Equity and Inclusion

The West Midlands is one of the country’s most ethnically diverse regions. The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Steering Group drives a number of collaborative initiatives aimed at achieving equity for students and staff of all backgrounds.

To create a workforce that matches our diverse student profile we

• Attract applications from all our communities. An ongoing online joint media campaign promotes the benefits of working in FE. This centres around a talking heads video in which colleagues from Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage backgrounds, working in different roles across 13 CWM colleges, share their positive experiences of development and progression in the sector.
• Actively support progression to management roles. Our innovative Future Leaders Programme is based on a reciprocal mentoring model where senior leaders sponsor a colleague who is not yet in a manager role and is from a minority background, and these colleagues in turn mentor the senior leader. So far 33 colleagues from eight colleges have completed this targeted programme and all have reported positive progression. The senior leaders who have sponsored colleagues also reported. organisational benefits as result of the perspectives shared by their mentor.
• Ensure that job applicants from all backgrounds progress through the selection stages proportionally. We have produced an inclusive recruitment and selection guide and have developed and introduced shared training to support managers to make sound and inclusive recruitment decision. So far 580 college managers have been trained in inclusive recruitment.
• Assess impact. We share and analyse our staff profile data annually and for the third year running, we saw a shift towards more diversity; proportionally fewer White employees and more employees who are from minority groups. Our annual recruitment and selection analysis shows that proportionally more candidates from minority backgrounds are receiving job offers.

To create an inclusive culture for students we:

• Expand effective practice. Our ‘student focused group’ shares ideas around topics such as building cultural awareness, innovative ways to celebrate cultural diversity, introducing new ways for students to share their experiences in a safe way.
• Augment the learner voice. Our second joint Student Survey, which had over 10,000 respondents, and the following inter-college Student Summits have given us a clear understanding of what we are doing well and areas where we can do better.
• Transform relationships with students. Nine colleges are participating in a major programme which uses a train the trainer approach to develop college colleagues at scale. The programme supports colleagues to address their unconscious bias and inspires them to be more inclusive by focusing on self-awareness, empathy, communication skills and confidence to have constructive discussions.
• Focus on student outcomes. All 18 CWM colleges share their student performance data so we can analyse performance according to their ethnic background and other demographic factors and spot anomalies that require targeted action.