic.
It has been said far too many times before, but more than ever we need to collectively implement a long-term and focused strategy, with targeted funding, to make our education system fair for all children no matter the colour of their skin or the challenges they face as a result of their background. Our collective work is precisely to do this; by supporting each other in our grassroots endeavours AND coming together to set a path for policymakers and society on a collective direction.
Last week the Education Select Committee welcomed verbal evidence on the impact of Covid-19. We submitted our collective evidence to the education select committee and a group of members are leading calls for a National Tutoring Service. We are continuing work on our overarching campaign for a fairer education system, including how we co-ordinate and ‘join the dots’ with other campaigners leading similar work – to support each other to achieve change rather than compete. We are renewing our commitment to ensuring addressing racism is understood and addressed as a core piece of the issues and solutions.
5. As individuals: Let's continue to learn, donate and talk
There is no shortage of materials for us to individually educate ourselves, ways to support financially and opportunities to have the difficult conversations we have often avoided. The Secretariat has started to compile resources, so please feel free to share with us your recommendations. If it seems helpful, we can compile an FEA bank of resources from across the Alliance and share in future bulletins.