#SLTchat George Floyd Summary Sunday 5th July Summary

Another week... Another twitterchat...

Hot off the heels of my first ever twitterchat on Sunday 28th June, I was invited by the Caroline Spalding, assistant headteacher & founding member of #SLTchat.

#SLTchat is a twitterchat dedicated to looking at issues that affect school leaders in the UK Education sector.

The @SLTchat profile has over 33,000 followers and is even recognised by the Department of Education! Many of the chat's followers were the leaders of the biggest schools in the country!

Intimidated but honoured, I accepted this mission, Tom Cruise style...

Like the week prior, this is how I felt, 30 minutes before hosting...

But again, I was blown away by how kind, generous and thoughtful the #EduTwitter community is!

There were some absolute crackers of answers from the 3 questions that I asked and I wanted to share them here!

I hope that enjoy them as much as I did! 😁

1. Only 1% of all headteachers in the UK Education system are black. As senior leaders, what will you do to remove the barriers for talented BAME leaders to rise in your organisations?

There's very little that I can add to there wonderful teachers' responses. I just wanted to quickly plug the website that Amjad Ali suggested - bameednetwork.com.

It's a fantastic website dedicated to promoting the best teachers and resources from the BAME community. Check it out!

Also, if you look in the Speaker's section, you might see a friendly face... 😎

2. George Floyd and #BLM have highlighted the racial inequalities that hurt our BAME students. As senior leaders, what measures have you put in place to make your schools are inclusive of all cultures as possible?

Representation matters. Liam's points were very powerful because it is not just a school policy issue but a culture issue.

The school, especially if they have a substantial amount of multi-ethnic students, must be proactive in promoting positive images of ALL cultures.

Children can't be what they can't see.

3. As the news has slowly moved on from George Floyd and BLM, some BAME communities feel that the drive for change will also dwindle away. What practical things must the Educator sector do to ensure that this isn’t a trend and a catalyst for a fairer sector for all?

All of the above 👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾👆🏾.

What gives me great hope is that teachers have already started to implement plans to increase representation and anti-racist policies and resources within their schools.

Also, the willingness of senior leaders to spearhead these changes means that George Floyd's death will not just be a 'trend' that goes from today's headlines to tomorrow's chip-paper but maybe a catalyst to greater organisational changes.

@ChilternTSA's plan is pragmatic and practical and I hope that other schools and trusts can pick it up and run with it.

Mr Floyd's death was a tragedy but hopefully, we can find the tiniest of silver linings which makes things better for ALL our kids.

If you are on Twitter, find all of the above and follow them - you won't be disappointed!

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Karl from actionheroteacher.com