Ethnic diversity in the teaching workforce, and why it matters

Education is key for ethnic minority communities in the UK as a gateway for opportunities through which young people acquire skills, knowledge, and experiences. Yet in the U.K, education is highly unequal and the disproportionality in the school teaching workforce in England’s schools have drawn little interest from policymakers and education practitioners. This webinar addresses the noted gap in the literature and provides trends and empirical evidence in England’s teachers’ workforce by ethnic background and its disproportionality when compared to the pupils they teach. Our main data source was the School Workforce Census, the largest and most comprehensive source of data on teachers available in England. It used the diversity gap and the teacher-student parity index, for comparing the proportions of teachers and students from different ethnic groups to gain an understanding of the demographic reality of today’s schools. The main findings of the research confirm that the e