Inclusive Education Framework

We want all our students to feel included during their time at Keele.

The Inclusive Education Framework has been introduced to identify and remove barriers to student learning, participation, and engagement. We are creating positive, engaging, and socially cohesive learning environments to celebrate the diversity of our students and to ensure that all members of our community feel a sense of value and belonging.

We propose to do this by adopting five key principles, decolonising our curriculum, research and libraries, and through the use of nine toolkits which will support colleagues across the University to implement aspects of the IEF.

As part of the framework, we are committed to providing mainstream adjustments so that individual amendments become the exception, rather than the rule. Students with a diagnosed disability where mainstream adjustments would not meet their needs will still be offered alternative and personalised amendments.

If you need further support or advice, please contact our Disability Support and Inclusion or Equity, Diversity and Inclusion teams.

Five key principles of the Inclusive Education Framework

We will proactively address the needs of our diverse student body and plan accordingly.

We will ensure that all students can flourish and achieve their full potential free from prejudiced attitudes and unlawful discrimination.

We will design a curriculum that is fully representative of diverse student characteristics, lived experiences, and cultural perspectives.

We will ensure our teaching and learning environments, both physical and online, are safe spaces that respect individuality and empower our student voice.

We will design assessments that are purposefully diverse and flexible, provide transparent marking processes, develop Keele’s Graduate Attributes, and adhere to the principles and expectations in our Assessment and Feedback Code of Practice.

Inclusive Education Framework

Toolkits for Inclusive Education

To support colleagues across the University to implement aspects of the IEF, nine toolkits have been designed alongside various Codes of Practice, Tables of Expectations, benchmarks, and guides that support inclusive practice. Each toolkit includes a diagnostic self-assessment, relevant resources, and examples of internal and external good practice.

The toolkits will ensure that all students, including those with protected characteristics, can participate and thrive in all aspects of their educational experience. The resources will evolve over time as inclusive practice stories are collated from across the University.

The nine toolkits focus on:

All IEF toolkits can be viewed here.

Decolonising the Curriculum

We’re proud that our teaching is research-led. As a result, we are decolonising our curriculums and libraries to ensure we hear from diverse parts of the world, from diverse voices and groups, and that we teach and research in ways which are less discriminatory and more collaborative and co-creative.

To achieve this, we have been examining what constitutes knowledge, who is authorised to validate it, what types of knowledge are excluded, where knowledge is produced, and by whom.

Our approach to Decolonising the Curriculum has been a joint effort between students and staff. The University-led plan has been overseen by the Chair of the Race Equality Charter Self-Assessment Team, Dr Lisa Lau.

More information can be found on our Decolonising the Curriculum web page.