By Geoffrey Stanford, Headmaster, RGS Newcastle
One of the joys being part of the Royal Grammar School Newcastle is how diverse it is as a community. It is so important for our young people to grow up with the experience of living and studying alongside people who are not alike and learning how to work with others.
This means that they can understand how to be allies and to support peers because everyone recognises the value that difference can bring. Every year, we welcome a large number of new students, and staff too, each of them bringing with them a vast range of prior experiences and backgrounds. New members of our community are clear about our expectations with regards to supporting diversity in all its forms, and provide appropriate challenge to maintain this culture where everyone is celebrated.
To that end, this academic year we have substantially expanded the role of Head of Personal, Social, Heath and Economic (PSHE) education in our pastoral team and committed significantly more time to educating and supporting pupils in matters relating to equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). In parallel, our new Deputy Head, Academic, has been working with our teachers to review how EDI is represented within the curriculum. These discussions help us both with the everyday good practice of embracing diversity, whilst also introducing a range of initiatives that move the dialogue forward in a positive way.
As someone who went to a single sex school myself, I particularly value the fact that the school is now co-educational and on International Women’s Day we were fortunate to have Claris D’Cruz address the whole school, sharing her experience as a charity lawyer advising the RGS on its move to coeducation over 20 years ago. Claris subsequently served as a governor and has also been an RGS parent of children coming through the school, which meant that she was able to reflect from a position of real understanding both on the challenges of the transition and on the benefits that it has brought. Not only has the school grown following the introduction of girls leading to economies of scale but, far more importantly, girls have also substantially changed the culture of the school for the good.
Another area of diversity that we have consciously been evolving has been our approach to neurodiversity. Indeed, I know from the experience of my own family, there are many high performing individuals with dyslexia and other educational needs, who thrive within the inclusive learning environment that we offer at RGS. For that reason, we have recently restructured our special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) provision to ensure the best possible academic support for all students. By giving our SEND team a prominent, purposely redesigned, location in the heart of the school we have sent a very clear message about the importance of promoting strengths and focusing on what each individual can do, rather than cannot do. These collective and conscious efforts at RGS have re-energised our staff with training initiatives behind the scenes and has also helped us to be much more communal about celebrating difference, for example during the recent neurodiversity week.
Like many organisations, we are not complacent and strive to continue to do better. In particular, our staff body at all levels of the organisation still needs to be more ethnically diverse if it is to provide appropriately diverse role models for our pupils. This is something we are working on and it has been encouraging to see more diverse candidates both applying for and appearing in short lists for jobs. However, the teaching profession as a whole has a lot to do to attract high quality candidates, in the meantime, recent anti-racist awareness training for all staff has been aimed at ensuring that we can all act as allies.
In all of the above we are aiming to ensure that all pupils, from whatever background, have the best possible experience of school and are well equipped to make a positive contribution to society.