Promoting the Protected Characteristics at St Dennis Primary Academy

Article 2: All children have the right to their RIGHTS - no matter what!

Article 30: All Children have the right to their own language, religious customs and culture.

Our children and young people live in a diverse society in 21st century Cornwall. St Dennis Primary Academy is committed to creating an environment for the whole school community that demonstrates shared values of inclusion, equality, fairness and respect. Our school recognises and celebrates difference within a culture of respect and fairness, and aims to meet the needs and rights of every child as detailed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We support all children and staff through our vision of 'Aiming High and Achieving Our Best' to ensure all can flourish during their time at St Dennis.

This year we are focusing on our school specific objective – Each curriculum subject or area is planned to maximise opportunities to represent diversity, challenge stereotypes, raise aspirations, promote spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and foster good relations.

Why we have chosen this objective:

To ensure children’s curriculum experience is strategically broadened and diversity regularly celebrated (or normalised). So that all children see themselves/their heritage reflected positively and to confirm our curriculum’s unconscious bias is challenged.

To achieve this objective, we plan to:

• Review Reading Spine across the school to ensure diversity is reflected positively and key people of study throughout topic learning reflects diversity.
• Highlight and mark national events such as Black History Month, LGBT history month, DisAbility Awarenes
• Mark religious celebrations and national events.
• Introduce teaching of Children’s Rights as detailed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
• PSHE curriculum to be continually reviewed and ensure all are reflected in our teaching.

We will update below throughout the year with celebrations of our achievements towards this.

We work to ensure that our children understand that:

Everyone is different.

We celebrate being different.

We are all equal in our differences.

The Equality Act became law in 2010. It covers everyone in Britain and protects people from discrimination, harassment and victimisation. Everyone in Britain is protected. This is because the Equality Act (2010) protects people against discrimination because of the protected characteristics that we all have.

Under the Equality Act (2010), there are nine Protected Characteristics:

• Age
• Disability
• Gender reassignment
• Race
• Religion or belief
• Marriage or civil partnership
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Pregnancy and maternity

At St Dennis Primary Academy, we actively promote these in our curriculum and work to embed them into our ethos, PSHE lessons and in the wider curriculum. 

This is where children learn about Protected Characteristics through our planned PSHE Curriculum.

We have also started to use the book No Outsiders in our School: teaching the Equality Act in Primary Schools by Andrew Moffatt. This book provides support and resources to schools to deliver the objectives outlined in the Equality Act  which make it against the law to discriminate against an individual because of a range of protected characteristics.

The No Outsiders resource provides lesson plans for each primary school year group (EYFS - Y6) based on a selection of picture books.

Issues addressed include: gender and gender identity, religion, race, sexual orientation, disability and age. The focus of the programme is around noticing, celebrating and developing resilience around diversity. Through discussion and activities based upon the picture books, children are encouraged to show respect and develop their understanding of diversity.