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Equality

PROMOTING THE NINE PROTECTED CHARACTERISTICS

The Equality Act became law in 2010. It covers everyone in Britain and protects people from discrimination, harassment and victimisation. Everyone in Britain is protected. This is because the Equality Act protects people against discrimination because of the protected characteristics that we all have. Under the Equality Act, there are nine Protected Characteristics:

  1. Age
  2. Disability
  3. Gender reassignment
  4. Race
  5. Religion or belief
  6. Marriage or civil partnership
  7. Sex
  8. Sexual orientation
  9. Pregnancy and maternity

Under the Equality Act you are protected from discrimination:

  • When you are in the workplace
  • When you use public services like healthcare (for example, visiting your doctor or local hospital) or education (for example, at your school or college)
  • When you use businesses and other organisations that provide services and goods (like shops, restaurants, and cinemas)
  • When you use transport
  • When you join a club or association (for example, your local rugby club)
  • When you have contact with public bodies like your local council or government departments

The 9 Protected Characteristics are actively promoted in school through:

  • Our school vision and ethos statements, SDP, and SEF
  • Our school core values
  • Our school positive behaviour policy
  • Conscious role modelling by all adults in the school community
  • Active engagement and communication with parents and carers
  • Whole school and year group assemblies
  • The promotion of British values in school life
  • Developing a love of reading through a range of authors and genres
  • Discussion within the Connected Curriculum, taking a cross-curricular approach, for example when we learn about Black History month and when we learn about relationships in RSHE
  • Promoting articulation by building appropriate language and a coherent vocabulary
  • PSHE and RSHE lessons
  • Religion and World Views (RaW) lessons
  • Sporting competitions –inter and intra competitions
  • Art projects and visits
  • The work of the School Council
  • Educational experiences and visits
  • Real-life learning outside the classroom
  • Guest speakers
  • Developing links within the local community
  • Extra-curricular activities, after-school clubs, charity work and work within the local community
  • Safer recruitment, retention and staff development

We collect and analyse the following data to assess the impact of our Single Equality Policy. The data is recorded on our CPOMs system and the main areas we assess are:

  • Admissions
  • Attendance
  • Exclusions
  • Outcomes
  • Racial incidents
  • Bullying incidents
  • Homophobic incidents
  • Any other prejudice related incidents

Embedding Protected Characteristics into the whole ethos of Ravenscote Junior School promotes:

  • Self-esteem, self-knowledge and self-confidence
  • Understanding that everyone is wonderful and everyone has wonderful talents and attributes
  • Respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic process
  • Acceptance of responsibility for their own behaviour and teaching children to make good choices
  • Respect for their own and other cultures
  • Every member of the community knowing that whatever they report it will be dealt with appropriately and followed up
  • Understanding of how they can contribute positively to school and home life and to the lives of those living and working in the locality and further afield
  • An understanding of Equality, Human Rights and Protected Characteristics
  • An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens and is essential for their wellbeing and safety
  • An understanding that the freedom to choose and hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law
  • An acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should be accepted and tolerated, and should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour
  • An understanding of the importance of identifying and combating discrimination
  • Parents taking an active part in identifying barriers and informing school leaders of actions that can be taken to eradicate these
  • The highest expectations for all our children and staff, and the wider community

Our Equality Objectives 2021-2025

Ravenscote Junior School aims to meet its obligations under the public sector equality duty by having due regard for the need to:

  • Eliminate discrimination and other conduct that is prohibited by the Equality Act 2010;
  • Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it; and
  • Foster good relations across all characteristics – between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it.

Our Equality Objectives are:

To weave opportunities to develop children’s knowledge of diversity and equality throughout the curriculum: promoting tolerance, respecting differences and recognising that all learners are of equal value.

 To achieve this, we will:

  • Continue to implement Jigsaw as a significant component of our PSHE (with RSHE embedded) curriculum
  • Continue to develop our RAW (Religion and Worldviews) curriculum and monitor the impact of the move to RAW from RE on the children’s understanding of the views of others
  • Ensure all subject leaders have reflected on opportunities to promote British values and protected characteristics in their subjects
  • Use a range of sensitive teaching strategies when teaching about different cultural and religious traditions
  • Develop pupils’ advocacy skills so that they can detect bias and challenge discrimination
  • Use assemblies to foster positive attitudes towards one another, and a sense of cohesion and belonging
  • Offer opportunities for competition and celebrations, for example in sporting competitions and art displays
  • Use Pupil Voice as a mechanism for exploring children’s understanding of diversity and equality

To close gaps in attainment and progress between groups of students, for example children with SEND with those without, and boys and girls.

To achieve this, we will:

  • Regularly monitor attainment and progress data of specific groups to identify areas of focus
  • Monitor the impact of the new reading curriculum on boys’ attainment and progress to track if the gap narrows
  • Assess the effectiveness of our current interventions on supporting the progress of children with SEND and make adjustments as necessary to develop the provision
  • Implement an Inclusion Register to ensure children from key groups are being focused on and given additional opportunities to thrive
  • Prioritise key groups of children for extra-curriculur provision, for example children on the Inclusion Register prioritised for after-school clubs
  • Discuss every child’s progress in pupil progress meetings
  • Carry out SEND case studies to monitor the impact of our provision on individual children
  • Compose provision maps and inclusion targets for children on the Inclusion Register
  • Report to the governors and the Trust on the attainment and progress of all groups within in school.

To commit to valuing, respecting, and understanding differing gender identities and sexual orientations, whilst providing continuous support and proactively creating an inclusive culture for all pupils, staff, parents and visitors to the school.

To achieve this, we will:

  • Produce a Gender Identity Policy and monitor the impact of this with governors
  • Ensure there is a rationale to any circumstance in which gender is specified
  • Adapt any processes or procedures that are needlessly gendered to be gender neutral
  • Ensure children and adults have access to gender neutral toilets
  • Provide an inclusive school uniform list which does not assign items of clothing to specific genders
  • Deliver staff training to deepen their understanding of gender, gender issues, support in place for children questioning their gender and how to promote a gender inclusive environment
  • Continue to implement Jigsaw as a significant component of our PSHE curriculum
  • Teach children the concept of ‘Different Families, Same Love’
  • Teach children appropriate and inclusive language
  • Address any instances of discriminatory language and deal with these in line with our Positive Behaviour and Anti-Bullying policies
  • Use accurate language when referring to particular groups or individuals and challenge instances where this is not the case
  • Participate in School Diversity Week

To ensure that we promote role models and heroes our children can positively identify with, who reflect and broaden the school’s diversity in terms of race, religion, gender and disability.

 To achieve this, we will:

  • Promote engagement of visiting speakers to broaden children’s perceptions of equality and diversity
  • Ensure the school calendar and displays create opportunities to reflect and remember the importance of diversity, for example:
    • Little Big Hair Assembly
    • School Diversity Week § Anti-Bullying Week § Religious celebrations such as Diwali and Christmas
  • Review the books and texts used across the curriculum to ensure a diverse range of role models are explored
  • Ensure teachers of varied genders work with children in each year group
  • Uphold our safer recruitment procedures, which includes applicants completing equality monitoring forms.

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