Challenge Partners seeks to enhance diversity, equity and inclusion as it recruits new trustees and nominations for its Education Advisory Group
Challenge Partners has put enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at the heart of its campaign to recruit new trustees and nominations for its Education Advisory Group (EAG). Recognising there is always more to do to improve DEI and ensure all levels of our organisation better reflect the children and young people we serve, trustees have decided that two of the four Board vacancies should be ring fenced for candidates from ethnic minority backgrounds and/or those with lived experience of educational disadvantage. Nominations to our EAG are also encouraged from these groups.
Our partnership was founded by practitioners in 2011 and remains proudly practitioner-led. This is so much the case that we baked into our Articles of Association a requirement that more than half of trustees should be approved by the partnership. As a result, practitioners and other trustees approved by our network play an important role in setting our vision and strategy, and holding the central team to account for delivering it.
Our Education Advisory Group also plays a vital role, bringing together practitioners from across the partnership to act as the principal reference group for the central team as we develop and deliver our networks and programmes. Its focus is more operational than the Board of Trustees and is one important way in which we ensure our activities meet the needs of schools and trusts in the partnership.
CEO Dr Kate Chhatwal OBE said:
"Challenge Partners has always been proudly practitioner-led and school and trust leaders play an integral role in steering our partnership as trustees and through our Education Advisory Group. As we seek to recruit new trustees and nominations to our EAG, we are determined to seize the opportunity to enhance diversity at the top of our organisation.
"Like many sectors, the highest levels of education do not reflect the populations they serve. At Challenge Partners we want to be better at this and have taken important steps to improve DEI at all levels of our organisation, including investing in a new recruitment platform which seeks to reduce the biases inherent in any recruitment process. We are using this to recruit trustees, as well as for staff recruitment."
For more information on how to join us as a trustee or member of Education Advisory Group, please see HERE.