Equality Objectives

•           Holyrood Academy continues to prioritise students in receipt of PP funding, those experiencing disadvantage and those with SEND, positively privileging them in line with our mission for social justice and social mobility.

•           Our Kaleidoscope 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 continues to be very effective and impactful. It has allowed the school to establish three clear ways of reporting unkindness and bullying which are now very well used and trusted by our students. We have seen a significant decrease in all forms of bullying across a three-year trend.

•           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 Team now consists of two members of staff who work together with our staff and students to ensure that kindness and equality are promoted.

•           We have engaged our student leadership teams 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 leadership teams on particular equality-related issues in school, including refurbishment of toilets, labelling of accessible toilets and a gender-neutral uniform.

•           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 conducted a whole school survey of staff and students to find out their views on issues of gender equality, sexism and misogyny, the findings of which will inform our strategy for 2024-25.

•            We had our annual SEND review by a variety of colleagues from other BEP schools, which helped us better 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 were pleased that all previous areas for development are now recognised as strengths of the school.

•           Our Enhanced Learning Provisions for Cognition and Learning Needs and Social, Emotional and Mental Health Needs are thriving.  The former won a national NASEN award for 2024.

•           We were part of a DfE pilot project to investigate the impact of Trauma Informed Schools training upon reducing suspensions and exclusions.  This meant that our staff received high-quality training on how to best support children who have experienced trauma.

·       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.