Flying the flag for our students: Fostering a sense of inclusion at ACS
ACS caters for students and staff from over 70 countries with a vibrant international, diverse and multi-cultural ethos. The student voice is championed, the students themselves being the ones who have driven the need for change by pointing teachers towards what is currently happening among their peers.
Over the last few years, it has been hard to miss the multiple news stories focusing on sexism and female safety on social media through the mainstream media.
One example of this would be Andrew Tate, whose views have become almost impossible to avoid since November last year. In February 2023, research by Hope Not Hate found that eight in 10 boys aged between 16 and 17 had either read, listened to or watched his content. In comparison, fewer boys – around six in ten – had heard of the PM, Rishi Sunak.
So, it is not surprising that frontline counter-extremism workers have witnessed a rise in the number of Andrew Tate-related student cases being referred to them by schools. While all schools in the UK have strict racism and homophobia policies in place, few had the same in place for sexism incidents. Sadly, this behaviour has been happening in educational settings for a long time, and because the attitude that ‘boys will be boys’ has always been widely accepted, many students often haven’t felt comfortable speaking out.
However, this is not the case for ACS International School Egham. The school is part of ACS International Schools, a group of schools that caters for students and staff from over 70 countries; we have a vibrant international, diverse and multi-cultural ethos. At ACS Egham, the student voice is championed, the students themselves being the ones who have driven the need for change by pointing teachers towards what is currently happening among their peers. And we recognise that it takes a lot of courage for young people to do this.
In response to our student concerns, and to ensure Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is embedded, championed and celebrated across the whole school, we established a staff-led DEI Council back in 2020 following the tragic death of George Floyd in America, with the main aim to listen and respond to our students’ needs and potential worries.
The DEI Council was founded to raise awareness of key current issues that impact our students. The DEI Council aims to:
Influence and drive positive change across the whole ACS International Schools organisation by raising awareness of and seeking solutions for challenges in the organisation
Providing information and recommendations on best practice
Creating initiatives to help ACS International Schools achieve its commitments outlined in the DEI Charter
The Council consists of 30 members of staff, from a wide range of roles across ACS International Schools, who volunteer their time. In 2023-24, we will implement a DEI Student Specialist program in which we will partner with ACS DEI partner organisations to train a group of students to tackle discrimination.
LET GIRLS PLAY
Since its inception in 2020, the Council has implemented a series of impactful initiatives. However, most of what the Council does is driven primarily by our students and what they are telling us. For example, we recently began to notice an overall drop in female student participation in sports at ACS Egham. To encourage them to talk to us, we launched an anonymous survey and the response was telling: more girls felt comfortable playing sports when no boys were watching, and mainly due to the recent uprise in Andrew Tate-led attitudes.
As a result, we signed up for Barclays and the FA’s Let Girls Play; the largest all-girls football session to take place across the UK, giving girls equal access to football at school. 200 female students aged 4 – 18 were invited to take part and our gender diverse students were given options as to how and if they would like to participate, which resulted in a powerful sense of camaraderie throughout the day. Female coaches from football academies Phoenix Academy and We Make Footballers, led the session in the our school sports hall, alongside other sporting activities, making the initiative wholly inclusive.
LET BOYS TALK
Alongside this general growing trend in harmful behaviour in schools up and down the country, ACS Egham has become even more motivated to engage with the entire student body so behaviour and relationships between students at school is not impacted. So, on the same day as Let Girls Play, we hosted ‘Let Boys Talk’ sessions for all male-identifying
students at the school, where students were encouraged to discuss their feelings and the common masculine stereotypes they face in today’s society.
We gave careful consideration to splitting up the students by gender, but ultimately decided to do so based on student survey feedback and the desire to address specific inequalities all students may encounter. These male-only sessions were designed in the spirit of addressing inequality. Our Head of School and other male members of staff led the sessions with all male students at the same time, and the conversations encouraged the male students to reflect on and openly discuss gender equality. They were able to address the common societal stereotypes that men face, one being unable to talk about their feelings, as well as the difference in the roles that boys and girls play, and what it means to be male.
These sessions signalled the start of an entire review of our school curriculum, where we are considering how to address crucial questions such as, what to do when we come across gender inequalities or discrimination?
FIGHTING MISOGYNISM
Initiatives like these are also beginning to pave the way towards a more open dialogue between students and teachers at ACS Egham. Earlier this year, it was our students who flagged to us their concerns about a rise in misogynistic beliefs among their peers following the rise of Andrew Tate. We recognised that this is a huge step for them to take, and so we listened to them and knew that we had to respond. We offered them the opportunity to open the conversation between staff and students in order to better understand student experiences and take action.
In solidarity with our students’ concerns, we partnered with gender equality organisation, Action Breaks Silence to deliver dedicated workshops to our Grade 8 students (aged 13-14) as part of our PSHE curriculum. The sessions aimed to raise awareness of gender-based violence and misogyny, ensuring that we as an organisation are taking responsibility and actively encouraging a more open and equitable school community. This helped to ensure that students were equipped with the tools to tackle hate, as well as understand the damaging and detrimental impact this ideology can have.
To ensure that the sessions were tailored to our students’ specific needs, we monitored a number of platforms, such as The Wellbeing Hub – Teen Tips, and distributed student surveys. Students also have access to the Hub to give them professional advice and practical tools on issues relevant to them in today’s world. These tools complemented the workshops and ensured that our work with Action Breaks Silence was maximised and made most effective.
Of course, while these were impactful initiatives, we’re not quite where we want to be just yet: the aim of the day was to launch a wider, deeper conversation around gender inequalities, and these initiatives are just the start of our DEI journey at ACS Egham. We plan to provide professional development and support for our staff to approach these complex issues with the students, to talk about and tackle misogynistic views, so that students understand the damaging effects of this ideology.
All of this is only the start of bringing our school community on our DEI journey; there is still lots of work that needs to be done, from policy to practice, to keep all of our students and staff safe and happy. We are proud of the sense of openness that we have nurtured at ACS Egham, and we are continuing to learn that we should, at times, look to our students to drive the agenda in these complex and current issues.
Lauren Kelley is the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Coordinator at ACS International Schools
