Equality and Diversity
Curriculum and Ethos Categories
The Equality Act 2010 requires schools to publish information to show how we are working to:
- Eliminate discrimination
- Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it
- Foster good relations between groups of people
The protected characteristics – which relate to a primary school – are:
- Disability
- Gender reassignment
- Sex
- Sexual orientation
- Race
- Religion and belief
Other groups of pupils we believe it is also important to consider are:
- Looked-after pupils / children who were previously look-after
- Young carers
- Pupils eligible for free school meals or living in poverty
This forms part of our published information and is designed to show information that will be most useful and interesting to our families. On the school website, you will find our Equality Policy; our Equality Action Plan; our Access Plan; our Anti-Bullying Policy and our PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) Policy
At Harestock Primary School we strive to treat each member of our community as an individual; to make each individual feel valued and to teach our pupils to do the same. Trying to achieve this involves us all learning what we all have in common as well as valuing our many differences. We think that children will learn better in a school where everyone feels equally safe and welcome. We believe everyone has the same rights but may have different needs and so making school ‘fair’ for everyone is not about giving everyone the same things.
As well as teaching the children about equality and diversity generally through the curriculum and particularly through our PSHE curriculum, we also regularly discuss these ideas with the children in assemblies and aim to reflect these values in our day to day interactions with the children.
Children are taught about prejudicial language and our playgrounds are safe places to be (never perfect, but children are confident they will be looked after if things go wrong). The equality message is loud and strong and we involve the children in ensuring that this remains so. We have a pupil leadership team who help adults keep this a living project.
At Harestock Primary School we strive to treat each member of our community as an individual; to make each individual feel valued and to teach our pupils to do the same. Trying to achieve this involves us all learning what we all have in common as well as valuing our many differences. We think that children will learn better in a school where everyone feels equally safe and welcome and feels a sense of belonging. We believe everyone has the same rights but may have different needs.
The diversity working party, which was set up in September 2021, was made up of teachers, teaching assistants, SLT, governors and parents. We met once every half-term to drive forward our strategic goal, which was:
“All members of the school community to be accepting of the diverse world that we live in and feel that they belong, are included, represented and listened to.”
Our diversity working party has now completed it's work but we still review and work closely together to ensure equity and equality within our school community.
In 2022-23:
- We developed a three year strategic plan
- We identified operational priorities to achieve our goals and decided when these will be completed
- We created an appendix for our Equality: non-employment policy
- We reviewed the school’s approach to uniform
- We kept all staff and SLT updated on our progress
- We started to work towards some of our operational objectives.
In 2023-24:
We focused on delivering some of our operational objectives and auditing various aspects of our current practice in order to improve upon what we already do.
Here is our three year strategic plan. Strategic Plan 2022-2025
