Equality and Diversity

We enjoy and celebrate a rich diversity of ethnicity, age, personality and family life within the school community; and approach this blessing by outworking the foundational Christian principles of mutual love and care for all, honouring others, using words to build others up, acting in the interest of others, and fostering good relations amongst all. We do this in the context of our curriculum and our relationships, as outlined in our Equality Policy.

Our curriculum seeks to promote British values in many varied ways throughout Lower, Middle and Upper schools preparing our pupils to reflect the love of Christ in modern society. Our objectives include tackling prejudice and promoting understanding for all, including toward those who may be marginalised in wider society. It is important to us that all our pupils know that they are valued, are confident in the love of God, and confident in their relationships, enabling them to achieve their potential.

We regularly review how to further enhance our policies, working closely with school families and pupils in respectful Christian partnership to ensure their views are fully heard. Specifically, we have established an ongoing review of equality, diversity and inclusion in the context of racism, led by the Governors and SLT and involving parents and a Pupil Voice group. A working party constituted by the school governors to review our approach will be maintained to provide specific evaluation of the below actions:

1. Ongoing curriculum development, with particular attention to diversifying cultural perspectives
2. Further review of the curriculum for any specific approaches and topics that might condone or promote racism, whether implicitly or explicitly
3. Further exploration and discussion of racism and current related cultural concepts (eg. ‘anti-racism’, ‘othering’, ‘white privilege’) within PSME, rooted in a Biblical context
4. Annual pupil surveys on safety and bullying will include racism as a regular topic of discussion in the pupil voice group
5. Our uniform policy will be reviewed to ensure that cultural diversity is appropriately valued
6. Continuing commitment to identification and addressing of any discrimination in school that may result from prejudice, through pupil voice surveys and rapid investigation of allegations made
7. Continuing governor review of pupil progress, safeguarding concerns and behaviour reports with reference to protected characteristics (including race) to help identify any structural discrimination in the school’s approach
8. Review of the behaviour policy and the school code of conduct for any specific approaches that might condone or promote racism or otherwise result in discrimination, whether implicitly or explicitly
9. Embedding year group appropriate understanding of the code of conduct and mutual respect in the community, with particular focus on allegations of racism and the school’s response to such allegations
10. Continued review of the resolution of reported incidents, through regular reporting to governors to ensure the code of conduct is implemented in a non-discriminatory way
11. Review of our complaint procedures and channels of communication, including the diversity of those responding to such complaints, to ensure that both staff and pupils are treated in a non-discriminatory way
12. Ensure that all staff are appropriately trained on diversity and inclusion.

If you are interested to talk more about the work done on racism that underpins these actions, please contact the Chair of Governors through the school office.

SEND

We are a school with a comprehensive intake of children some of whom have identified Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). We seek to be widely accessible to families and have a dedicated Additional Learning & Pastoral Support (ALPS) department to ensure that such needs are managed and met appropriately. This is headed up by the SENDCo. During our admissions process we make every reasonable effort to ascertain whether a child has any known additional needs. We then make a decision regarding offering a place based on whether the child’s needs can be met in our setting. Where needs are identified we advise prospective parents about the financial constraints we have as a school due to our low fees structure and ineligibility for most external funding unless a Local Authority funded Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan is in place for the child.

For further information please refer to our SEND Policy.