Develop expected outcomes for DEI over the next five years, including:

• Through the Office of the College President and in collaboration with UWC International, hold ourselves to account to confront racism and dismantle racist practices
• Make explicit the connection of the values and mission competencies to the vision for diversity, equity and inclusion at UWCSEA, and our resulting actions
• Collect baseline data in our community to enable us to understand both the experience of marginalised groups and the impact of our efforts to become a more inclusive community over time

Partnerships will be an important part of our work, and the College looks to collaborate with like-minded organisations to better understand and address all forms of inequity that can be found in our context. 

Action to date

• Recruit a dedicated full-time project lead to accelerate Anti-Racism DEI initiatives in the College for 2020/2021 school year (August 2020)
• Establish a Board DEI Steering Group to oversee and guide strategic DEI initiatives
• College and community-wide Anti-Racist DEI Task Force initiated to identify and initiate strategic anti-racist initiatives (August 2020)
• Campus-based Action for Diversity Pods created in 2020, to support the work of the Task Force, with passionate members of the community engaging in campus-based action for diversity work based on the needs of each campus
• A demographic survey of our current staff to identify representational gaps in our staff 
• Review work on student diversity through the admissions process, which provides for intentional diversity in line with our mission and our capacity to provide for students of different cultures and differing abilities
• Appointment of a College DEI Lead in January 2021
• An ongoing series of workshops and training on cultural competence, unconscious bias, anti-racism and anti-bias recruitment in the community and with specific groups
• Development of a UWCSEA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) belief statement to be published internally and externally
• Development of DEI Guiding Statements and a shared lexicon to create a shared understanding of DEI language: this has been drafted and is in the final stages of being reviewed. This will include identification of key terminology and written definitions of terms such as diversity, equity, inclusion/inclusivity, affinity, privilege, discrimination, bias, microaggression and unconscious bias
• Recruitment process to address representational gaps, with baseline data from the initial 2020 staff survey being compared with recruitment data to provide insights over time
• Creation of a toolkit for hiring managers with specific DEI questions and self guided learning on recruitment bias
• Further develop the bi- and multilingual and English as an Additional Language programmes aligned with our understanding of linguistic diversity and the importance of trans-languaging practices in classrooms
• Linguistic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion review began October 2019
• Parental Linguistic Diversity Survey conducted
• Language Policy reviewed and agreed
• Linguistic landscaping project, started in September and October 2020, installed during the holidays at the end of the 2020/2021 school year 

In progress

• An ongoing series of workshops and training on cultural competence, unconscious bias, anti-racism and anti-bias recruitment in the community and with specific groups
• Reviewing our policies through an ARDEI lens
• Developing a diversity impact assessment tool for our policies
• Ensuring policies and procedures ensure equity and safeguarding and create inclusiveness
• Develop structures to ensure easy access to support and complaint procedures, facilitate restorative practices
• Create campus-based support to help students or staff who are targets or witnesses of hate or bias incidents
• Focus on workplace integration: ensuring inclusion between academic and all support functions and administration
• Elevating the visibility and voice of those coming from historically under-represented identities, backgrounds, abilities and beliefs, by facilitating and researching the need for additional affinity groups

In line with our focus on creating deliberate diversity when recruiting our student community, we are currently reviewing our recruitment process and employee experience through a holistic lens to identify gaps and to make the process as equitable as we can in line with our mission, and to diminish and eventually eliminate potential bias.

As a result, the HR Recruitment team, together with hiring managers, was supported with unconscious bias training to enable us to refine recruiting and interviewing procedures as we worked to increase diversity in hiring. The first HR team member completed unconscious bias trainer certification through the Cultural Intelligence Centre in February 2020; two additional staff had to postpone due to the focus on immediate operational response required by COVID-19, but are allocated to complete the training in the near future. These staff will then share their learning with other hiring managers in the College. 

Review of our staff recruitment process has included moves to diversify our staff recruitment pool so that staff at all levels, including senior leadership, reflect the rich diversity of global and local talent pools. 

The College is employing other means to diversify its staff recruitment pool including:

• Changing our selection process to (partly) introduce blind recruitment to promote equity. Efforts from the 2020/2021 school year are being evaluated with intent to further develop and implement elements of this model in the 2021/2022 school year
• Work will continue during 2021/2022 school year to explore alternative ways to source and grow talent , in particular reviewing our more traditional recruitment channels 

A College-wide demographic survey in 2020 collected data from our staff to establish baseline information about our staff community and to explore representational gaps.

We plan to conduct a comprehensive Climate Survey for our community in 2021/2022 which will explore the inclusive nature of the individual’s experience at UWCSEA. This will be used to inform the strategic priorities for future DEI commitments, again with a view to long-term, systemic change.

To welcome all community members, our commitment is that all College and campus materials will continue to evolve to reflect the diverse interests, needs and values of our community. Ongoing action includes:

• We have conducted a visual and language review of College and campus-based marketing and communication materials and continue to identify and address the areas where we wish to reflect greater visual diversity eg website and brochures, advertising campaign, video and photography content creation, and to be more inclusive in our practices of presenting materials eg including subtitles on videos and transcripts of webinars and other voice-recorded content, page reader-friendly website publishing practices
• School policies are under review to evaluate inclusion for transgendered, non-gendered and non-binary students

Review communications with our community to ensure that they are inclusive, ideally including translations of key documents for both current and prospective community members. Ongoing action includes:

• Work on identifying key documents such as our Mission, Guiding Statements and other core community communications has begun, including identifying translators who are able to provide UWCSEA context-specific translations for key marketing, communications, safeguarding and operations materials 
• We are gathering community data to identify core languages for the first phase of community-specific translations 
• We are working to identify processes to support consistent presentation of translated materials, and to create systems that will support regular review and updating of key marketing, communication and safeguarding messages in translated formats

We are working towards a curriculum that reflects our values and aspirations for DEI involving the  review of the written and taught curriculum through the DEI lens. This work is led by the College Head of Curriculum and Research, working together with the Directors of Teaching and Learning on both campuses. This work will continue throughout the 2021/2022 school year

We aim to develop a definition and rationale for our UWCSEA vision of an inclusive school, and to present this work to the Board of Governors with all resource implications. A DLT and ELT Inclusion Workshop in May 2020 drafted a temporary position on inclusive education and student support, and the College is currently undertaking feasibility studies to explore this further.

Our goal is to raise intercultural awareness among staff, students, and parents through targeted learning, and professional and curriculum development. 

Priorities around which we are organising our work in this area include:

• identifying a research based inventory tool to support leadership and staff in becoming aware of their own intercultural understanding. Examples being considered are Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and Cultural Intelligence Assessment (CQ)
• increasing staff capacity to embed intercultural learning and practice to ensure that the learning experience reflects the complexity and diversity of future workplaces
• create authentic opportunities for staff and students to understand the place of religion and spiritual growth in a secular education system

Examples of action to date

Here are some examples of actions and activities that have taken place: this is not an exhaustive list.

• Unconscious Bias training with administrative staff (June 2020 through June 2021)
• curated Anti-Racist Resources shared with all staff (June 2020)
• guided personal anti-racist learning shared with East teachers (June 2020)
• ELT, DLT and Operational Leadership teams participated in a UWCSEA-designed two-day workshop 'Courageous First Steps' which covered topics: understanding bias, privilege and oppression as an anti-racist leader (August and November 2020)
• Unconscious Bias and Micro-Aggression professional learning in East Middle School (August 2020)
• Information and opportunities for engagement for facilities and operations staff are being created, including printed material based on audience requirements and engagement in community. This will include accessible information that will introduce topics such as bias, prejudice and other key concepts in intercultural awareness.
• Cultural Competence online workshops for parents (5 workshops) in 2020/2021
• Dover and East Parents’ Associations hosted a face to face workshop on both Unconscious Bias and Cultural Intelligence to recruit parent volunteers who can run these workshops in multiple languages (December 2020)
• Intercultural Communication professional learning in Dover Middle School (December 2020)
• Intercultural Understanding professional learning in East Middle School (January 2021)
• Cultural Competence training in Dover Primary School (January 2021)
• Unconscious Bias training in Dover Primary School (February 2021)
• Dover and East Parents’ Associations online workshops in Cultural Intelligence and Unconscious Bias in languages other than English (February and March 2021)
• Introduction to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion workshop for High School teachers and mentors (East)
• Diversity, Equity and Inclusion specifically framed in the PSE curriculum (East)
• Introduction to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training in the Boarding House (Dover)
• A professional learning roadmap has been created, and in collaboration with the Learning Leadership Team, the Professional Learning team will implement this in the 2021/2022 school year.

We are deeply committed to an ongoing effort to raise awareness and deepen understanding of the cultural diversity in our community, and to create a more inclusive environment for all in our community. 

Roosmarijn Emmering joined the Office of the College President in August 2020 on a 12 month contract to facilitate the commitment to systemic change on anti-racism DEI action across the College. In line with our commitment to systemic change, our learning on the intersectional nature of the changes, and to ensure continuity and the embedding of ongoing efforts, the position has been retained for the 2021/2022 academic year.

The role of the DEI Lead is to work with the College President (in her role on the International Board), the College Leadership Team and our DEI groups across the College to create insight into our current capacity and to identify opportunities for the College to increase awareness, understanding and engagement with our DEI agenda. This work includes facilitating opportunities to build diversity and inclusivity into our operations and education, including providing support as needed for work in the curriculum. 

We are reviewing our current status, gathering data and developing a road map for our future priorities, addressing any systemic issues. The DEI Lead works with our wider community on the roll out of our DEI vision and to create structures for accountability with clear milestones and goals. 

As we work towards creating a safer internal environment, the role of the DEI Lead may evolve again, as new priorities are identified for future work. 

Members

• Pauline Markey, Primary School Principal, East
• Rebecca Butterworth, High School Principal Dover
• Roosmarijn Emmering, ARDEI Project Lead
• Joze Hutagaol, Senior HR Manager and Talent Recruitment Lead
• Hemantha Dissanayake, Director of Faculty Timetabling and Information Systems
• Kate Woodford, Senior Marketing and Business Development Manager

Activity

External messaging: College website and UWCSEA content on other recruitment sites were reviewed for DEI messaging, and opportunities to better promote the College’s intention were identified and actioned, including

• DEI Statement is framed on the careers pages and included in all job ads: “UWCSEA is an equal opportunities employer, and welcomes applications from those who wish to join a community which is inclusive, and which celebrates diversity.”  
• additional staff and student profiles have been seeded on key pages throughout the website (home page, Careers pages, About Us, Community pages, Staff, Campus pages) providing visibility for staff and students from underrepresented groups
• language and images in our job brochure template and other student and staff recruitment materials have been reviewed to be more inclusive and diverse

Candidate application form changes: the working group reviewed the application form with the Co-Chair of the Task Force to implement more inclusive recruitment practices:

• multiple choice questions and text boxes have replaced the previous 10,000 word text box on our application form, which favoured first-language English speakers
• to elicit relevant details from candidates with a more diverse experience, application form language was reviewed and amended eg. added a question on grade-level experience
• demographic questions were added to capture additional information with new biodata fields added for candidates, both demonstrating our commitment to DEI to candidates and giving the College baseline data with the aim of tracking progress over time

Addressing unconscious bias in candidate screening

• hiring managers no longer see biodata such as names, gender, marital status, passport country, dependents, etc at the point of candidate review (long listing) so as to remove unconscious bias in initial assessment process
• concurrent unconscious bias and cultural competence training for many hiring managers throughout the organisation has created a two-fold approach to addressing this issue in recruitment

Outreach to attract greater diversity: a new hiring process saw candidate sourcing channels expanded beyond traditional partners, as we renewed efforts to reach diverse networks; a review of 2020/2021 data will inform further intentional outreach in the 2021/2022 school year. 

Student-led Activity and Service groups have conducted a significant amount of student-focused activity in support of DEI awareness and understanding.

Facilitated by staff, these groups empower students to learn more, and to shape their actions both individually and as contributors to systemic change.

Engagement with parents is a key part of our DEI strategy. They are both key stakeholders and important partners in our work. In the past we have invited parents to participate in  World Cafés and the Values in Action consultations, and in the coming years, we will continue to extend our partnership approaches. 

In 2020/2021, the College DEI Lead hosted a face to face workshop on both Unconscious Bias and Cultural Competence in partnership with the Dover and East Parents’ Associations. An additional five parent workshops on Cultural Competence were hosted online by the College DEI Lead.

In 2021/2022, sessions on Cultural Competence, Unconscious Bias and other relevant topics have been offered online and face-to-face where possible, including making these workshops available, in partnership with the Parents' Association on our campuses, to speakers of Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

UWCSEA engages with the UWC movement though a number of channels, including:

• College President, Carma Elliot, is a member of the UWC International Board where DEI is front and centre of discussions. As Chair of the UWC International Board’s Education Strategy Steering Group, Carma also continues to ensure that discussions about DEI are embedded in this important strand of the UWC dialogue about teaching and learning.
• Alongside Erin Robinson (former East Campus Middle School Principal), Sajjad Akhtar, Vice Chair of the UWCSEA Board of Governors, was a founding member of the temporary UWC ARDEI Think Tank which was created in response to an impassioned movement-wide call in mid-2020 for the UWC International Office to take action around anti-racism. 
• The outcome of the UWC ARDEI Think Tank was the development of the movement-wide UWC ARDEI Steering Group. This Steering Group is set to begin the important task of addressing ARDEI across UWC International and will make recommendations to UWC governors on a strategic, holistic response.