Equalities
Legal Duties As a school we welcome our duties under the Equality Act 2010. The general duties are to:
- eliminate discrimination,
- advance equality of opportunity
- foster good relations
We understand the principal of the act and the work needed to ensure that those with protected characteristics are not discriminated against and are given equality of opportunity. A protected characteristic under the act covers the groups listed below:
- age (for employees not for service provision),
- disability
- race
- sex (including issues of transgender)
- gender reassignment
- maternity and pregnancy
- religion and belief,
- sexual orientation
- Marriage and Civil Partnership (for employees)
In order to meet our general duties, listed above, the law requires us to do some specific duties to demonstrate how we meet the general duties. These are to:
- Publish equality Information – to demonstrate compliance with the general duty across its functions (We will not publish any information that can specifically identify any child/.)
- Prepare and publish equality objectives
To do this we will collect data related to the protected characteristics above and analyse this data to determine our focus for our equality objectives. The data will be assessed across our core provisions as a school. This will include the following functions:
- Admissions
- Attendance
- Attainment
- Exclusions
Prejudice related incidents Our objectives will detail how we will ensure equality is applied to the services listed above; however where we find evidence that other functions have a significant impact on any particular group we will include work in this area. We also welcome our duty under the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to promote community cohesion. We recognise that these duties reflect international human rights standards as expressed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and the Human Rights Act 1998. In fulfilling our legal obligations we will:
- Recognise and respect diversity
- Foster positive attitudes and relationships, and a shared sense of belonging
- Observe good equalities practice, including staff recruitment, retention and development
- Aim to reduce and remove existing inequalities and barriers
- Consult and involve widely
- Strive to ensure that society will benefit