With a distinguished career spanning the legal, education, and public sectors, Caroline Anukem brings a wealth of experience to her role as the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Lead at Beaconsfield High. Caroline's position before joining us involved representing the Secretary of State at the Home Office, where she concurrently held the crucial role of EDI Lead for the Central London Division.

Caroline's journey is marked by a unique lived experience, positioning her as an ideal facilitator for driving and improving EDI at Beaconsfield High. As an excellent communicator, she applies a panoramic EDI lens to every aspect of education, ensuring that inclusivity is embedded at its core. Caroline is dedicated to shaping a future where diversity is celebrated, and equity is not just an aspiration, but a lived reality.

Our inaugural Global Citizens Week showcased the diversity and unity within our school community. The heartbeat of this initiative was, without a doubt, our students' voices, echoing the need for a platform to embrace and appreciate our multicultural community.

The 6thHub was transformed into a living canvas of cultures with displays featuring clothing, fabrics, artefacts, biographies, literature, tableware, and tea sets from around the globe. Year 7 students learnt and sang national anthems from different countries and all students enjoyed our mouth-watering Global Food Festival with dishes prepared by their peers. We held a Culture Dress Day with a diverse array of cultural attire showcased by students and staff alike. And finally, our fashion show was a spectacular visual journey into the heart of our collective global heritage.

Our students took the stage with powerful and inspirational assemblies that paid tribute to the incredible contributions of black women. Mrs Anukem attended the prestigious Penna Black History Month event networking with several remarkable women, including former Olympian Donna Fraser OBE. The canteen served dishes from black heritage, including curry goat, rice and peas, fried and boiled plantain, mac and cheese, Jollof rice, pepper stew, and jerk chicken. As a grand finale, our gospel choir enchanted us with a soul-stirring folk song.

Rev Chalmers spoke to the sixth form about his experiences growing up in Apartheid South Africa as a white person, and his journey to the realisation that what was going on was wrong. His story of resistance was heart-warming and harrowing, as he endured suffering, knowing he was still one of the more privileged people in the movement. The gospel choir enchanted us with a soul-stirring folk song.

Nikita, one of our EDI Prefects confidently led our Diwali assemblies this year, bringing the spirit of this significant festival to life, and sharing some personal experiences of how the celebrations differ. Diwali, often referred to as the "Festival of Lights," is one of the most widely celebrated festivals in India and by the Hindu and Sikh communities around the world. The assemblies looked at the different significance between the Hindu and Sikh communities.

We conducted a student diversity, equality and inclusion survey to help us understand how our students perceive EDI across the school. Based on the survey and conversations with students, we invited Just Like Us, a charity which shares the lived experiences of LGBT+ young people at school. Just Like Us hosted virtual assemblies for all year groups, sharing the diverse experiences of young people in the LGBT+ community.

We led a school wide conference in collaboration with The Global Equality Collective: Uncomfortable Conversations - Overcoming Toxic Masculinity in Schools. The conference was attended by 16 schools, and we received some incredibly positive feedback from those that joined us. The keynote speaker was author, writer and speaker Hira Ali (pictured)

This was created by us to help parents have conversations about race at home. It was created with author and blogger Uju Asika, who wrote Bringing Up Race: How to Raise a Kind Child in a Prejudiced World. Uju makes an uncomfortable conversation safe and accessible for all parents, and we are so happy she will be a part of our webinar series. We also welcome a group of six students from our own community and The Beaconsfield School, and they discuss their own lived experiences of racism.

Adiche’s Ted Talk is an engaging and candid exploration of her lived experience and the impact of stereotypes and our language on our relationships, environment and education. After watching the Ted Talk, have a think about the following questions from the organisation, Facing History and Ourselves: as someone else ever made an assumption about you because of some aspect of your identity? Was it a positive assumption or a negative one? How did you find out about the assumption? How did you respond?

 The organisation Facing History and Ourselves offers some excellent and valuable resources and thinking points for teachers, students and parents to think about history and identity from a range of diverse perspectives.

• The GEC’s Raising Rebels is an excellent, free resource for all parents to explore and learn about gender equality at home with their children.
• If you are a student at Becky High, you can access the Equality, Diversities and Charities SharePoint created by our Head Girl team. It contains information on a variety of current topics including anti-racism, and the discrimination faced by the LGBTQ+ community.