Diversity matters

Directors of children's services (DCSs) are all kinds of different characters, but if you're at all like me, one of the things you'll cherish is the opportunity to spend time among children, young people and the wider communities in the area you serve. And one of the things you'll enjoy about that is the diversity of the people you spend time with.

People differ from each other in a variety of ways, but for the purposes of this blog, I'm thinking particularly of racial and ethnic diversity. As a nation, our increasing diversity is a generational thing as today's generation of children at school are far more diverse than previous generations. In my borough of Merton, 37 per cent of the population are from a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) background; by contrast in our schools that's 68 per cent (which is nevertheless lower than the London average). That varies widely across the country, of course (the figure is about 30 per cent across England, I think), but everywhere it's changing.