Audit

The Branksome Hall Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Audit, conducted by independent auditor Anima Leadership, is a cornerstone of our long-term commitment to be a community that embraces diversity, equity and inclusion so that it permeates our institutional culture, guides our actions and is reflected in our students’ and employees’ lived experiences.

Offering us access to decades of experience in the field of DEI, Anima’s findings from this comprehensive audit conducted across our community from 2020 to 2022 provide benchmarking data on the internal state of DEI within the organization and help us to meet one of our five DEI accountability goals (to develop metrics, collect data and report findings that inform DEI priorities). Important progress in our school community has been made alongside this research. We are proud of this work, and we remain committed to continuous improvement as we embark together on our initial action plan.

The Branksome Hall Board of Governors and leadership team are committed to ensuring that Branksome Hall is an inclusive community, where everyone feels they belong and can thrive. To that end, we have moved forward with a transparent self-examination of where we were and where we wanted to go as a school. The Board and school leadership are confident that these measures will help to maintain Branksome as a leading organization within the community and within the Canadian independent school movement.

As one of the first independent schools in Canada to choose to embark on a DEI audit of this magnitude, Branksome Hall has broken new ground with the scope of this initiative, which will inform strategic directions and enhancements within our community for years to come. DEI work always leaves room for growth, and this school-wide audit gives us the opportunity to foster positive change within our community, while inspiring this movement within other educational institutions.

In 2020, Branksome Hall engaged an external auditor, Anima Leadership, to conduct the DEI audit through a series of comprehensive measurements focused on school climate and the experiences of community members. The audit focused on three areas within Branksome Hall:

1. Student and alum experience,
2. Employee experience, and
3. Organizational practices.

In alignment with the Anima approach, the DEI audit utilized a strengths-based framework. Anima determined what Branksome Hall is already doing well in its DEI practices before identifying gaps and opportunities in policies and practices so that we could strategically focus our efforts.

Community members were surveyed between May 2021 and January 2022 and focus groups were held between October 2021 and January 2022. Anima also engaged students, parents/guardians, alums and employees who could speak to the Black experience, other racialized minorities, the LGBTQ2S+ community and allies through community sessions. During each step, Anima structured the audit in a way that enabled the school to hear from minority community members with a variety of perspectives and backgrounds.

Anima then compared all the data and insights collected against best practices, using its DEI expertise as the filter to make meaning, synthesize and prioritize themes. The final recommendations were generated from a combination of survey results, focus groups, interviews, observations and document review. Rather than a checklist of immediate to dos, the findings present the opportunity to re-evaluate and hone Branksome’s DEI priorities, and in turn translate them into a long-term action plan.

Anima Leadership is an independent auditor that partnered with Branksome Hall to conduct this DEI audit. Based in Toronto, since 2006 Anima Leadership has worked with thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations teaching, consulting and coaching transformative change. They believe in leadership from the inside out and have developed award-winning approaches to achieving racial justice and inclusive organizations.

Branksome Hall is grateful for Anima Leadership’s partnership and expert assessment. Through its assessment and recommendations, Anima Leadership has identified several areas of development that can allow for constructive conversations and layered action plans at Branksome for many years to come.

Annually, Branksome Hall sets out school-wide and department-specific priorities. Our actions help to advance our DEI strategy at the school and in our classrooms. School leaders choose actions that enable systemic and high-impact change in how DEI happens at Branksome Hall, that help to increase awareness, and enrich our programming.

With this comprehensive audit and the multi-year action planning that will flow from it, Branksome Hall now has an opportunity to demonstrate our commitment to further improving and growing our DEI outcomes by utilizing the audit as a launching pad for current and future action by increasing awareness and engagement, supporting a culture of advocacy, building leadership capacity by employees and students, and ensuring data-informed decision-making.

In response to the audit findings, we will continue our work to identify and integrate DEI-specific skills within our curriculum, increase representation in hiring, support student and employee leadership in combatting anti-Black racism, engage in diverse community and educational partnerships, and make systemic changes. These actions will serve to benefit everyone in our community, building a strong sense of belonging and equipping our students and employees with the skills and awareness to recognize their role as advocates and allies as they move forward in their personal and professional lives.

A number of Anima's recommendations are already in progress, many of which were initiated on a parallel path to the DEI Audit. In determining which items to start working on, we prioritized high-impact choices that could bring about significant changes to our system, would build upon existing strengths and opportunities for growth, and enrich our programming.

Other recommendations will take more time and require further internal consultation or are dependent on other priorities. We invite you to join our community engagement sessions to learn more about the priorities that are already underway or have been identified as part of our short-term goals. Many organizations will benefit from seeing these recommended actions as independent schools across Canada strive to make systemic change. We encourage others to join us in taking action.

Truthfully, the exact impact is still to be determined. Neither Branksome Hall, nor Anima Leadership, is able to determine exactly how these findings will impact the experiences of current and future community members. We will work to measure this impact, as well as positive growth, through continuing to engage students, parents, employees and alums to reflect on, prioritize and contribute to our actions.

Students
The report asks students to consider their role and capacity to build supportive environments for all students. We will help students through the action-planning and implementation process. Branksome Hall leadership is prepared to have productive, two-way dialogue during which we can discuss the findings, respond to questions and listen to ideas. We hope that students will take part in these upcoming discussions to participate in shaping what’s to come.

Employees
Our Board of Governors and Senior Leadership Team are committed to supporting this work and continuing to build a diverse, inclusive and equitable community for all. Each member of the SLT will have accountability for one or more focus areas and this work will transcend through all departments. We will be hosting our first of the Anima Leadership presentations about the findings with Employees on May 1, 2023. We are committed to building brave spaces for employees and providing them with the tools to continue to provide supports for students.

We have an exciting opportunity to continue to reflect on and potentially evolve some of our long-standing traditions in order to welcome, support and uplift a more diverse community. We will continue to engage students, parents, employees and alums in this effort. Our community’s participation will help to shape our future actions, and we hope you will be a part of these upcoming discussions.

Branksome Hall is part of a growing number of schools in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada, the United States, and the world at large committed to fostering change in the DEI space. While Branksome Hall isn’t alone in this work, audits are a relatively new phenomenon in the field of DEI, with most organizations never having conducted one. Where comparable data is available, it was included in The Branksome Hall Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Audit Report: Summary of Findings and Action Plan 2023. In cases where comparable data is limited, Anima Leadership has noted that many of the issues identified are common to organizations across all sectors.

One of the things these past few years has taught us is that we are a community united in learning. When it comes to DEI, we are proud to be breaking new ground with this report to actively listen, learn and continuously improve.

We know that the best learning happens when students are in spaces that affirm them as they are. The mental and physical well-being of all students is closely connected to their sense of belonging within a community. Everyone brings a unique perspective and identity to Branksome Hall, and learning in spaces that value every student leads to a thriving community. For Branksome Hall, this investment is core to our integrity as an organization and is therefore invaluable.

Ongoing commitments to DEI will bolster academic excellence at Branksome by creating open and brave spaces for listening, learning and taking action, a process integral to helping students grow into global citizens. A part of our overall DEI efforts and Branksome Hall’s strategy refresh, the audit initiative and our multi-year action planning are about investing in the long-term sustainability of the school and creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive community in which all feel they belong and where all can thrive.

As we continue to build on our DEI Action Plan for the 2023–24 Academic Year and beyond, additional initiatives will be rolled out in parallel. Branksome Hall plans to initiate a Values Survey in the fall of 2023, followed by a School Climate Survey in November 2024 after the Multi-Year Action Plan is shared with employees, students, parents/guardians, alums, Affinity groups and clubs earlier that year.

Measurements of progress, as well as DEI updates, will be circulated in our regular community updates and DEI newsletters, in our ongoing DEI report cards and on this website.

DEI is an ongoing journey of organizational improvement, requiring input and feedback from internal stakeholders, while keeping abreast of emerging external trends. Anima Leadership and Branksome Hall recognize that while implementing every recommendation may not be appropriate or feasible, they collectively offer guidance for conversation and decision-making. How the school determines which recommendations to implement and when will be a collaborative process and we encourage you to take part.

Organizational leaders and teams, in partnership with students, parents/guardians, employees and alum representatives, will consider these recommendations carefully and determine which will be taken up and then prioritized to inform short, medium and long-term strategic goals, as well as future aspirations.

We invite our community to join us as we collaborate on ways to enhance the Branksome Hall experience for all. In Spring 2023, we will be hosting one-on-one meetings, parent, student, alum and employee presentations, as well as facilitated conversations, requesting participants to identify key priorities along with associated rationale. We will also be hosting community engagement sessions to share more about the priorities and recommendations already underway or which have been identified as part of our short-term goals.

We recognize there is a great deal to digest in the audit summary document. There will be opportunities for you to engage with Anima Leadership as well as school leaders to ask questions and to participate in developing action plans for the next phase of our DEI journey.

Information about registration for the below sessions has been sent via community email.

• Employee Session – Monday, May 1, 2023 (In-person)
  2:30–3:30 p.m. 
  4:00–5:00 p.m.
• JK–12 Parent and Guardian Session – Tuesday, May 9 (In-person and Virtual)
  6:00–7:30 p.m. 
• Student Session (Grades 7–12) – Monday, May 15 (In-person)
  2:00 p.m. No registration needed
• Alum Session – Tuesday, May 16 (Virtual)
  6:30–7:30 p.m. 

In the meantime, we invite you to read the summary of the audit findings and recommendations closely and come to one of the community engagement sessions to learn more and join us in taking the next step in this work.

DEI work impacts individuals and communities in a deeply personal way. As we understand that the findings may impact members of our community differently, we encourage you to consider the support resources outlined in the section below.