South Camberley Primary School is committed to equality and valuing diversity, and actively supports practices that promote genuine equality of opportunity for all staff and children.

We recognise our obligations under the Equality Act 2010 and are committed to promoting the equality and diversity of all those we work with especially our employees, pupils, young people and visitors. We oppose all forms of unlawful an unfair discriminations, bullying and harassment and will make every effort to comply with the requirements of the Act and its subsequent provisions.

PROMOTING THE NINE PROTECTED CHARACTERISTICS

We strive to ensure our children understand that:

All children are unique and deserve to be treated with respect

We celebrate difference

We are all equal in our difference

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 at South Camberley through:

• Our PURE principle, mission statement, SDP and behaviour certainties.
• Our school behaviour policy
• Conscious role modelling by all adults in the school community
• Active engagement and communication with parents and carers
• Assemblies and external speakers
• The promotion of British values in school life
• Developing a love of reading through a range of diverse authors and genres.
• Discussion within curriculum subjects, ensuring we are promoting and teaching our core equality aims through a cross-curricular approach.
• Promoting articulation by building appropriate language and a coherent vocabulary
• Through our Learning for Life curriculum
• Religious Education (RE) lessons and RSE lessons
• Sporting competitions –inter and intra competitions
• Art projects and visits
• School and Eco Council, Sports ambassadors and House captains
• Educational experiences and visits
• Outdoor Learning and Forest School
• Guest speakers
• Developing links with 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
• Peer on peer incidents
• Racial incidents
• Bullying incidents
• Homophobic incidents
• Any other prejudice related incidents

We champion diversity and inclusion and embed the Protected Characteristics into the whole school ethos at South Camberley by:

• Embedding a values-based curriculum
• Delivering whole school assemblies linked to diversity and equality, British Values and school’s PURE Principles.  These promote the protected characteristics through the use of high quality texts which promote diversity and inclusion.
• Reading and discussing picture books and stories encouraging respect and developing understanding of diversity.  These are a selection of the texts we use:

These are a selection of the texts we have carefully chosen that enhance our curriculum by promoting pupil’s understanding of themes surrounding equalities, diversity and fundamental British Values.  In addition to these core curriculum texts, we use a selection of high quality texts through our assemblies each week across the whole school.

EYFS/ KS1

 

 

• Adopting a differentiated and adapted learning experience and environment for those with special educational needs and disabilities - supported by robust inclusion, equality and diversity policies and practices
• Developing children’s self-esteem, self-knowledge, self-confidence and resilience with the use of our Social and Emotional Lead and links with the Mental Health Support Team, in addition to our Learning for Life curriculum
• Understanding and celebrating differences and acknowledging the strengths of others throughout school life, including celebration assemblies and through the use of the school’s behaviour policy.
• Embedding a culture of respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic process e.g. School Council and Eco Council
• Using restorative approaches to support children to take responsibility for their own behaviour and to teach children to make good choices as part of our behaviour policy.
• Teaching children to have respect for their own and other cultures. We are a culturally diverse school and celebrate all main religious festivals such as Christmas, Diwali and Eid, in addition to cultural festivals, such as Chinese New Year. We teach children that difference should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour
• Promoting an understanding of how we can all contribute positively to school and home life and to the lives of our local community e.g. Harvest Festival collections, young carers
• Having an understanding of Equality, Human Rights and Protected Characteristics, which is developed through staff CPD and our school’s induction programme
• An understanding that we have the freedom to choose and hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law e.g. PURE principles and RE curriculum
• Developing an understanding of the importance of identifying and combating discrimination
• Working with parents to take an active part in identifying barriers and informing school leaders of actions that can be taken to eradicate these
• We have the highest expectations for all our children and staff, and the wider community to ensure all children Believe, Achieve and Succeed.
• We have an Equality and Diversity steering group made up of staff and parents to ensure we a continually improving our practice to suit the needs of our community
• We have an Equalities and Diversity section on newsletters to celebrate our children’s achievements