Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Sandhills Primary School

 

At Sandhills Community Primary School, we welcome our duties under the Equality Act 2010 to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations in relation to age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race and ethnicity, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.

 

We are continuing to develop a strategic approach to ensuring that Equality, Diversity and Inclusion are threaded through all aspects of school life including:

 

  • Policies and processes
  • Curriculum – individual and whole school programme of events
  • Staff training
  • Community links

 

The School is working towards the Bronze Equality Award.

 

Staff training

Over the last 12 to 18 months, all staff have taken part in Equaliteach training

 

The Deputy Headteacher is currently taking part in the Equally Safe programme run by Equaliteach that aims to prevent and tackle identity based bullying.

 

The Deputy Headteacher is a member of the River Learning Trust EDI curriculum group and will be attending training on ‘Leading and Embedding a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion strategy in your school’ over the course of the year.

 

In February 2021, the school undertook Edurio’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion survey, along with all 24 schools in the River Learning Trust. 

 

Curriculum

Whole school programme of  visits, visitors, assemblies, focus days and annual events.  Examples include:  

 

  • Equaliteach ‘Rejecting Racism’ workshops for KS2
  • Celebration of Black History Month
  • Celebration of Pride Month 
  • International Women’s Day.
  • Assembly celebrating The Paralympics
  • Use of signing in assemblies
  • Assemblies on celebrations from different faiths
  • Well-being programme to embed school values of Respect, Responsibility, Relationships and Resilience

 

Examples of threading Equality, Diversity and Inclusion through the curriculum:

 

Subject EDI content
English An audit of class texts used for English has been carried out to ensure a diversity of representation as well as written by authors of different gender and ethnicity.  Examples include Wonder by RJ Palacio (Y6),  The Girl Who Stole an Elephant by Nizrana Farook (Y4); The Proudest Blue by Ibtihaj Muhammed (Y3) and Coming To

England by Floella Benjamin (Y2).

Books purchased for the class libraries.
Art Children learn about artists from different cultures and different styles of art.  Eg Yayoi Kusama
Music The music curriculum studies music from different countries and cultures.  Eg Hands, Feet, Heart is a song written for children to celebrate and learn about South African Music and Three Little Birds by Bob Marley is a Reggae song.

Additionally, children learn to sign songs as part of the music curriculum.
Geography Matthew Henson – Black American Arctic explorer
History Learning about key historical figures and events eg Mary Seacole and Rosa Parks.

Learning about the black American Arctic explorer – Matthew Henson
PSHE ‘Celebrating Difference’ is a term-long topic studied by children in Years One to Six.

 

We continue to look for more ways to meaningfully thread equality, diversity and inclusion through our curriculum across all subject areas.

 

Community Links

 

In 2021 we brought International Women’s Day together with Science Week and the children wrote questions for and interviewed a member of our school community who works on the Covid Vaccine Project as part of the Oxford Vaccine Group.

 

‘All the children in our school were invited to submit questions and they did not disappoint!  We received a fantastic range of questions from all our classes including some of the youngest children in the school.  The interview, carried out by several of our year six pupils was recorded and shared with all classes and it was great to hear the children finding out the answers to their questions.  We hope the children were inspired by what they heard and by the hugely important role science has in our lives.’

 

Stakeholder workshops – A workshop for parents was held in February 2020 and the DHT updates Governors either through meetings with a Link Governor or by attending meetings.

We are looking to further rebuild links with the community following the Covid pandemic.