EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST
EDUCATION CORNER PODCAST INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR OF EDI AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Mrs. Naima Charlier FROM WELLINGTON COLLEGE, BERKSHIRE
Mrs. Naima Charlier speaks to us about her unique role at Wellington College, as well as the Harkness pedagogy and how equality is implemented into the school’s curriculum. Could you tell us a little about your role at Wellington?
Director of EDI and Social Responsibility is not a role that I had encountered before. It represented such an exciting opportunity to work with a world-leading school that was so passionate 6 2 | EDUCATION CHOICES MAGAZINE | AU T U M N 2 02 3
about the need to acknowledge, support and work with children who are growing up in this global and very interconnected world. It was exploring the idea of the barriers that can sometimes exist for young people if they don’t feel like they are included or that they belong. It’s about actively learning about what kinds of barriers exist and what schools should be doing to break them down. The school had placed the children’s wellbeing and their ability to be valued as their unique selves at such a high priority that I was immediately attracted to the job. This role was an opportunity to work on a really global approach to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in education. They are each very separate ideas, which require individual attention. My background feeds into this as well, as my father is Muslim and from India and my mother is from Scotland. My mum’s parents were blind and my parents’ interracial marriage was always an interesting topic of conversation. A lot of interesting things come up when you have differences which, perhaps, others don’t share. I grew up in a small town in Oxfordshire and seeing less people who looked like me, and experiencing a curriculum that reflected what made me who I am and my family what it is, piqued my interest at a very young age. The idea that we can look at these differences of inclusion, diversity and equality as the separate elements that we need in order to have
