Equality Objectives
Holyrood Academy's Equality Objectives
Holyrood Academy seeks to promote equality and we celebrate the diversity within our community. We welcome the Public Sector Equality Duty as set out in the Equality Act (2010).
What is the duty?
We must:
• Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation
• Advance equality of opportunity between different groups
• Foster good relations between different groups
What are the protected characteristics?
The Equality Act 2010 was introduced to ensure protection on the grounds of specific characteristics (referred to as protected characteristics). For schools, this means that it is unlawful to discriminate against students or treat them less favourably because of their age; sex; race; disability; religion or belief; gender reassignment; sexual orientation; pregnancy or maternity.
Marriage and civil partnerships and age are also 'protected characteristics'.
Our Equality Policy
Our Equality & Diversity Policy, which can be found on our website in the 'Policies' section, contains information about how the school complies with the Public Sector Equality Duty. We also give guidance to staff and outside visitors on our approach to promoting equality.
• Our YOUNIQUE group, which exists to promote and support issues facing our LGBTQ+ community, is now established and playing an active role in promoting LGBTQ+ issues.
• Our Anti-bullying strategy was very effective and impactful. It allowed the school to see a decrease in all forms of bullying, by 36% when considered against 2020-21 data.
• We have mapped our provision against the Gatsby benchmarks for Careers guidance, to ensure that our careers information, advice and guidance provisions are effective for all students.
• Our Equality & Diversity Officer completed their first year with us, working with a dedicated team to support the targets and perpetrators of discriminatory behaviours and bullying.
• We have engaged our student council to improve the content of our PDP curriculum to best meet the needs of our context with regards to DEI
• We have engaged our student council on particular equality-related issues in school, including refurbishment of toilets, labelling of accessible toilets and a gender-neutral uniform. This work has included students and staff conducting a representation audit to consider how inclusive and representative our school is.
• We have worked closely with our staff to understand how respected and included they feel in their place of work as a result of their protected characteristics.
• We have engaged with training from Diverse Educators to ensure that we have leaders who are well-equipped to tackle DEI issues in our school. This has helped us to refine our curriculum to ensure that it is more representative.
• We commissioned a SEND review by Beth Warwick, UAT Director of SEND, to understand the strengths of our SEND provision as well as what we need to do to be better. This has allowed us to ensure that our self-evaluation is very accurate.
• We commissioned a PP review by Bill Jerman, to understand the strengths of our PP provision as well as what we need to do better. This has allowed us to ensure that
• We established a comprehensive programme of community engagement activities, ranging from hosting Britain's Disabled Strongman to playing an active role in Chard's multi-cultural festival events.
Progress made in 2021-22
• To further develop work to challenge all forms of bullying and discrimination, through the curriculum and wider strategies.
• To deploy our new Equality & Diversity Officer to support and educate both perpetrators and targets of bullying and discrimination.
• To use performance data to monitor student achievement and respond to variations between groups of learners, subjects, courses and key stages, trends over time and comparisons with other schools. In particular, we will seek to further improve the progress made by boys at GCSE and A-Level whilst ensuring that the progress of girls continues to be promoted.
• To foster good relations between different groups through the use of assemblies, Religious Studies lessons and the PSHE programme, including PSHE Impact Days.
• To further develop student and staff wellbeing and positive mental health for all, particularly in response to increased demand following the pandemic.
• To promote equality, diversity and inclusion actions across our staff body. This will be achieved in several ways, including through the provision of training for staff to eliminate any unconscious bias in recruitment and to be as inclusive as possible in the language they use.
Specific tasks relating to these objectives can be found within the Academy Improvement Plan 2021-22.
Our Equality Objectives for 2021-22 were:
Our Equality Objectives 2022-23
Our Equality Objectives reflect the school's priorities and draw upon available data and other evidence. Careful analysis of this is undertaken in order to ensure that we are working to achieve improved outcomes for different groups.
• To continue to work in partnership with our community to eradicate bullying in all its forms, with a particular focus upon online abuse, disablist bullying and racial discrimination.
• To work closely with groups of staff to understand how to fully include all staff groups within our community, through the establishment of a DEI working party.
• To work closely with students to understand how to fully include all student groups within our community.
• To respond effectively to the findings of our SEND review so that provision and outcomes in all their forms improve for these students.
• To respond effectively to the findings of our PP review so that provision and outcomes in all their forms improve for these students.
• To place the needs of and provision for SEND and PP children at the heart of the school's improvement plan for 2022-23.
• To ensure that SEND and PP children are proportionately represented in our extra-curricular programme of clubs and trips.
• To ensure that SEND and PP children are supported to sustain their attendance at school in line with the attendance of all students.