St Mary's C of E Primary School & Nursery

Public Sector Equality Duty

The Equality Act 2010

St Mary's school has 'faith in everyone to shine brightly'. This positive, inclusive approach is at the heart of everything we do and in how we function. We aim to welcome and include everyone into our school, to value and recognise our similarities and celebrate and respect our differences.

It is a legal requirement under the Equality Act that, in the exercise of their functions, schools are required, to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation; advance equality of opportunity; and foster good relations.

We have three key documents:

1. Equality and Diversity Policy (see our policies page)
2. Equality Information And Objectives (see our policies page)  
3. Equality Objectives Examples and Evidence (see below)

Protected Characteristics

The 9 'Protected Characteristics' as defined in the Equalities Act (2010) are: 

1. age
2. disability
3. gender reassignment
4. marriage and civil partnership
5. pregnancy and maternity
6. race
7. religion or belief
8. sex
9. sexual orientation

St Mary's strives to be ever mindful of these characteristics in all we do, from workforce and employment functions, to our children's individual needs and our knowledge-based, values-led curriculum, which aims to provide all pupils to lead productive, successful lives, and contribute positively to our society. 

In relation to our staff and pupils at St Mary's we: 

• monitoring information to ensure we meet our general equality duties effectively;
• publish some information (below) about the impact of our employment and other functions on adults and children with the different protected characteristics, in order to demonstrate compliance with our general equality duty.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) says:

“Publishing equality information should enable service users, staff, the Commission, regulators and other interested parties to assess the equality performance of your organisation.  It will help you to explain how and why you have reached certain conclusions and made certain decisions.  It will provide a clear picture of how you have complied with the general equality duty and it will make your decision-making more transparent.”

The 'three limbs' of Equality

We always aim to address the 'three limbs' of the general equality duty. These are to:

1. eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under the Act;  
2. advance equality of opportunity between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and people who do not share it. Having due regard to the need to:-
   • Remove or minimise disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics.
   • Take steps to meet the needs of people with certain protected characteristics where these are different from the needs of other people.
   • Encourage people with certain protected characteristics to participate in public life or in other activities where their participation is disproportionately low;
     
     
3. foster good relations between people who share a relevant protected characteristic and those who do not share it.
    

Our Equality Objectives

Below you will find information published to demonstrate and support our commitment to these three vital aims. We have three equality objectives plus a policy review (annually). We work with the Equality Governor and report information relating to these and other equality duties to the Governing Body.

The information here may be qualitative or quantitative in nature. We are mindful that with the size of the school, some information could serve to identify individual members of staff or children, so this can lead to some details being supressed in this forum.

For each objective, we indicate those affected by inequality and who may be consulted and involved in the decisions the school takes to promote equality and eliminate discrimination: affected people could include parents, pupils, staff and members of the local community.

Please note: this is a 'live' document which is regularly updated.