Schools offered £30,000 grants to hire gay and trans teachers
An education funding scheme which offers funding of up to £30,000 to employ and promote gay and transgender teachers has been labelled as “profoundly misguided”.
Run by the National College for Teaching and Leadership, the scheme is designed to provide training or hire new staff to address diversity gaps and encourage “applications on the basis of so-called protected characteristics”, reports The Telegraph.
Defined by the Equality Act 2010, these include age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.
Schools with low numbers of staff who are gay, mature or returning to work are thought to benefit from a £900,000 fund available for the first time this year, following a pilot 2014/15 scheme.
A Department for Education spokesperson said the initiative aims to support “under-represented groups”, and ensure the presence of “excellent leaders in our schools, to raise the standard of teaching and achieve the best outcomes for their pupils.”
“Good school leadership teams should also reflect the diversity of the teaching profession,” he said.
Yet opponents to the policy warn of its discriminatory nature, including Civitas think tank founder David Green, who said the is scheme was bad for children because they were not getting the best teachers based on skill.
“The assumption behind the Leadership Equality and Diversity Fund is that there has been discrimination if there is not proportionate representation of any of the above groups in leadership roles,” he said.
“It is highly likely that this would include every school in the land. A law against discrimination is at least understandable if it relates to an ascribed characteristic that the individual can’t change (such as race), but it makes no sense if the protected characteristic is chosen.”
When hiring new candidates, Green said work-related ability should be the most important element.
“I would abolish the whole thing, I think it’s profoundly misguided and the money could be better spent on providing more teachers for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Conservative MP David Nuttall said the “absolute nonsense” fund was inherently discriminatory, whether “positive or not”.
“It means someone somewhere is being discriminated against and I would always argue for a true equality where you don’t have positive discrimination at all, where you treat everyone equally,” he said.
“The problem is that by having an artificial mechanism in place that guarantees one group special treatment over another not only is it patronising to that group, but by definition it means that others who might be better qualified for promotion are discriminated against.”
Labour shadow education secretary Lucy Powell added the money could be better spent.
“We support moves to diversify school leadership so that it is more representative of the communities schools serve,” she said.
“However given the teacher shortage crisis in this county it is important that this funding is properly accounted for and is not being used simply to help plug gaps given the failure of Ministers to train enough teachers and at a time when more teachers are leaving the profession than ever before.”