Having already begun our efforts to establish anti-racist practices and decolonise our curriculum at school, returning to the academy before the summer holidays in 2020, following the latest Black Lives Matter mobilisation, presented a fairly overwhelming task.

We knew we weren’t doing enough. We had some ideas for what we wanted to improve. But largely, we didn’t know where to start.

We formed an Anti-Racist Working Group where around 15-20 members of staff committed to bringing about change. There was limited information out there over how we could achieve our goals, or even establish what our goals were, so we initially largely relied on the expertise of staff and student voice.

So much work has been done since then and likeminded teachers at other schools, who are keen to improve their offer for students, get in touch with me fairly regularly. I thought it was important to get down everything we had done in to a single document to make it a useful starting point for other teachers and save them some of the time we had spent working out what we were going to do and how we were going to do it.

I had no idea how to write a report though, so my friend Parise Carmichael-Murphy gave up loads of her time to help me, and this is the final result!