At Digitech Studio School, we are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where diversity is celebrated, and everyone feels valued and respected. Our DEIB objectives for the 2025-26 period are as follows:
- Ensuring all our community feel a sense of belonging.
- We aim to raise awareness of unconscious bias in language, policy and practice.
- Ensuring students from marginalised groups have a safe space to express their identities, share their experiences, and thrive academically and socially without fear of discrimination or exclusion.
- Actions include staff training, system development, and challenging day-to-day interactions within the school community.
- Incorporating DEIB topics such as British Sign Language, volunteering, monarchy, cancel culture, freedom of speech, religious festivals and gender equality into the tutor program.
- Celebrating key diversity and inclusion dates throughout the academic year including Black History Month, Men’s Health Awareness Month, LGBTQIA+ Pride Month, LGBTQIA+ History Month, Women’s History Month and Autism Awareness Month. As well as celebratory weeks/days including: Transgender awareness week, Neurodiversity celebration week, International Women’s Day.
- Attracting a diverse student body
- Focused recruitment efforts targeting students from diverse backgrounds.
- Tracking recruitment trends and developing strategies to attract students from global majority backgrounds.
- Workplace Representation
- Ensuring broad representation within the workplace to provide positive role models for both pupils and staff.
- Emphasising LGBTQ+ representation and considering women and other underrepresented groups in leadership positions.
- Promoting DEIB in recruitment adverts and on the website, and networking with key community stakeholders.
- Ensuring a diverse and de – colonised curriculum
- Ensuring that our taught and extra-curricular curriculum is representative of our community
- We will focus on de – colonising our taught and extra – curricular curriculum
- Broadening Understanding of Race, Religion, and Cultures
- Enhancing the pastoral program and curriculum to include topics on race, religion, sex education, and relationships.
- Developing a curriculum plan that includes these topics in years 10 and 11, with a focus on decolonisation.
- Introducing a cultural programme of events within the school
- Ensuring that any prejudicial language is challenged and addressed
- Ensuring that staff are appropriately trained to monitor, recognise and challenge prejudicial language
- Ensuring that policy and procedures are in place and followed, meaning that prejudicial language is addressed, and students educated about the importance of appropriateness.
- Embedding British Values
- Integrating the British Values into the DP (Digitech Plus) curriculum.
- Conducting termly CPD (Continuing Professional Development) sessions with all staff.
- Ensuring school systems and policies are underpinned by the British Values.
We believe that by focusing on these objectives, we can create a more inclusive and supportive environment for all members of our community.
EDI Improvement Plan
Ensuring all our community (staff and students) feel a sense of belonging; addressing unconscious bias and celebrating diversity and difference.
Our Starting Point:
- We are not a very diverse school
- We have celebrated, through Digitech Plus and our pastoral programme, different religions and culture.
- We celebrate religious holidays, in some capacity.
- We have a positive culture around diversity
- Our three weekly discussion groups ensure that voices are heard.
- We have under representation in extracurricular activity.
- The menu at Digitech is not representative of our diverse cultures.
- We have a disproportionate number of male students, which could be leading to misogynistic behaviours.
Our Outcomes:
- Student voice demonstrates that 100% students and staff feel a sense of belonging at Digitech.
- All religious holidays and events are celebrated within the school.
- Enrichment and discussion groups become an area of strength, and key groups actively participate in the enrichment programme
- Students have opportunities to try and taste foods from different countries.
- Rewards ensure that our diverse cohort can achieve.
Proposed Actions:
- Celebrating all religious holidays and events.
- Regular staff training on EDI, which helps our staff community to develop a better understanding.
- Staff training that supports our understanding of individual life experiences of students and how this can affect their life.
- Ensuring that our discussion groups are regularly provided and well attended.
- Ensuring that our enrichment provision appropriately targets key groups
- Ensuring that we have a full programme of celebration for different religions and cultures.
- Developing a robust EDI calendar for the year.
- Consider the menu at Digitech – liaising with ‘Aspens’ around cultural food opportunities.
To track trends and develop strategies to attract students from a more diverse background at Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5.
Our Starting Point:
- That our admissions policy favours people from our local area, which is proportionately white British.
- That our student population is proportionately White British.
Our Outcomes:
- We have a greater representation of global majorities, across our student body.
Proposed Actions:
- Consideration of our admissions policy.
- Better promotion within areas with greater diversity.
- Term 6 roadshow with staff and students, into partner schools with greater diversity.
Becoming an academy where our staff body is truly representative of our diverse cohort. Addressing under representation within the workplace.
Our Starting Point:
- We are improving our diversity and inclusivity within our staff, but we are still not fully representative.
- We are a school where staff want to work at Digitech.
- We are disproportionately represented with males on the senior leadership team.
- Numbers of global majority staff have increased across the school, including in Senior Leadership positions, but there is still a lack of equal representation.
Our Outcomes:
- We have a truly representative staff body.
- Staff, student and parent voice recognise this.
Proposed Actions:
- EDI Training Session
- Staff have a choice of wearing LGBTQ+ & Trans support lanyards
- Consideration of staff recruitment, particularly with women in leadership roles.
- The development of staff discussion groups, which could also encompass colleagues from across the Cabot Learning Federation, and beyond.
- Considering representation on our academy council.
Becoming an academy where our curriculum (taught and wider) is truly diverse and representative of our cohort; we will focus on diversifying and decolonising our curriculum.
Our Starting Point:
- We have developed our curriculum responding to the needs of our whole community.
- Curriculum maps and medium-term planning consider EDI.
- We have considered our Curriculum from different viewpoints, encompassing different role models from across a range of backgrounds.
- We have a responsive PSHE programme and an informative curriculum using pop-ups in lessons.
- Our tutor time reading programme considers texts from a variety of cultures and backgrounds.
- GCSE curriculum limits diversity, but we recognise this and consider ways of diversifying and decolonising the curriculum.
Our Outcomes:
- The curriculum fully represents and reflects our diverse cohort.
- Schemes of Work and Medium-Term Plans fully focuses on EDI.
- Student voice outcomes demonstrate change in our curriculum.
- Our curriculum is truly diverse and decolonised.
Proposed Actions:
- Launching Racial literacy groups
- EDI induction training for new Digitech staff.
- Student voice continues as part of our curriculum.
- Consideration of EDI champions, across different parts of the school.
- Being flexible and ‘brave’ with our PSHE curriculum, responding to school need and current affairs.
Becoming a school where any instances of prejudicial language are challenged and addressed.
Our Starting Point:
- Our behaviour and anti-bullying policy has been updated to consider prejudicial incidents, explicitly.
- Clear and positive staff training on the matter.
- Our student voice suggests that EDI can be spoken about freely.
- Students feel uncomfortable because of language used within the academy (particularly ‘under the radar’)
- Staff feel confident in challenging discriminative language in classrooms and across the academy (in the main)
- Students are aware of how and who to report discrimination to.
Our Outcomes:
- That prejudicial language is entirely eradicated.
- That Digitech becomes a leading school within the community, regarding managing prejudicial views and language.
- SENSO is regularly updated with language updates.
- All reports are closed.
Proposed Actions:
- Students have received Anti-Bullying Training
- Launch a Peer listening/mentoring services for Anti-bullying.
- Consideration of use of our social media platforms, to promote EDI.
- Working closely with external agencies and the EDI central team
Embedding the British Values across our curriculum, and particularly within our Digitech Plus programme.
Our Starting Point:
- The British Values are explicitly taught within our Digitech Plus Curriculum.
- The British Values are not explicitly referenced outside the Digitech Plus curriculum and tutor programme.
Our Outcomes:
- The British values will be intrinsic in all our teaching and curriculums across the school.
Proposed Actions:
- Working with curriculum leaders across term 6 to consider how the British values interweave across our taught curriculum
- Making sure that we have strands throughout each curriculum map regarding EDI and British Values.
- EDI and British Values will be added to the Digitech T and L template.
- Consideration of linking the British Values with our taught and extra-curricular curriculum.
