The Equality Act 2010 was introduced to ensure protection from discrimination, harassment and victimisation on the grounds of specific characteristics (referred to as protected characteristics). The Act defines protected characteristics as follows:
- race
- disability
- religion or belief
- gender
- sexual orientation
- gender reassignment
- pregnancy or maternity
- age
- marriage and civil partnership
These protected characteristics apply to pupils, prospective pupils, staff, prospective staff or anybody they are associated with, exception for ‘age’ and ‘marriage and civil partnership’ which do not apply to pupils and prospective pupils.
The Act requires all public organisations, including schools to comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty:
The Public Sector Equality Duty requires all public organisations, including schools, to give due regard to the need (in relation to the protected characteristics above)to:
- Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation
- Advance equality of opportunity between different groups
- Foster good relations between different groups
Click on the download links below to view the policies from our Academy Trust ( DBAT)
As a whole school we have been recently revisited our vision of 'Loving to Learn, Learning to Love'. The word ‘Love’ stands out in our vision as the most important value and we have been thinking about what love is and what this should mean for all of us at Fishponds Church of England Academy.
As a Church of England Primary school, we underpin all that we do from the teachings found in the Bible. The Bible passage that we have chosen to underpin all that we do in school is 1 Corinthians 13 v 4-7:
Essentially, as a school, our aim is to teach the children in our care to love one another, develop skills that enable positive relationships to blossom. We maintain hope and believe that all children can be successful in learning the skills and knowledge needed to flourish in life. We will continue to persevere and believe that we can make a positive difference to all who come through the doors of our school.
As a school community, we have established a number of core values. We understand that these values need to be lived as well as taught by everyone in our school.
Eliminating Discrimination
All our staff receive regular training in Equalities. There are a number of linked policies that define our agreed approaches in each area. We ensure that we monitor equalities issues by keeping records of any incidents involving protected groups to help guide our practice for the future.
To read our policies in full please click on each individual link in the 'Downloads' section below.
Advancing Equality of Opportunity
View our accessibility plan in 'Downloads' below.
This is our work to improve our physical school site and ensure that all can access the opportunities on offer.
Accessiblity Plan
As a school we strive to improve and develop our practice so that all children have an equal opportunity to fulfill their potential. We have chosen a small number of Equality Objectives in order to help us achieve this. You will find details about the context of our school and what we are currently working on in the document below.
View our school's Equality objectives in the Downloads section below.
Fostering Good Relationships
Ofsted commented in their last visit ( April 2018) that there was a welcoming ethos in our school community.
' Pupils get on well with each other and there is a very real sense of community in the school. Pupils are typically polite to eachother and visitors. The vast majority of pupils have a strong sense of moral duty. They accept eachother regardless of differences in their backgrounds or circumstance. This contributes strongly to the welcoming ethos at the school.'
Ofsted Inspection Report April 2018.
We achieve this through a combination of work in PSHE and RE alongside work on our values in Collective worship sessions. Please see our PSHE, British Values and SMSC Policy and Teaching and Learning Policy for in the 'Downloads' section below for further explanation.
We actively encourage a diverse range of visitors to share their stories with our children and inspire our children that differences are to be celebrated.
We work closely with our parent / carers and other stakeholders to seek to find out their views on differing aspects of school life when seeking to make changes. e.g. We recently held a working group of parent/ carers from a variety of cultural and faith groups to discuss our new Relationships and Sex education curriculum. ( Agreed May 2018)