Joseph Hood Primary School Equality Information and Objectives
2019-2023
Contents
1. Aims................................................................................................................ 3
2. Legislation and guidance....................................................................................... 3
3. Roles and responsibilities...................................................................................... 3
4. Eliminating discrimination...................................................................................... 4
5. Advancing equality of opportunity........................................................................... 4
6. Fostering good relations....................................................................................... 5
7. Equality considerations in decision-making................................................................ 5
8. Equality objectives............................................................................................... 5
9. Monitoring arrangements...................................................................................... 6
10. Links with other policies...................................................................................... 6
Our school aims to meet its obligations under the public sector equality duty by having due regard to the need to:
Joseph Hood Primary School and Nursery is an inclusive school where we focus on the well-being and progress of every child and where all members of our community are of equal worth.
We believe that the Equality Act provides a framework to support our commitment to valuing diversity, tackling discrimination, promoting equality and fostering good relationships between people. It also ensures that we continue to tackle issues of disadvantage and underachievement of different groups.
This document meets the requirements under the following legislation:
• The Equality Act 2010, which introduced the public sector equality duty and protects people from discrimination
•The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011, which require schools to publish information to demonstrate how they are complying with the public sector equality duty and to publish equality objectives
This document is also based on Department for Education (DfE) guidance: The Equality Act 2010 and schools.
Academies, including free schools, if applicable, add/amend: This document also complies with our funding agreement and articles of association.
The governing board will:
The equality link governor is Claire Alder She will:
Report back to the full governing board regarding any issues
The headteacher will:
The designated member of staff for equality is Alice Hargrave. She will:
All school staff are expected to have regard to this document and to work to achieve the objectives as set out in section 8.
We are committed to working for equality for all our staff, parents/carers and children to meet our duties under the Equality Act 2010 and complies with non-discrimination provisions.
We eliminate discrimination by:
Where relevant, our policies include reference to the importance of avoiding discrimination and other prohibited conduct.
Staff and governors are regularly reminded of their responsibilities under the Equality Act, for example during meetings. Where this has been discussed during a meeting it is recorded in the meeting minutes.
New staff receive training on the Equality Act as part of their induction, and all staff receive refresher training every September. The school has a designated member of staff for monitoring equality issues, and an equality link governor. They regularly liaise regarding any issues and make senior leaders and governors aware of these as appropriate.
5. Advancing equality of opportunity
As set out in the DfE guidance on the Equality Act, the school aims to advance equality of opportunity by:
In fulfilling this aspect of the duty, the school will:
The school aims to foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not share it by:
7. Equality considerations in decision-making
The school ensures it has due regard to equality considerations whenever significant decisions are made.
The school always considers the impact of significant decisions on particular groups. For example, when a school trip or activity is being planned, the school considers whether the trip:
The school keeps a written record (known as an Equality Impact Assessment) to show we have actively considered our equality duties and asked ourselves relevant questions. This is recorded at the same time as the risk assessment when planning school trips and activities. The record is completed by the member of staff organising the activity and is stored electronically with the completed risk assessment.
At Joseph Hood Primary School and Nursery, we are committed to ensuring equality of education and opportunity for all pupils, staff, parents and carers, irrespective of race, gender, disability, belief, religion or socio-economic background.
Objective 1: Improve pupils’ understanding of and respect for people who are different to themselves.
Why we have chosen this objective:
As a school who sees its diversity as a source of strength and a source of pride we want to be proactive in promoting positive relations between members of our diverse school community.
To achieve this objective we plan to:
Create opportunities for our pupils to learn directly from people and groups who have specialist knowledge and/or direct experience of protected characteristics from the Equality act in order to promote increased understanding and respect. This is linked to our RSHE scheme of work and our wider curriculum.
Progress we are making towards this objective:
Objective 2: Remove disadvantage for those with protected characteristics-disability and gender.
Why we have chosen this objective:
There is a significant gap between the progress and attainment of pupils with disabilities/SEN support pupils in writing compared to the non-SEN support group. In 2019 KS2 SATS progress scores were -9.85 for SEN support/pupils with disabilities compared to -0.46 for school overall. In 2018, the progress score for SEN support pupils/pupils with disabilities was +0.67 and +3.92 for the school overall. Although our SEN support pupils performed better than the national, there was still a gap.
Although we have closed the gap by 5.8% since 2016-17, the gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged higher standard still exists in the 2019 SATS results. It should be noted that the school disadvantaged group of pupils scored 4.4% higher than national figures.
To achieve this objective we plan to:
Ensure the pupil progress meetings identify SEN support pupils/those with disabilities who are not making expected progress and allocate resources accordingly-target these pupils with the Write Away intervention. SLT to monitor the provision for these pupils in class drop-ins. SENCO to work with staff targeting these pupils-reviewing planning and provision.
Ensure the pupil progress meetings identify higher ability disadvantaged pupils who are not making expected progress and allocate resources accordingly. SLT to monitor the provision and expectations of disadvantaged pupils to ensure there is a match between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils.
Progress we are making towards this objective:
Objective 3 : Increase the representation of teachers from local minority ethnic communities over a 4-year period (from this July to July in 4 years' time), so that this group increases from 11% to 22% of the teaching workforce.
Why we have chosen this objective:
We have chosen this objective because our school has a very culturally diverse population and yet this is not represented amongst our teaching staff.
We have worked hard over the last 4 year to increase the number of male teachers within our school and now 33% of teaching staff are male.
Our governing body membership has 33% from culturally diverse backgrounds.
To achieve this objective we plan to:
Ensure are staff recruitment reaches a wider profile of people. One way to achieve this is to use other platforms to advertise teaching posts-i.e. not just Eteach. The headteacher will also continue to attend college recruitment fairs as a Merton representative.
Progress we are making towards this objective:
The Governors will update the equality information we publish, [described in sections 4-7 above] at least every year.
This document will be reviewed and approved by the full governing body at least every 4 years.
This document links to the following policies:
Approved by Joseph Hood Governing Body: 10th October 2019
Review: Autumn term 2021