Equality Duty Statement

The Federation of St Paul and St Martin of Porres Catholic Primary Schools seeks to value everyone and are schools are committed to equality in practice.

The Governing Body welcomes our legal duties to eliminate discrimination, to promote community cohesion and to fulfil our responsibilities under the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) with regard to our pupils and staff.

The Equality Act 2010 requires us to publish information that demonstrates that we have due regard for the need to:

Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010;
Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, gender re-assignment, age, pregnancy and maternity, marital status, religion and belief and sexual orientation) and people who do not share it;
Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it.

We will collect and use equality information to help us to:

Identify key issues;

Understand the impact of our policies, practices and decisions on people with different protected characteristics;
Assess whether we are discriminating unlawfully when carrying out any of our functions;
Identify what the key equality issues are for our organisation.

We have considered how well we currently achieve these aims with regard to the protected groups under the Equality Act and we have also involved staff, pupils, parents and others in the following ways;

All staff and children in our schools have the right to be respected, the right to learn and the right to be safe;
Three clear levels of pastoral care in our schools
- o Class Teacher
- o SENDCo
- o Executive Headteacher
Annual questionnaires to gain feedback from pupils and parents/carers;
Awareness sessions open to parents in such areas such as reading, phonics, numeracy, computing, SEND and e-safety’
Class and whole school assemblies embrace a breadth of cultures;
The school curriculum is designed to enable children to understand and respect diversity;
Hold termly coffee mornings for parents whose children have SEND and/or disabilities;
Effective School Council;
Circle time groups which include children from Reception to Class Six;
Effective system of playground monitoring;
Annually the children select specific charities to raise money for;
All racist incidents are recorded and reported to the Governing Body.

Our Equality Objectives

Educate all about discrimination and prejudice and promote a harmonious inclusive environment

To monitor changes to the curriculum to ensure that all pupils in protected groups strive for the highest possible outcomes in their learning and make good progress, and to review the curriculum in light of new performance measures
To do everything possible to avoid fixed term and permanent exclusions

Ensure that the appointment of staff is in line with equal opportunities legislation

A downloadable version of the Equality Duty Statement can be found here.

The Federation’s Equality and Diversity Policy can be found at –

https://www.stmartinofporres.co.uk/Policies/ and

https://www.stpaulswoodgreen.org.uk/Policies/

This statement was updated on 26^th January 2022