I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sat in a staff training session on equity, diversity or inclusion and watched the same thing happen. Heads nod. Notes are taken. Someone asks a thoughtful question. And then everyone goes back to their classrooms, their offices, their timetables — and nothing changes.
Not because people don’t care. In my experience, the overwhelming majority of people working in education care deeply about fairness. They went into this work because they believe every young person deserves the chance to thrive. The problem isn’t a lack of goodwill. The problem is that goodwill, on its own, doesn’t change systems.
That gap — between caring about equity and knowing how to build it into the everyday workings of a school or organisation — is why I’ve started this consultancy.
What I kept seeing
In my experience of working with schools, you ask staff about disadvantaged students and they show you where they have them marked on a seating plan or you talk to senior leaders, and in some cases the reliance on a pupil premium strategy and document to serve as a means to
equity is perpetuating a gap in outcomes. It’s all very well to demonstrate you know who the pupils are and you identify how the money is being spent- but so what?
Over 4 years working in school improvement, a few patterns kept repeating themselves:
Equity work treated as an event, not a practice. A training day in September. A display for a history month. A policy reviewed once and filed away. These things aren’t bad —
but when they’re the whole strategy, they signal that equity is something the organisation does occasionally rather than something it is.
The people closest to the problem furthest from the decisions. The staff an
d students with the most direct experience of inequity were rarely the ones shaping the response to it. Initiatives were designed for communities rather than with them.
No one measuring what mattered. Schools that could tell you their attendance figures to a decimal point couldn’t tell you whether their behaviour policy affected some groups of pupils differently, or whether all families found parents’ evening equally accessible. What doesn’t get examined doesn’t get improved.
What I believe instead
Good equity work, in
my experience, has a few non-negotiable features.
It’s structural, not just interpersonal. Unconscious bias training has its place, but if your curriculum, recruitment, assessment and behaviour systems haven’t been examined, you’re asking individuals to compensate for systems that work against them.
It’s specific. “We value diversity” is a sentiment. “We reviewed our reading lists and found that 9 in 10 protagonists came from one background, so here’s what we changed” is a practice. Equity work succeeds when it gets concrete enough to be checked.
It’s sustained and owned. Real change happens when equity has a home in the organisation — named responsibility, protected time, and a place in the improvement plan — rather than living in the enthusiasm of one or two committed individuals who eventually burn out or move on.
It assumes good faith. People disengage from equity work when they feel accused. They engage when they feel equipped. My approach is built on the belief that most staff want to do this well, and what they need is clarity, tools and honest data — not blame.
What I offer
I work with schools, colleges and education organisations on:
- Equity audits — a structured, evidence-based review of where your policies, curriculum and culture are serving everyone well, and where they aren’t.
- Strategy and action planning — turning findings into a realistic, sequenced plan with clear ownership, rather than a wish list.
- Training and facilitation — sessions designed for genuine engagement and follow-through, not compliance.
- Ongoing advisory support — because the hardest part of this work isn’t starting it; it’s sustaining it.
Why now
After years of doing this work from the inside, I wanted the freedom to support m
any organisations rather than one. I’ve spent my career inside the education system, and I’ve seen both how much harm inequity does and how much is possible when an organisation decides to take it seriously. I started this consultancy because I want to spend my working life on the second part.
If you’re a school or organisation that knows your equity work needs to go deeper — or you’re not sure where to start — I’d genuinely love to talk. You can reach me at hello@equityeducationservices.co.uk.