Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Impact Report 2021-2022

Introduction

Without doubt, the advent of the Instagram account @unsettledc woke Dubai College up to instances of racism within the College community. Consequently, we have made it our mission to ensure that every child feels safe and welcome in our school, widening our focus beyond racism alone to include all forms of excluding and discriminatory behaviour. While there is no doubt that much good has come from our endeavours, we must note and appreciate that the philosophy which underpins DEI that everyone is different and yet everyone is welcome is a fundamentally western ontological assumption.

The publication of the recent Code of Conduct for Education Professionals by the UAE Ministry of Education in conjunction with the KHDA makes it clear that schools must abstain from addressing socially rejected topics such as abnormal sexual morals and ethics, homosexuality, and alternate gender identity. As a British school in the Middle East, whose very existence is predicated upon the land gifted to the school by the late ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Rashid, we must continue to support the local values, ethics, and traditions and avoid topics which are inappropriate in UAE culture.

Global concerns about sustaining culture have been highlighted by Future Agenda, an open source think tank and advisory firm that runs the leading open foresight programme and helps organisations to identify emerging opportunities and make more informed decisions. “In many regions”, they advise, “Western influence affects local values, causing cultural instability at a national level. In the struggle to keep traditions, education will play a key role in helping to preserve language and maintaining balance in the system” .

As such, at the end of year two of our work to celebrate the diversity of Dubai College, to ensure that we create equity for students with additional needs and to ensure inclusivity at all levels, we will continue to promote the principles of tolerance and acceptance of others in a culturally sensitive manner I hope you find this report informative, though-provoking and encouraging and can see our work in the spirit in which it is intended: for all staff and children to feel safe and supported at our school.

Michael Lambert, Headmaster

DEI Policy

The need for a policy clearly outlining the expectation at Dubai College in relation to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) was identified. Members of the committee were delegated responsibility to complete key aspects of the policy based on their area of expertise. This was done in working groups as well as individually.

Information, resources, templates, and examples were used to guide the development of the policy that would apply to all past, present, or future stakeholders. Rights under UAE federal law were included in the policy development, along with the review and inclusion of twelve (12) related internal policies, to be read in conjunction with the DEI policy.

To ensure consistency, the reporting and recording mechanisms outlined in the DEI policy are similar to those outlined in the grievance and disciplinary policies. Once the draft policy had been developed, it was reviewed for wording, length, and complexity. Once satisfied, the Headmaster approved the policy for publication.

This DEI policy will be monitored, reviewed, and revised at the beginning of each academic year to ensure relevance. You can view it here.

Michelle Hobson, Head of HR

Surveys and data

We have been nothing other than radically transparent with our whole community since the advent of @unsettledc. We have invited all staff, students, parents, and alumni to join us in our work, to feedback on their experiences and to inform our direction of travel. In this spirit of transparency, we sent a summary document to every student at Dubai College detailing our work and then asked them how well they felt the school had responded since @unsettledc first appeared. The encouraging news is that the large majority of students have felt supported by our work (see Figure One Student Voice).

Figure One Student Voice

Last year we also appointed the school’s first DEI Coordinator, Karen Norris, a key feature of whose role is to listen more to the internal DC community. After conducting face to face interviews with staff over the course of the previous academic year, Karen will now spend more time working with students, one year group at a time. To focus these discussions Karen conducted an initial survey which asked students a series of questions about "Where are you from?". As a British School in the Middle East populated almost entirely by expatriate students, defining identity has its own added complexities Consequently, as a staff body we need to have a greater awareness of how our students feel about their own sense of identity, starting with whether they feel a sense of belonging based on national identity.

The outgoing Year 13 completed the survey voluntarily as a trial and some initial key findings of note are:

While it is hard to answer the question "Where are you from?" for around a third of our students, and a similar percentage do not feel any sense, or are uncertain about, their own national identity, nonetheless, our pupils would like to celebrate other cultures more and have opportunities to engage in greater discussion and debate around the whole concept of identity. The work continues.

Finally, we also repeated the Olweus Bullying Questionnaire (OBQ). The OBQ is an anonymous, research based survey administered to students that assesses the nature, extent, and location of bullying problems in a school. We chose this programme because

meta analyses have revealed that bullying prevention programs are effective in reducing bullying and that those programs “inspired by the work of Dan Olweus worked best.”

Adults are not always accurate in estimating the prevalence of bullying at their school and are frequently surprised by the amount of bullying that students experience, the types of bullying that are most common, or the “hot spots” where bullying happens. Surveying annually is recommended to determine program effectiveness and areas for continued attention.

Figure Two Annual reported rates of bullying

While the overall bullying rate at Dubai College remains consistently low and has not significantly changed year on year (Figure Two Annual reported rates of bullying), the frequency of incidents of bullying about race or colour has dropped 10% points year on year (Figure Three Annual reported rates of racist bullying). This suggests that our work is having a positive impact.

Figure Three Annual reported rates of racist bullying

2020 2021

2020 2021

British Schools in the Middle East

Dubai College’s work on diversity, equity and inclusion has made it a beacon for other British Schools in the Middle East. The Headmaster has twice been invited by Natasha Hilton, Head of Park House English School, and Chair of the BSME Diversity Network to present as a keynote speaker, most recently at the annual BSME Conference 2022. However far behind the school may have been in championing an inclusive school culture where everyone is welcome, Dubai College is now seen as case study for good practice within the region. Our DEI Policy is regularly being downloaded and bowdlerised by other schools to help provide the framework for their own diversity policies as they too get to grips with this work. Our commitment to DEI includes a commitment to ensure wider impact and influence.

Training

DEI Leaders Programme Second Edition

Over the past twelve months, five members of the teaching staff have completed the Diverse Educators' Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Leaders' programme comprising of 25 hours of content and discussion over Zoom. The various modules of the course included:

an overview and history of protected characteristics cultural intelligence and building an inclusive culture reviewing and decolonising the curriculum fostering a sense of belonging constructing diversity statements and policies developing strategies to implement change

The programme allowed the participants to share their experiences and best practice, collaborate on developing our DEI strategies within our own contexts and to celebrate the progress we have made so far. The course has enabled the participants to reflect on their own spheres of influence and commit to working towards further positive change within our schools.

The participants from DC were:

1. Donna Anderson

2. Deb Jones

Karen Norris

Regina O'Dwyer

Bobby Trivic

Representation Matters

In October Aisha Thomas from UK organisation Representation Matters presented to the staff body on the UK protected characteristic of race. As a former Assistant Principal in a Bristol secondary school, Aisha now delivers workshops and training addressing the inequality in the UK education system and beyond. While context is key to almost every matter, Aisha’s personal story of her experience growing up and working as a Black Briton in a predominantly white country and white city, was just as relevant to our experience here in Dubai. Anyone, but especially young people, who see themselves represented in their schools and across all industries, will empower them to pursue careers and ambitions in unrepresented areas.

Mermaids

In September 2022 the UAE code of conduct for education professionals in general education made it explicitly clear that anyone who works in a school must ensure that “unacceptable behavioural manifestations do not spread within UAE society and abstaining from addressing socially rejected topics such as: abnormal sexual morals and ethics, homosexuality, and alternate gender identity” . Nonetheless these characteristics are commonplace within the UK and US education systems at primary, secondary and tertiary level and almost all of our students will attend universities where the protection of these characteristics is enshrined in law. As such, British charity Mermaids presented to the staff body on the UK protected characteristic of gender, educating staff on the topic so that they could be fully informed of this characteristic while recognising the prohibition to engage in conversation with students about the topic.

Denim Day

Several students in Year 10 organised 'denim day' to raise awareness about sexual assault in term 3. Working closely with Ms Penney, Mrs Hill, Mrs Romans, Mrs Greenlees and Mr Wooley, and Year 13 student Zeenat Javaid, Head of the Student DEI Society, the students developed and revised their content to ensure its relevance and appropriateness. Their aim was to educate younger students on inappropriate behaviour and bullying, as well as avoiding and speaking out against sexual coercion or assault for older students. The presentation was approved by all the heads of lower school years and, in addition to this, the students consulted other 6th form students to ensure that the content remained true to the DC values and is appropriate for Islam. Denim day was a prime example of how passionate our students are about these causes.

Every Teacher is a SEND teacher

Following feedback from parents within the parent and alumni DEI working party, we renewed the school’s focus on training all teachers on how to best support students with special educational needs and disabilities As Professor Becky Francis notes, “Pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) have the greatest need for excellent teaching and are entitled to provision that supports achievement at, and enjoyment of, school. So, for us, closing the disadvantage gap means finding better ways to support pupils with SEND.” All students will benefit from the kind of adaptive teaching which supports SEND students best and the staff training session at the beginning of this year delineates precisely what this looks like. Crucially we acknowledged that SEND is not a fixed or permanent characteristic; rather at a specific time a child has additional learning needs. At times, many pupils will require tailored or additional support to fully participate in everything the school has to offer.

Internationalising the curriculum

Since October of 2021 the Curriculum Sub Group of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Society have been engaged in discussions with Heads of Department and Heads of Faculty about students’ perspectives around representations in the current taught curriculum. Discussions surrounded the need to make some amendments to what was taught and how we teach topics to ensure that there is greater international representation which in turn would be more reflective of our wider community. Some students spoke about the need to address the Eurocentric nature of our curriculum. In some subjects like History, it was suggested that rather than holding onto the last vestiges of a traditional curriculum, students would like to work with faculties to diversify the resources to encompass a wider intellectual body of work. These views were also reflected in some of the @unsettledc Instagram posts, which further emphasised the need to work in partnership with out student body to evaluate current provision. A full and separate report on our progress in this area will be published shortly.

RPEP

We launched the “little and often” rolling positive education programme (RPEP) outlined in the Strategic Vision 2021 2024, within six weeks of receiving approval from the board of governors. The programme is called RPEP, the rolling positive education programme, and it takes place in a different period each week starting on Monday Period One and rolling through to Friday Period Five by the end of the year.

The benefits of the programme are that we are now more compliant with the requirements of the UK Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE), Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education (RSE) curricula than we have been for several years as we did not have the time to deliver this content before. We have also been able to integrate diversity, equity and inclusion training into the programme making it an interwoven and explicitly taught subject for the first time in the school’s history.

The case for PE

Globally physical education is a key focus for diversity, equity, and inclusion. In no other subject are students as exposed (both literally and metaphorically) as they are in physical education. In History, no one need know your test result unless you choose to share it with them. In PE everyone gets to see you attempt to throw a discus or swim 100m of front crawl. There is nowhere to hide. For this reason, no other one subject has been

subject to so much scrutiny and criticism as PE has been during our discussions of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Despite this, however, Dubai College remains committed to physical education for all children at the school. We do not shy away from proclaiming the advantages that we believe the subject offers to all students’ mental and physical health. We also recognise that physical education is the single most motivating subject for some students in the College and our PE department’s ability to prepare students for national representation in key sports remains one of our key selling points. We are truly lucky to have the dedicated staff that we do at the College.

That said, our PE department have taken to heart the questions and criticisms which have come their way and they have responded robustly, with sensitivity and, crucially, with evidence to what has been an emotive topic for some. There had been a particular query about ethnic representation in sports teams, particularly netball. As such the PE department sent out their annual extra curricular activity and sport survey, for which they received a 75% response rate from the whole school. For those of you familiar with surveys any response rate above 35% is generally considered to be excellent.

The ECA and Sport Survey offered students the opportunity to cite the reason why they had ceased to play particular sports, any items for improvement and what was working well. The students were given an open text box to reply so their answers were not directed by leading questions. The survey did not find any suggestions that students were concerned about ethnic representation in their sports or their reasons for participating or not. Nonetheless, the DC Sport selection policy was reviewed and updated in consultation with the Director of Sport and the Heads of Sport. It now reads:

“Dubai College does not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, nationality or religious affiliations. We seek to objectively assess the abilities of all students to maximise their enjoyment and development.”

During the selection process we focus on each athlete’s:

Technical ability and tactical understanding

Current physical maturation rather than chronological age Growth mindset and willing ness to accept feedback Resilience to accept and overcome adversity

Positive attitude to teammate, staff, and opponents

A desire to adopt and display the College’s sports values

As with music or drama, the best musicians and actors will be selected in addition to those committed to rehearsal and training. That said, all students can participate in music, sport, and drama during curriculum lessons, extra curricular activities and the house competition ensuring that every child has a chance to take part. As Laszlo Bock, former VP People Operations at Google, remarks “We need to use evidence (data) to guard against rumour, bias, and plain old wrong headedness.” In conducting a full and frank review and presenting to the DEI parent and alumni working party, we feel we have done just this.

Girls Out Loud

Dubai College has entered a partnership with Girls Out Loud (GAL), an award winning UK not for profit enterprise, which provides mentoring to teenage girls. As part of the school’s commitment to an enhanced career development programme as well as understanding that girls are often under represented in key professions, we are currently introducing two of GAL’s initiatives, the Big Sister Programme and the Role Model Relay. Both initiatives are key components of our drive towards greater diversity, equity, and inclusion, ensuring our girls become industry leaders in their chosen professions.

What Next?

As members of the Dubai College community past and present, I hope you can recognise the support which the school continues to offer to staff and students across the full spectrum of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

However, we are only as good as the information we hold. As Laszlo Bock, former VP People Operations at Google, remarks “We need to use evidence (data) to guard against rumour, bias, and plain old wrong headedness. Relying on data indeed, expecting every conversation to be rooted in data upends the traditional role of managers. It transforms them from being providers of intuition to facilitators in a search for truth.”

If you feel strongly about diversity, equity, and inclusion at Dubai College, and you would like to support us on our mission to ensure that everyone feels welcome at our school then please do reach out by emailing headassist@dubaicollege.org.