Public Sector Equality Duty
The public sector Equality Duty came into force on 5 April 2011. It is designed to ensure that all public bodies play their part in making society fairer by tackling discrimination and providing equality of opportunity for all. The Equality Act 2010 was introduced to ensure protection on the grounds of specific characteristics (referred to as ‘protected characteristics’). For schools, this means that it is unlawful to discriminate against students or treat them less favourably because of their sex; race; disability; religion or belief; gender reassignment; sexual orientation; pregnancy or maternity. Marriage and civil partnerships and age are also protected characteristics. These apply to staff but not students in schools.
Our Vision for Equality
At Brannel we challenge our students to develop their understanding and appreciation of diversity by celebrating what we have in common and promoting respect for the different protected characteristics as defined in law. Our vision:
- For every student to feel valued for who they are, so they can grow and flourish into confident, successful adults.
- For every student to have no barriers to opportunity, achievement, success or enjoyment.
- For all our families to feel valued and their diversity recognised and celebrated.
- That our wider community benefits from the work of the school, building on the values of community cohesion.
Our Commitment
As an organisation we are committed to:
- Tackling discrimination of all kinds: including race, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious belief and age discrimination.
- Positively promoting race, disability and gender equality.
- Creating good relationships with all the groups it serves: by race, culture, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religious belief and age.
- Promoting equality of opportunity for all.
We aim to mainstream equality issues by:
- Integrating equality issues into all our key policies, service planning arrangements and performance management framework.
- Ensuring that our short, medium and long term planning contributes towards this scheme.
- Ensuring that arrangements are in place to monitor and report on our progress against our action plans as well as our progress on integrating equality issues.
- Ensuring that we engage effectively with stakeholders and local communities in delivering and monitoring the scheme.
Our Policy
Our Equality Policy contains information about how the school complies with the Public Sector Equality Duty. We also give guidance to staff and outside visitors on our approach to promoting equality. For further information please see our Single Equality Scheme Policy which can be viewed from the School Policies page of this website.
Our Single Equality Scheme Policy identifies our Objectives as:
- To ensure all student groups identified within the Single Equality Scheme have the same access, provision and opportunity as all other students and they are successful in all aspects of attainment and other outcomes.
- To ensure that, in all aspects of its work, Brannel School celebrates diversity and challenges discrimination and, in doing so, has a positive impact on shaping the values of its community and contributes positively to all aspects of social cohesion.
These objectives feed directly into the school’s Single Equality Scheme Action Plan.
Gender Pay Gap Report
Brannel School is part of Cornwall Education Learning Trust. The trust publishes a Gender Pay Gap report which can be viewed here.