UKEdMag: What is BAMEed

BAMEed: It’s often reflected that schools are a microcosm of the communities they serve and society as a whole. We teach pupils with vastly different experiences and with their own culture, social, and linguist backgrounds. I feel that schools do a superb job at balancing and catering for the cultural/social needs of their pupils and get it right in the majority of cases.

However, is the teaching profession a reflection of the population as a whole?

This article originally appeared in the March 2017 Edition of UKEdMagazine

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The #BAMEed (Black Asian Minority Ethnic educators) network is a grassroots movement aimed at ensuring our diverse communities are represented as a substantive part of the education workforce for teachers and leaders in education.

Difficulties in recruiting diversely is not a new issue; it is not something that has never been talked about. There has also been programmes aimed at changing the visible face of education and there has been marginal gains.

Change is happening, but this needs acceleration.

This new network is an open invitation to all for action to diversify all aspects of education. Our support is aimed at two levels:

• supporting graduates seeking to make their rst step into teaching and during the rst years of teaching.
• supporting teachers trying to step into leadership.

BAMEed will help make the step accessible, fair and achievable.

This is an open network. We seek to learn from each other and actively welcome all ethnicities. Our mix of culture and identity in the network engenders the ideal that we seek to develop in education across the UK .

Why is BAMEed needed?

The number of schools that are able to recruit and maintain teaching staff that are as ethnically diverse as our society is very limited. While there are many underlying issues that lead to this outcome.

The two most significant factors are:

• the lack of BAME people entering into teaching careers.
• the lack of support to ensure progress in those careers. This grassroots network is dedicated to changing this dynamic.

We believe that inclusive representation of the global community leads to long term benefits for our profession and the students under our care. Furthermore, inclusive representation among school leaders and decision makers widens the range of perspectives and hence improves ideas.

We also believe that social, economic and cultural differences should not be barriers to the careers in education. It is everybody’s responsibility to critically examine their role in working towards substantive diversity in education. Read uked.chat/17mar01 for more.

Join us on this journey to drive change in education.

Find out more about the origins of BAMEed by visiting:

bameednetwork.com

How can you get involved? Visit the website and sign up to our list of BAME educators. Get involved in coaching other BAME educators. Or, if you would like coaching, get in touch. Look at for our first conference this year where we will be addressing some important topics in education today! Follow @bameednetwork to keep up to date.