Samuel Rhodes School

Equality information and objectives

Contents

• Our commitment to equality and community cohesion
• Part 1: Information about the pupil population
• Part 2: How we have due regard for equality
• Part 3: Our equality objective

All data used in this report is for the academic year 2019 - 2020 and was extracted on 23/07/20.

Our school commitment

Samuel Rhodes recognises and celebrates difference and encourages acceptance & tolerance of each other’s values, beliefs and behaviours.

Developing pupils’ independent life skills is a core purpose and in so we advance equal opportunities and foster good relationships in the community and beyond.

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 and people who do not share it
• Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it.

At Samuel Rhodes School:

• We ensure that everyone is treated fairly and respectfully.
• We ensure that our school is a safe and secure place for everyone.
• We recognise that people have different needs, and we understand that treating people equally does not always involve treating them the same .
• We ensure that no-one experiences less favourable treatment or discrimination because of:

• Their age
• Their abilities
• Their ethnicity, colour or national origin
• Their gender
• Their gender identity (they have reassigned or plan to reassign their gender)
• Their marital or civil partnership status
• Their being pregnant or having recently had a baby
• Their religion or belief
• Their sexual identity and orientation.

• We recognise that some pupils need extra support to achieve and be successful
• We try to make sure that different groups are consulted and are involved in our decisions, especially pupils, parents and those of us who can be treated less favourably.

We welcome our duties

• • To promote community cohesion (under the Education and Inspections Act 2006).
  • To eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations (under the Equality Act 2010).
  • To publish information from September 2012 about how we have used Pupil Premium funding to improve provision for pupils from low income households.

We welcome Islington Council’s commitment to considering people on low incomes when making decisions about how it exercises its functions under the Equality Act, and the emphasis of Ofsted inspections on the importance of accelerating the progress of pupils from groups who are underachieving, including pupils from low income families. We have therefore decided to include our pupils on low incomes as a group when considering our promotion of Equality.

As part of this we will:

• Publish information every year about our school population.
• Outline how we have due regard for equality and how we promote community cohesion.
• Publish equality objectives to show how we plan to tackle particular inequalities and improve what we do.
• Publish information about how we spend Pupil Premium funding for pupils from low income families.

First Draft:     April 2012

Equality data updated:  July 2013, July 2014, July 2015, July 16, August 17, August 18, July 19

Equality objectives reviewed:    Jan 2016

Part 1: Information about the pupil population

Number of pupils on roll at the school: 119 of which 40 are girls and 79 are boys.

Information on pupils by protected characteristics

The Equality Act protects people from discrimination on the basis of ‘protected characteristics’. Every person has several of the protected characteristics, so the Act protects everyone against unfair treatment.

Disability

Number of pupils with disabilities:  

All 119 children have a statement of special educational needs, Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) or are on an assessment place.

There are pupils at our school with a wide range of single and multiple disabilities.

Ethnicity

Because of the small numbers involved we can only disclose our numbers for the following pupils:
White English -36, Bengali – 9 and Somali– 9.  There are 28 other ethnicities within the school.

Religion and belief

Sensitive information on some pupils with protected characteristics

Some information in relationship to protected characteristics we regard as sensitive. Please contact Head Teacher if you want more information.

It is not appropriate for us to collect information from pupils in relation to some protected characteristics, such as gender identity and sexual orientation.

However, as a school we are aware that there may be a number of equality issues for gay, lesbian and bisexual pupils, as well as those who are undergoing or who have undergone a reassignment of their gender.

Information on other groups of pupils

Ofsted inspections of schools will look at how schools help "all pupils to make progress, including those whose needs, dispositions, aptitudes or circumstances require additional support."

In addition to pupils with protected characteristics, we wish to provide further information on the following groups of pupils:

Pupils from low income households

In addition to the ‘protected characteristics’ identified by the Equality Act, we are obliged to publish how we spend Pupil Premium funding for pupils from low income families. Islington Council is also committed to considering people on low incomes when making decisions about how it exercises its functions under the Equality Act. We have therefore decided to include our pupils on low incomes as a group when considering our promotion of Equality.

Pupil with Special Educational Needs (SEN) 100% = 119 pupils

Pupil with English as an additional language (EAL)

12 different languages are spoken by our EAL pupils, we cannot disclose any numbers because of the low numbers for each language.

Children looked after-5

2019-2020 Exclusions - 8 pupil fixed term exclusions

Because of the small numbers involved we can only disclose the ethnicity of our white English pupils of which there are 7 exclusions. There are 12 other exclusions from 9 different ethnicities within the school.

Part 2: How we have due regard for equality

The information provided here aims to show that we give careful consideration to equality issues in everything that we do in the school.

Eliminating discrimination

We are committed to working for the equality of all our pupils. To meet our duty to have due to regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct towards pupils with protected characteristics prohibited by the Act:

Part 3: Our equality objectives

The Equality Act 2010 requires us to publish one or more specific and measurable equality objective. We aim to address areas where we need to take action to improve equality and tackle disadvantages.

We will regularly review the progress we are making to meet our equality objectives.

Equality Objective

All our children have learning disabilities and many have multiple disadvantages and we ensure that they all reach their personal potential by the time they enter the adult world. Our equality objective is to ensure that they develop independent life skills, work skills and values to lead fulfilled adult lives in the community.

Our Values are:

Samuel Rhodes School is a learning environment where children can grow, learn and excel.

We support each other to play a positive role in a changing society and lead a fulfilled life.

Small steps to giant leaps.

Progress we are making on this objective is measured by: