EDUCATING FOR EQUITY AWARDS

These awards are suitable for all types of schools and colleges

Allegiance Award: For schools who are at the beginning of the journey. The majority of the criteria is focussed on auditing, reviewing and exploring current practice and putting clear actions in place over a 2-3 year period.
Champion award: For schools who have already embedded an anti-racist ethos and culture, and can champion equity not only for their school but also for others.
Beacon award: For schools who have exemplary practice. Anti-racism is deeply and widely embedded across all aspects of school life; the school is a centre of excellence.

The Award criteria are sometimes updated to reflect new research and thinking. Where this happens during the process of a school collecting evidence, schools can choose to continue using the existing criteria or use the updated criteria.

Schools that achieve the ‘Educating for Equity Awards’ © will have had to evaluate all areas of school life, and are nationally recognised for their ongoing commitment to eliminating injustices and creating an equitable society.

Once you have registered for the awards, you will be sent the award criteria, an action plan template and a series of optional school audits. Over a period of up to 12 months, you will gather evidence to demonstrate how your school/ college has achieved each of the criteria.

There may be some criteria that schools can evidence straight away without doing any additional work. For example, having a link governor for equalities. Examples of evidence for this criteria could include governing board/ board of trustees minutes that highlight their role, questions they have asked during meetings/ reports they have written after link visits to school. Other criteria, especially those linked more to staff CPD or teaching, learning, curriculum and resources, may take a little longer to evidence due to their longer term nature. For example, creating an induction programme for new staff or developing curriculum planning. Evidence can be links to documents on a cloud drive, which could include survey analysis, photographs, minutes from meetings, website links, video, audio, planning documents or lesson resources. Some schools prefer to write a narrative description of their work in addition to submitting links.

The action plan template is for schools to use as you see fit- it is not compulsory. It can, however, be a useful tool to prioritise the actions you need to put in place to achieve all the criteria in a timely manner. The criteria is in the form of an application form. As soon as you are confident that all the criteria has been met, you can complete the application form, providing electronic links to your evidence.

The awards assessment team will review your application and evidence, and you will receive your results within 4 weeks of your application. Successful applicants will receive a certificate as well as a logo that can be used on your website, letterheads etc. In order to achieve the Beacon Award, an external assessor will conduct an accreditation visit and provide the school with a written report.

If successful, your award will be valid for 3 years. After this date, you will have to re-apply. Beacon schools will need to undergo an annual review/ re-accreditation in order to keep the Beacon status (this would be a written review that is assessed rather than another full application every year).

No, this is unlikely to happen. The coaching call is used to ensure that when schools feel ready to apply, they can go through all the evidence with a member of the assessment team and ask any questions they may have. The assessment team may offer suggestions for additional evidence that could be gathered for specific criteria. We want schools to be successful!