Glossopdale School and Sixth Form is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the school community and the wider community are treated equally, fairly, and with respect by the school and by each other. The Local Governing Body, Headteacher and staff are committed to advancing equality of opportunity and providing fair access and treatment in employment and in delivering education.

 The policy sets out how the school will promote equality of opportunity regardless of race, gender, transgender, disability age, religion or belief and sexual orientation, in both the delivery of its services and the employment of its staff. All Governors, the Headteacher and staff, acting on behalf of the school are responsible for implementing the policy and have a continuing duty to challenge all forms of discrimination.

 What is the duty?

 We must:

 Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation

• Ensure equality of opportunity between different groups
• Foster good relations between different groups

 What are the protected characteristics?

The Equality Act 2010 was introduced to ensure protection on the grounds of specific characteristics (referred to as protected characteristics). For schools, this means that it is unlawful to discriminate against students or treat them less favourably because of their sex; race; disability; religion or belief; gender reassignment; sexual orientation; pregnancy or maternity.

Marriage and civil partnerships and age are also 'protected characteristics'.  These apply to staff but not students in schools.

As a public organisation, we are required to:

• Have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) when making decisions, taking action or developing policy and practice.
• Publish information to show compliance with the Equality Duty. This is done via our Equalities Policy.

Publish Equality Objectives which are specific and measureable.

Our Equality Policy

Our Equality Policy is in line with national guidance and contains information about how the school complies with the Public Sector Equality Duty.  We also give guidance to staff and outside visitors on our approach to promoting equality.

Our Equality Objectives

Our Equality Objectives reflect the school's priorities, our values and draw upon available data and other evidence. Careful analysis of this is undertaken in order to ensure that we are working to achieve improved outcomes for different groups. Our Equality Objectives for 2024-25 are below:

1)            To continue to provide a school environment that welcomes, protects and respects diverse people.

2)            To develop an effective and well delivered curriculum for the teaching of Relationships, Sex and Health Education (including the school approach to sexism and sexual harassment).

3)            To use performance data to monitor student achievement and respond to variations between groups of learners, subjects, courses and key stages, trends over time and comparisons with other schools.  In particular, we will seek to close the gaps in attainment and achievement between students and all groups of students; especially the progress made by boys at GCSE, students with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, Looked after Children, and Disadvantaged students.

4)            To challenge stereotypes and expectations that can deny opportunities or restrict ambitions to students when choosing their options through effective and ongoing option and careers guidance and the aspire programme, from Y7 onwards.

5)            To encourage wider participation in our extra-curricular programme particularly for disadvantaged students.

6)            To ensure that all students are given the opportunity to make a positive contribution to the life of the school, particularly focusing on developing a wider demographic of students to take on leadership responsibilities across the school.

7)            To reduce the gap in fixed term exclusions between Disadvantaged and Non-Disadvantaged students and boys and girls.

8)            To further develop student and staff wellbeing and positive mental health.

9)            To eradicate the use of homophobic, sexist, racist and other discriminative language by students in the school.

10)          To promote equality, diversity and inclusion across our staff body.  This will be achieved in several ways, including training staff on unconscious bias, use of positive language in order to eliminate racial or gender bias and derogatory language. The work on routines and deliberate practice will be used to negate this.

Specific tasks relating to these objectives can be found within the School Improvement Plan.