Equity, Diversity and Inclusion - The Education and Training Foundation

In November 2022, The ETF, alongside WorldSkills UK and the Association of Colleges and others pledged to ensure that technical and vocational education pathways are made accessible and inclusive to all.

As a commissioning body, committed to ensuring any contracts we award are to suppliers that can prove their work is accessible to all and encourage a more inclusive and diverse workforce
As a collaborative player, working with the sector to create a more diverse teaching workforce
As an employer, committed to an open and fair People Strategy that ensures all staff have equal opportunities to develop and excel.

Our commitments to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

To demonstrate our commitment to EDI, we have made pledges to the following:

The Education and Training Foundation, one of 103 organisations to take part in Mind’s second annual Workplace Wellbeing Index, has been recognised with a Bronze Award, meaning we are committed to achieving change within our workplace.

Mind’s Workplace Wellbeing Index is a benchmark of best policy and practice, celebrating the good work employers are doing to promote and support positive mental health, and providing key recommendations on the specific areas where there is room to improve.

Mind surveyed more than 54,000 employees across the 103 employers participating in the Awards and found that 7 in 10 had experienced a mental health problem in their lives, with just over half (53 per cent) affected by poor mental health in their current workplace.

We will be taking forward the recommendations from MIND through our organisational change programme, SHAPE. The ETF is committed to being a mentally healthy workplace and wants to ensure our employees have the space to have open and honest conversations about their mental health and wellbeing.

As part of our continued commitment to ED&I, we are now a member of Inclusive Employers, the UK’s first and leading membership organisation, for employers looking to build inclusive workplaces. This membership has enabled us to complete an external benchmarking assessment to ensure we carry out effective ED&I practice in everything we do. The outcome of this assessment, supported by our internal staff forum, will allow us to formulate an updated strategy and a set of priorities to help the ETF excel at creating and supporting an inclusive and diverse internal workforce.

In October 2018, we were awarded Disability Confident Committed Employer status. This means, as an organisation, we are committed to:

ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible
communicating and promoting vacancies
offering an interview to disabled people
anticipating and providing reasonable adjustments as required
supporting any existing employee who acquires a disability or long-term health condition, enabling them to stay in work
at least one activity that will make a difference for disabled people.

More information about this award can be found on the Disability Confident website.

We have signed ‘The Mental Health at Work Commitment’ to ensure we continue to prioritise mental health and wellbeing at ETF. This commitment supersedes our previous ‘Time to Change‘ Employer pledge and sets out a clear framework, organised into six standards to help us continuously improve our wellbeing offer for our employees. This work will be progressed through our internal change programme – known as SHAPE and supported by a cross-representative groups of employees. We are dedicated to ending the stigma around mental health and continue to champion our employees, so they feel comfortable and supported by those around them.

Ongoing activity underpinning our current wellbeing offer includes meditation sessions, onsite gym, learning hours, open discussion forums, MHFA training and Senior Leadership Team support.

More information can be found on the Mental Health at Work Commitment page.

In March 2020, the ETF became a signatory of the Armed Forces Covenant. In doing so, it has committed to upholding the Covenant’s key principles; namely that no member of the Armed Forces Community should face disadvantage in the provision of public and commercial services compared to any other citizen, and that in some circumstances special treatment may be appropriate, especially for the injured or bereaved.

The ETF has pledged to uphold those principles in a number of ways, including:

Seeking to support the professional learning and development of Armed Services personnel through the ETF’s Workforce Development offer.
Seeking to support the resettlement, training and employment of veterans, young and old, including the transition to Further Education and Skills technical teaching careers.
Endeavouring to offer a degree of flexibility to veterans when they are studying their ITE programme or any other workforce development support offer, through Further Forces or any other ETF programme.

More information can be found on the Armed Forces Covenant website.

In November 2021, The ETF, alongside WorldSkills UK and the Association of Colleges and others pledged to ensure that technical and vocational education pathways are made accessible and inclusive to all.

View our Inclusive FE page

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) announced a formal partnership with the Black Leadership Group (BLG) as we work together towards eradicating racism in the Further Education and Training sector.

BLG, a not-for-profit company formerly known as the Black FE Leadership Group, established in November 2020, envisions an anti-racist culture at the core of further education for both employees and students and wider society. Through this new partnership, the ETF will demonstrate a commitment to anti-racism and to highlight the positive contribution of anti-racist efforts across the sector. The ETF and the BLG will be working together on a range of areas including improving outcomes and representation for learners, staff and leadership (including governance); enhancing workforce succession planning and the talent pipeline of Black staff in the FE sector; influencing policy and practice; and sharing and cascading excellence and innovation in anti-racist practice.

This partnership builds on the ETF’s support of the BLG’s inaugural symposium held last year which set out a vision of anti-racism in the FE and training sector.