Hi!

I'm so happy and excited to say that I recently accepted an EDI coordinator role at my workplace! I am so excited to get started with that!

I start on the first week of September, and I'm going to be working on a whole-school strategy equity, diversity and inclusion. I get 2 hours of remission per week to work on this!

I've been thinking about it since the start of the summer holidays and currently, my biggest goals for the first half term are:

• Getting everyone to agree on what we mean by EDI.
• Move away from the idea of government-mandated 'protected groups' as our starting point and think about barriers to access as our focus. We can always supplement our own target groups with the government's protected groups later.
• Thinking about ways to celebrate the work we're currently doing.

I think it's also important for me to focus on the aspects of EDI that we think about less. For example, I think people underestimate the fact that it's actually an EDI problem if you're letting people off the hook because they're part of a protected group.

This is often observed in schools with SEND students. Not correcting a student they've said something inappropriate because they're autistic is, in my opinion, ableist. It comes from a well-meaning place, but it doesn't help them to grow and improve and insults their capacity to grow. In the real world, them knowing what's inapprorpiate and what isn't will help them a lot.

I think I have a lot of work to do, but I'm excited because this school is really open to improving!