About us

A Learning and Work Institute equalities and empowerment site

The equalitiestoolkit is a Learning and Work Institute Equalities and Empowerment website. We have 4 more interrelated sites you may want to look at:

We created the equalitestoolkit website after LSISdefinition closed in 2013. Crowd-owned, sourced and curated, it showcases current equalities work in the FACESdefinition sector and brings together good practice resources to help education and training providers to make a positive impact for their learners (and staff) by meeting and exceeding the requirements of the Public Sector Equalitydefinition Duty (2010).

What is a Toolkit?

What people expect to find in a 'toolkit' varies from sector to sector, organisation type to organisation type and practitioner to practitioner. Essentially A toolkit is an assortment of practically useful resources brought together to address a particular problem. Spada (2014) in the Professions for Good Social Mobility Toolkit define a toolkit as 

"an assortment of resources brought together with the aim of addressing a specifc problem. It can help us to:

  1. measure (devices to assess the current situation);
  2. construct (frameworks with which stakeholders can engage);
  3. maintain (provisions to monitor the situation and sustain progress)."

In this context the equalitiestoolkit is designed to support the FACES sector to:

  • Assess the current situation so that we can support better policy and practice in this instance about equality, diversity, and social mobility 
  • Design and develop good practice examples and frameworks that people can use to improve their practice 
  • Monitor, evaluate and peer review the situation and sustain progress 

Without re-inventing the wheel

We provide information that's specific to the FACES sector, but we don't duplicate information you can already get from specialist organisations like the Government Equalities Office, or the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRCdefinition). Instead, we will signpost you to:

  • up-to-date and reliable sources of relevant knowledge and skills for use in your classroom or workplace 
  • practical examples of effective and emerging practice that other people in the sector have tried or are trying 
  • information that is already produced by sector organisations, like Ofsted, NUS, sector membership bodies, trade unions and strategic equalities groups like the Forum for Sexual Orientation and Genderdefinition Identity and FBFE
  • the evidence base for particular methods that have been shown to work in further education and skills

Inspired by the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream...' speech, 28 August 1963, the EqualitiesToolkit was launched at 7 pm (GMT) on 28 August 2013.