Celebrating diversity and challenging inequity
We are proud to have a very diverse school community, with a wide range of nationalities, races and religions represented amongst our students and families. Our culture days celebrate this diversity by encouraging students to come to school in cultural dress and with cultural food and drink. Our House system is centred around all members of our school community feeling ‘safe and celebrated’ with students routinely exploring all that we share.
We are upfront and explicit with our students about societal inequities. Through assemblies and PSHCE, we draw attention to the racial, gender and socio-economic imbalances in many professions (including teaching). We deliberately foreground examples of women and global majority people in positions of influence and power so that all our students see this as a possibility for themselves.
All students study REP as a discrete subject from Year 7 to 9. The curriculum has been designed to ensure that students have a strong understanding of the history, beliefs and customs of other religions. We have a large Muslim community and the teaching of Islam is prominent in our REP curriculum. We have a much smaller Jewish community and so Judaism is also prioritised as this is likely to be less well understood by most of our students. Christianity, Hinduism and Sikhism are all explored as well.
Our academic curriculum across the school is designed to reflect our community and cohort. In English, authors and texts are selected with our cohort in mind. The History and Science curricula ensure that the achievements of women and global majority people are heard and celebrated. We routinely bring in guest speakers and visitors who closely represent our community, so that students see themselves in these role models.
The protected characteristics are taught in PSHCE. If a student is found to be using discriminatory language, they take part in a scripted anti-discrimination intervention session that aims to educate them about the language they have used and the impact it can have.