How inclusion drives Hopwood Hall College

From 23rd to 29th September 2024, we’re celebrating National Inclusion Week, dedicated to celebrating inclusion and taking action to create inclusive workplaces.

Dan Baxter shares the story of Hopwood Hall College, a recent Queen’s Anniversary Prize winner.

Having worked with Hopwood Hall on a number of key placements, we’re inspired by their work responding to challenges affecting people’s life chances in one of the most deprived areas nationally. Both staff and students find Hopwood to be a place where the best of themselves is always celebrated.

As a trauma-informed education provider, inclusion is at the heart of their mission to widen participation and support marginalised and disengaged young people.

Dan Baxter: Thanks for joining me. I’m really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on inclusion. Inclusion is a very broad term, so I think we should start by thinking about what inclusion means to you.

Julia Heap: To me, as the Principal, inclusion means making sure everyone has an opportunity to fulfil their potential. No matter their background, people will always be welcomed, can be themselves and feel supported to reach their ambitions. That goes for our staff, governors and other visitors too.

Gary Buxton: My understanding overlaps with Julia’s. I think the word that resonates most with inclusion is belonging. I think it’s such a powerful word. If you feel like you belong somewhere, then you feel safe and able to succeed.

I think inclusion is about everyone being more curious all the time. If we ask more questions about one another, we learn more about the diversity of perspectives and backgrounds of people.

DB: I love the idea of thinking about this alongside belonging. I think this links to communities that are wider than just the College. Tell us a little about them and why inclusion is so important in Rochdale.

JH: I wonder whether Rochdale feels included as a borough because it’s an economically disadvantaged area, having been more prosperous at the height of the cotton industry. Recent history means it’s always out on a limb with negative stories. People here can feel marginalised just for being a member of our community.

However, if people came to Rochdale and were more curious, they’d see thriving communities with people who are passionate about the area being a fantastic place to live, work and learn. Of course, it could be better because there is deprivation, therefore, as a college, we want people to be able to have those opportunities to get out of some of those situations. An education, useful skills, and good employment are vital to that, and that is where the College plays a bigger role than just providing education. We adapt to provide support, help with ambitions and help to raise communities.

DB: Gary, you’ve recently taken on your role as Chair of the Board. Tell me about your first impressions of the culture across the College.

GB: I’m so lucky. When you walk through the door of an organisation, it can be opaque, but walking through Hopwood’s door, you can just immediately feel it. I’ve spoken with all our Board Members and want to make sure that they have a voice and that we recognise their commitment. They are giving their time to the success of the College, and they will be getting loads back for themselves too. Making sure it feels like a nice virtuous circle is always really important to me.

DB: It was a pleasure to support you in the appointment. Julia, you lead this positive culture as the Principal and CEO of Hopwood. What does it take for you as a leader to build and lead this kind of culture?

JH: A previous Principal of the College, early in my FE career, said to me that “the role that gets played as the leader of the organisation is many, but the most important is to hold the values”. And I’m literally sitting here, holding my hands in front of me with our values in them now as I speak, as this resonated with me so much.

I’ve taken that literally and philosophically through everything I do. I hope I support my staff and students in doing the same across the whole College. You’ve got to believe in the values first, and then you’ve got to tangibly and intangibly demonstrate them every day.

A staff member said to me recently, linked to our Queen’s Anniversary Prize—it was a really moving moment, I can feel myself getting little goosebumps now— she said to me, “you’ve done this because of the way you make people feel.”

DB: The College has a vision to bring out the best in everyone. But when there are pockets of deprivation, how do you inspire these people to engage with you?

GB: One of the things I loved about Hopwood was that we have the full breadth of qualifications available to students. This means we have the educational opportunity that’s the right size for any student right now. If you look at an institution and you can’t see anything that’s relevant for you right now, you’re not going to be walking through the door because you would feel like it’s not the right place for you. But this breadth allows someone to say, “you know what? I’m here and that’s OK. And this is where I’m going to start.”

I already see the College as inspiring, whether it’s an entry-level qualification or a university degree.

JH: I think stories are where the wider thinking comes to life.

Recently, I ran into a young person who I’d first met last year as they achieved a Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award. They were within a group of hair and beauty students who had many of the disadvantages that we’ve talked about in relation to their own lived experiences. We created a programme for them that included a DofE Bronze Award—which many thought would never be achievable for them. We made it engaging and relevant and made them feel included.

When I ran into this student, it was evident that they’ve achieved and progressed. They’re still in education and looking at a completely different area of study. They had a very confident conversation with me about what they wanted to do, what their summer was like, and are a completely transformed young person because of how we have tried to recognise what barriers were in place.

This is really special, but it’s normal for us to do that. It’s not extraordinary that my staff would want to be able to adapt, remove barriers, think outside of the box, put an individual front and centre to make sure they’ve had every opportunity that we can offer. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but where it does, that’s life-changing.

This is just one story.

With our Queen’s Anniversary Prize being for widening participation, we started to do lots of summer transition projects, including for those furthest away from education. We knew there was a rising number of home-educated young people, which was our focus. Around 70 of these young people attended the summer school and it was probably one of the most challenging transition schools we’ve ever done. Some of them haven’t stepped foot in a school for a year, if not longer, and yet, they came to Hopwood. Some just for half an hour, some did the whole programme. Some have now enrolled at college.

DB: There are clearly a lot of barriers that leaders must overcome. What do you think are the biggest challenges that employers face to be more inclusive – not just in the FE sector, but wider?

GB: The biggest challenge that I often find, and that is mentioned a lot, is pipeline. How do you get better representation of people in certain jobs, particularly the top jobs? We know statistically that organisations that have gender-diverse top teams or ethnically culturally diverse top teams outperform those that are less diverse by a significant margin. But there must be a pipeline. And it might be easy to feel like that pipeline is not your responsibility because it is such a big issue – it’s systemic – it’s societal – and so some people might just feel it’s too big of a problem.

My narrative is always that there are big things that affect us all, but that doesn’t mean to say that we don’t have any control. Let’s work diligently with focus, with commitment, with discipline, and keep on focusing on the things that we can control because the more time we spend in that space, the more we can affect positive change. The more positive change that we affect, the bigger the pipeline, the bigger the representation, the bigger the inclusivity. Some of it’s hard, but the prize is worth it, so let’s keep going!

JH: Everything that Gary said absolutely resonates with the FE sector too. Everybody wants their staff body to reflect the communities being served. It’s so powerful to be familiar with somebody’s characteristics and thinking “well if they can do that, I can do that too”. We want our staff to think this too, but it’s hard– and I’m not making excuses here. Recruiting in FE is tough. Maybe you need an engineer to teach engineering or a cyber specialist to teach cyber. Their industries pay so well that they have to make a big economic decision to come and be a teacher. In Rochdale, general attainment levels make it harder to attract them.

We’ve got to have a pipeline of people who have started their careers in a middle or entry role and feel represented, feel included, feel like the part of #TeamHopwood, and want to stay here to continue their development.

DB: Returning to your Queen’s Anniversary Prize. It’s the highest honour that can be bestowed on a college and the theme of inclusion runs through yours. Tell us a little bit more about the work that led to it.

JH: Pre-Covid, we had started this work as a response from staff and their experiences of behaviour they had seen in and out of the classroom. We were lucky to get some funding to help us understand what our trauma-informed practice is. We worked with some Rochdale-based psychologists who understood what our young people and adults were going through.

They helped our students understand their behaviours and how to navigate that. That’s how it started – a whole college approach. It was about holding those values again. If I don’t hold them, then why would anybody else think it’s important?

From here, we developed a training programme for all staff to understand how young brains develop, and then the impact of trauma on brain development in young people.

We understood that if you haven’t had the emotional or physical support needed to understand your emotions, or to regulate your response, then behaviours change. This knowledge helped our staff understand some behaviours they were experiencing, and they all gathered momentum because of the impact. We just evolved every year after that; different programmes, different transitions, working with different communities or different characteristics. We worked really closely with looked-after children for a year, and in that year, they outperformed our overall cohort by 2%— this was phenomenal.

We’ve worked on many different programmes now. Those that I’ve described, those who’ve perhaps been around criminal activity or the criminal justice system, those who’ve not had great school experiences.

DB: This year’s theme for National Inclusion Week is #ImpactMatters. What are three simple things that senior leaders can do to make their organisations more inclusive?

GB: My simple steps are monitor, prioritise, celebrate. If you don’t have the data, then you don’t know whether you are making a difference. If you don’t make it a strategic priority, then even if you’ve got the data, people will put it to one side. And most importantly, celebrate when you’re getting it right. Demonstrate through the celebration of success what good looks like. That has its own gravitational pull.

JH: I would say “listen”. Our staff and our students have the best ideas. And I think then the next part is say “yes” because you trust them. We can’t say yes to everything, but you’ve got to take a chance.