Valuing diversity: Muslim principal Hala Ramadan (left) and Aboriginal principal Fiona Kelly include their students and parents in cultural exchanges.

The Department of Education has today launched a new Diversity and Inclusion Strategy for its workforce.

The strategy values difference in employee background, skills and experience and supports the department’s Strategic Plan goal that “Education is a great place to work and our workforce is of the highest calibre”.

The department’s Secretary, Mark Scott, said respect for diversity was a core value of every staff member in schools and corporate offices.

“If we are to be the best education system in Australia, we need to create a workplace that encourages and supports opportunities for employees of all backgrounds and life experience to achieve, succeed and be their best,” he said.

Key priorities over the next five years are to:

• build an inclusive workforce through employee awareness, understanding and engagement
• attract, recruit, develop and retain a workforce which reflects the community we serve
• strengthen workforce data and evidence to inform sustainable decisions and initiatives.

The focus areas, based on current workforce data and NSW Government priorities, are:

• Aboriginal people
• people with disability
• culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people
• women in leadership
• male teachers.

The department is on track to meet and exceed the Premier’s priorities to double the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in senior leadership roles in the government sector by 2025; and to increase the proportion of women in senior leadership roles from 33 to 50 per cent by 2025.

The Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2018-2022 commits the department to increasing the number of Aboriginal people in senior leadership roles to 3% by 2025 (now 2.15%); increase the number of staff with disability to 5.6% (now 3.1%); and increase the number of women in senior leadership roles from the current level of 53% to 60% by 2025.

The strategy takes into account and responds to the Government Sector Employment Act 2013. It aligns with the department’s Disability Inclusion Action Plan 2016-2020, the Multicultural Plan 2016-2018, the Aboriginal Affairs Strategy including OCHRE, the NSW Government’s Aboriginal affairs plan and the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Inc. (NSW AECG) Partnership Agreement 2010-2020 (the Partnership Agreement).