Equality

What is the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED)?

The PSED was introduced by the Equality Act 2010 and applies to all schools, including maintained and independent schools, academies, maintained nursery schools, and maintained and non-maintained special schools.

At Moseley Church of England Primary School, we welcome our duties under the Equality Act 2010.  The school’s general duties, with regards to the three main elements of the PSED are:

• Eliminating discrimination and other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010
• Advancing equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it
• Fostering good relations across all characteristics – between people who do share a protected characteristic and people who do not share it

What are protected characteristics?

The PSED identifies the following protected characteristics:

• Sex
• Race
• Age
• Disability
• Religion or belief
• Sexual orientation
• Gender reassignment
• Pregnancy or maternity

Moseley Church of England Primary School aims to promote pupils' spiritual, moral, social, emotional and cultural development, with emphasis on promoting equality, diversity and eradicating prejudicial incidents for pupils and staff.  Our school is committed to not only, eliminating discrimination, but also increasing understanding and appreciation for diversity.

Due Regard

Paragraph 5.4 of the DfE’s advice says that ‘due regard’ has been defined in case law and means giving “relevant and proportionate consideration to the duty”.

For schools, this means:

• Decision makers must be aware of the duty to have due regard when making a decision or taking an action, and must assess whether it may have implications for people with particular protected characteristics
• Schools should consider equality implications before and at the time that they develop policy and take decisions, not as an afterthought, and they need to keep them under review on a continuing basis
• The PSED has to be integrated into the carrying out of the school’s functions, and the analysis necessary to comply with the duty has to be carried out seriously, rigorously and with an open mind.

Specific Duties

The PSED introduces secondary legislation in the form of specific duties. The duties require schools to:

• Publish information to demonstrate how they are complying with the PSED. This information must include, in particular, information relating to people who share a protected characteristic
• Prepare and publish equality objectives

Schools are required to update this published information at least annually and to publish objectives at least once every four years

Equality objectives

We are committed to promoting the welfare and equality of all our staff, pupils and other members of our school community. To achieve this, our school has established the following objectives:

1. We will further develop our RE curriculum to extend and deepen all children’s knowledge, understanding and appreciation of a range of different faiths and differences between the beliefs and values of people who have different faith backgrounds.
2. We will provide a range of activities to improve all stakeholder’s awareness and understanding of autism and implement measures to enable our school to become an autism friendly school.
3. We will commit ourselves to embedding a child rights approach to achieve the Bronze Right’s Respecting School’s Award.
4. We will commit ourselves to embedding the 'No Outsiders' programme throughout the school.
5. We will establish an Equalities Working Party and seek to include representatives who are able to represent a range of viewpoints of different stakeholders from across our school community to gain feedback and suggestions on our promotion of equality in the daily life of the school. 

To find out more, please see our Equality Information and Objectives on our Policies Page.  Supporting information can be found in our Relationships and Behaviour Policy, Antibullying Policy, Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy, SEND Policy and Accessibility Plan on our website.