While we absolutely want to address the long-standing challenges and inequities in initial teacher training, particularly around diversity, this moment has been less about presenting solutions and more about acknowledging reality. It has been about being honest about where we are, and taking the time to think carefully about how we move forward. What has stood out is how people have responded, not to bold claims or polished conclusions, but to the fact that we were willing to say openly that we are still learning and still figuring things out.

Much of our recent thinking has been shaped through the Diversity in ITT Project, funded by Mission 44 in partnership with Being Luminary, Chartered College of Teaching and Chiltern Learning Trust. As part of that work, we’ve been supported and challenged by our mentor, Harroop Sandhu. The project gives ITT providers the opportunity to explore barriers to entry, progression and belonging in teacher training, while also encouraging leaders to reflect on how systems, cultures and everyday decisions shape who feels able to enter the profession.

That space gave us permission to slow down and examine not just our actions, but our stance as leaders. It challenged the assumption that we should already have the answers and encouraged a more honest and ultimately more useful way of working.

A great deal of equity, diversity and inclusion work stalls not because organisations lack commitment, but because leaders feel an unspoken pressure to appear certain. Certain about the right language, the right strategy, or the right solution. That pressure can lead to a polished narrative that suggests the work is further along than it really is, which in turn can close down the very conversations that need to happen.

We didn’t, and don’t, want to work in that way.

One of the most important shifts in our work with Harroop has been learning to reframe our questions so that they are not more comfortable, but more truthful. At times, that has meant leaning into areas that feel difficult or unresolved, acknowledging the gaps in our understanding, and being explicit about the fact that this is ongoing work rather than a completed piece.

Instead of trying to communicate certainty, we’ve focused on communicating intent. Rather than positioning ourselves as having solved something, we’ve allowed ourselves to say that representation and belonging are not where they should be, that this matters deeply, and that we are taking action while remaining open about the complexity of the task.

That thinking directly shaped the campaign we’ve recently shared. The questions were deliberately provocative, but they were also carefully considered. Each one was designed to explain what we are trying to change and why, rather than to offer a neat solution. The final question, asking what else we should be considering, was intended as a genuine invitation rather than a rhetorical flourish.

There is a tendency, particularly in education, to turn DEIB work into a checklist or a plan to complete. Structure and accountability matter, but when the work becomes something you approach with dread, waiting to see what is overdue, something important has been lost.

For us, it has felt different.

When we open our DEIB action plan, it prompts curiosity rather than anxiety. It encourages us to pause and think more deeply about how we approach the work, how we do it well, and what we might be missing. Increasingly, it has also pushed us to think beyond Portsmouth SCITT, and to consider how this learning can be embedded more deliberately and more purposefully across our Trust.

We are not presenting a finished article, and we are not claiming to have a single solution that will resolve long-standing issues across the sector. We know there is more to do, and we expect that there always will be. What matters is that the work feels real, grounded and open to challenge.

This is not about smoke and mirrors, or about presenting the right image. It is about leadership that is willing to sit with uncertainty, to listen without defensiveness, and to be shaped by what we hear.

If this process has reinforced anything for us, it is that inclusion does not grow in environments where certainty is protected at all costs. It grows where leaders are willing to be questioned, where curiosity is valued, and where saying “we don’t know yet” is understood as a legitimate and necessary starting point.

That feels like the right place to be.

~Hayley Aldis

on behalf of Portsmouth SCITT