Ambition Institute's renewed commitments to equality, diversity and inclusion in education

Ambition Institute is one of 14 organisations to take part in this year’s statement, which is led by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) school leadership union. The statement highlights the work we have done in 2024/25 and sets out our EDI commitments for the year ahead.

Hilary Spencer, Chief Executive at Ambition Institute, said: “Strengthening equality, diversity and inclusion in the education workforce is crucial to achieving our mission to give every child the best start in life. That is why we continue to embed these principles into all areas of our work: in our programmes, in our work with partners and the wider sector, and within our organisational culture.

“In 2025/26, we will continue our work on all aspects of equality, diversity and inclusion, but will also focus particularly on strengthening racial equality, diversity and inclusion in the teaching workforce, because we recognise that people from ethnic minority backgrounds are persistently underrepresented in the education workforce and face ongoing barriers to recruitment, retention and career progression.

“Addressing racial inequality in the sector is not only a matter of fairness, but is critical for making sure we attract the best and widest range of talent into the education workforce, so that all pupils benefit from a skilled and diverse group of teachers and leaders.”

In 2024/25, we:

• Improved marketing and recruitment to our professional development programmes, to ensure people from all backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Our Initial Teacher Training cohort for 24/25 was more ethnically diverse than the national average and we are consistently enrolling a more ethnically diverse set of NPQ participants than the national NPQ averages and the overall workforce.
• Increased representation of diverse characteristics in programme materials and improved programme accessibility through new policies and enhancements to our online learning platforms.
• Implemented annual reporting to analyse participant cohorts in our national professional development programmes, compare them with national averages, and examine links between protected characteristics, disadvantage, and outcomes.
• Played a leading role in bringing together school leaders, educators and EDI specialists for a series of cross-sector EDI roundtables, setting shared sector-wide commitments to help improve racial diversity within leadership progression in education.
• Contributed to a range of sector events and initiatives focused on strengthening EDI, including the NFER’s advisory group on racial equality in the education workforce.
• Launched new EDI training for all our staff and implemented an enhanced package of support and development for colleagues leading our affinity networks, including a new sponsorship and mentoring offer.
• Improved completion rates for staff diversity data and conducted our first ethnicity and disability pay gap analyses ahead of mandatory national reporting expectations, to help us identify areas for improvement.

In 2025/26, as part of our involvement with the EDI roundtable group, we are committing alongside our partners to the following five shared commitments:

• Publicly declare a commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion with a specific reference to race equality and the reasons why this is important. This is especially important in the current national and international political environment.
• Understand and interrogate our own diversity data, both for our own workforce and employees, and for the services they provide.
• Share best practice and high quality resources from a range of organisations doing this work, so we are amplifying good work across the sector and not reinventing the wheel.
• Pay attention to internal and external marketing materials so that they demonstrate our commitments in action. This is particularly important where activity is focused on recruitment activity, either to support a more diverse range of applicants into the profession, or to support recruitment to development opportunities.
• Ensure representation in events including in invitation lists, speaking opportunities, panels, advisory groups etc. – both those we organise directly and those we take part in.

In addition to these commitments, we will:

• Keep accessibility and inclusivity at the heart of our programme design, delivery and support for participants and partners, with an aim to ensure there are no differences in outcome or impact across different groups.
• Continue our work as an employer to support and increase inclusion, through our network of affinity groups, our policies, and our practices, and taking evidence-based action to drive progress.
• Continue to work at a sector level to support EDI in the education workforce.

Read the full statement on NAHT's website.