The death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis has shone a light on racism, inequality and discrimination to the extent that it feels as though we are on the cusp of real change.

At the Association of Colleges, we spent a lot of last week talking with our staff and with our board members about how we should respond. It felt right to have that conversation before making a statement. We were - and are - acutely aware of the risks of both inadvertently saying the wrong thing and saying something that simply sounds tokenistic or complacent. Not saying anything was an option quickly dismissed for a host of reasons, not least because our staff and our members were rightly asking us to stand up, but also because we see our role as a leadership body in education.

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At AoC we believe that colleges, alongside other education settings, can and must change and act to secure the long-term, meaningful and deep changes in our society that are needed. Other sectors are important as well but securing the long-term culture and behaviour changes that matter needs to be central to our education system, from cradle to grave.

So we published our statement, which we hope will lead to more urgent and deep change internally as well as with our member colleges. A tall ask, but we’re committed to it. The statement is here, but the true test of it will not be whether we have crafted the words skillfully but whether any actions follow that lead to change.

Promoting equality and diversity

Within AoC, we’ve spent the past couple of years working internally with all our staff on equality and diversity, including achieving Investors in Diversity status last year. We’ve made progress in many areas, including on fair pay, different approaches to staff training, celebration of different cultures, religious festivals and remembrance days, and embedding our commitment in our organisational culture. It is progress but it is far from enough. So, we are working closely with the National Centre for Diversity to review what we can do now and how we can make more rapid progress.

Externally, we re-established an equality and diversity group, bringing together college leaders, and agreed some early actions, including better representation on the stage at our annual conference, a new service for colleges to recruit more diverse boards and a new Beacon Award in inclusive leadership. Progress, but insufficient by far.

We have a lot to do. For instance, while we have a diverse staff body at AoC, we do not have a racially diverse senior management team and nor does our governance reflect the society we operate in.

In education, the biggest mountain to climb is unequal educational achievement. Sadly, there has been far too little research or even analysis of the unequal outcomes of college education by ethnicity or race. There is some for schools and universities, but even that fails to appreciate the systemic issues which we need to understand better if we are to change them. It’s probably part of the problem: the very issue we need to challenge seems to have resulted in a lack of evidence to understand it.

We will be actively talking to AoC staff and members about this and engaging partner organisations. We don’t have all of the answers and we know that we cannot achieve the necessary changes on our own. So, I am writing to the permanent secretary at the Department for Education to offer to work with him on building the alliances that will make sure that actions follow.

It is through bold leadership and strong partnership that we can have a challenging, open and honest dialogue about what can be done, what needs to be done and what we will do to change things for ever.

David Hughes is chief executive of the Association of Colleges