On this day CSIE celebrates 36 years of remarkable achievements! Founded on 28 June 1982 as the Centre for Studies on Integration in Education, CSIE took on its current name in the 1990s. The Centre has continued to evolve, has expanded its remit to cover all aspects of equality in education, and has remained at the forefront of developments in inclusive education. On its 36th birthday, CSIE has many reasons to celebrate:

Our award-winning equality guide for schools continues to attract positive feedback, including an independent review in the March issue of Nasen’s magazine Connect, where the reviewer concluded that “Equality: Making It Happen” is “an extremely accessible and valuable resource for any educational provider” which “should be on every school’s bookshelf”!

We have recently received a National Lottery grant to set up, in collaboration with primary and secondary schools, an online equality hub to be made freely available to all schools. Many teachers have told us that the multitude of resources available is overwhelming and that a single space from which to navigate through available resources would be extremely helpful. In the words of one head teacher: “The idea of an online equality hub being freely available to all schools is essential. When these issues arise for different schools, they don’t know where to look. To have something central, quickly and easily accessible, is brilliant.”

Earlier this year we completed our research on experiences of disabled students at the University of Bristol and expect to launch the report soon. Funding permitting, we are ready to begin work, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Exeter, on the next issue in the series of Trends reports, exploring the proportion of children placed in special schools or other separate settings by each local authority in England.

During the past year we saw the successful conclusion of three international projects we had been involved in: the European Literacy and Citizenship project (ELICIT-plus), the Improving Assistance in Inclusive Educational Settings project (IMAS) and the Beit project. We are honoured to have been invited to contribute to four new projects: a national research project on children’s experiences of inclusion and three international projects: a follow-up on the IMAS project, a new Erasmus+ project on Enhancing Practices of Inclusive Teaching in European Countries (EPITEC) and a new project creating a Sustainable Transformation on Educational Practices Initiative Network (STEP-IN).

Additional ways in which CSIE offers support for schools continue to be taken up by schools and local authorities throughout the country. We recently started offering support to schools carrying out an equality audit and have continued delivering equality workshops for staff and governors or for school leaders; equality workshops have recently been delivered in Brighton, Derby and Preston, attracting extremely positive feedback in each location. Our disability awareness workshops for pupils are becoming increasingly popular with primary and secondary schools; in two days of workshops at Eastlea Community School last month, 94% of pupils said on anonymous feedback slips that they have found the workshop helpful. Some of the reasons pupils gave were:

“It showed us how we are all similar and it does not matter if we look different.”

“It taught me that if you see a disabled person alone help and play with them.”

“There is an autistic person who keeps chasing me and now I know I shouldn’t run away from him.”

“I know more about disability and not to judge people.”

Happy Birthday CSIE, we all wish that you keep going from strength to strength and continue to be valued for achievements at the cutting edge of educational change!