Equality and diversity in secondary schools in London

Abstract

Schools play a critical role in supporting our diverse society and contribute significantly to the development of students' knowledge, values and attitudes. To do this, schools must ensure equality and diversity for all our students. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the enactment of equality and diversity through secondary school teachers’ perspectives and experiences. The enactment of equality and diversity in education, in terms of the protected characteristics (race, disability, religion and belief, pregnancy, sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment) as stated in the Equality Act 2010, has attracted substantial interest among researchers, however studies have often been limited to fewer characteristics, and the concept as a whole received less attention. This study examines teachers’ perspectives and experiences of the enactment of equality and diversity in its entirety, from a social constructivist approach, to achieve equality in education for all students. The findings are the results of twenty-five semi-structured interviews with teachers in secondary state-funded schools in London, including Subject Teachers, Head Teachers and Teachers of Senior Leadership Teams from different subject specialism. The interviews were analysed using a thematic analysis approach based on Braun and Clarke’s (2006, 2021) work, and themes were produced inductively. Firstly, this study explores teachers' complexities in understanding equality and diversity in secondary school, as well as their motivations and approaches to enacting equality and diversity and supporting students with various characteristics. Secondly, this study contributes to theory of policy enactment (Ball et al., 2012) in secondary schools and predicts potentially harmful policy misapplications and misconceptions. And thirdly, this study contributes to policy, specifically the Equality Act 2010, by promoting equality and diversity and broadening its protection to include more student characteristics.