Equality

Orgill Primary School makes all members of our school community feel welcome and valued irrespective of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion and belief and sexual identity.  Our values and ethos promote equality and actively tackle discrimination.

We welcome our duties under the Equality Act 2010 to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations within our community.

We are committed to equal opportunities and have high expectations for all pupils.  Our school:

• believes in learning without limits and pushes every child to achieve the best that they can
• responds to the diverse needs of all pupils with a flexible and evolving curriculum
• strives to overcome potential barriers to learning.

Our commitment to equality is underpinned by a number of key principles:

All our learners are of equal value

We view all learners, potential learners and their parents and carers in a positive light.  They have equal value:

• whether or not they are disabled
• whatever their ethnicity, culture or nationality
• whatever their gender and gender identity
• whatever their religious or non-religious affiliation or faith
• whatever their sexual identity.

We recognise and respect difference

We treat people equally but this does not necessarily mean the same.  We ensure that our policies and procedures do not discriminate but do take account of differences of life-experience, outlook and background.  We recognise the kinds of barrier and disadvantage which people may face in relation to:

• Disability
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Religion, belief or faith
• Sexual identity.

We foster positive attitudes and relationships and a shared sense of belonging

We ensure that our policies and procedures promote:

• Positive attitudes towards disabled people and an absence of harassment
• Positive interaction, mutual respect and dialogue between groups and communities different from each other.

Good equalities practice in staff recruitment, retention and development

We ensure that policies and procedures benefit all employees and potential employees, for example in recruitment and promotion and in continuing professional development:

• Whether or not they are disabled
• Whatever their ethnicity, culture, religious affiliation or nationality
• Whatever their gender and sexual identity.

We aim to reduce and remove inequalities and barriers that already exist

In addition to avoiding or minimising possible negative impacts of our policies, we take opportunities to maximise positive impacts by reducing and removing inequalities and barriers that may already exist between:

• Disabled and non-disabled people
• People of different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds
• Girls and boys.

Stonewall School Champion

The ambassador for equality in our school is Clare Jackson.  Clare has undergone training with Stonewall which enables her to support other school staff in tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying and celebrating diversity.  This training gives us Stonewall School Champion status and we are currently working towards our bronze award which involves ensuring that we are able to meet the following criteria:

• School policies are inclusive and explicitly state that homophobic, biophobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying is unacceptable
• A pupil-friendly anti-bullying policy is in place
• Pupils know what HBT bullying and language is and that it is wrong
• HBT bullying and language is recorded and monitored
• Teaching staff are trained to tackle HBT bullying and language
• Pupils have age-appropriate lessons on different families, celebrating difference and gender identity and stereotypes
• The library contains books celebrating difference and different families
• School displays celebrate difference and diversity.