Ethnic minority teachers should be given bursaries to help them get into leadership positions, the authors of a new study have suggested – Schools Week reports.
The ‘ethnic diversity in the teaching workforce’ evidence review, published by the National Foundation for Education Research (NFER), says that around 60 per cent of schools in England had an all-white teaching staff in 2021-22, with 86 per cent having an all-white senior leadership team.
The research highlights the perception that there is ‘an invisible glass ceiling’ for teachers of colour, with some reporting being denied opportunities for training or being passed over for promotion.
The NFER study called for selection panels for senior roles to include people of colour and for training, support networks and tailored mentoring to be provided.
Bursaries, it said, “may be needed” to enable teachers, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to undertake leadership development.
According to NFER, around four times as many teachers of colour would have to be promoted to headteacher positions – around 2,500 more – for the role to become representative of the wider population.
Representation at leadership levels is also a pressing one in independent schools, where only a small number of school leaders are from black and other UK ethnic minority backgrounds.
Irfan Latif, principal of DLD College in London and one of only three ethnic minority boarding school heads in the UK, wrote on ISMP in 2022 that the sector needed to ‘place a strong emphasis on recruiting more from ethnic minorities’ and that there was already “momentum” and a strong “collective desire” for change.