The Highfield School seeks to promote equality and we celebrate the diversity within our community.  We welcome the public sector equality duty as set out in the Equality Act (2010).

What is the duty?

We must:

• Eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation
• Advance equality of opportunity between different groups
• Foster good relations between different groups

What are the protected characteristics?
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 gender; 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 Equality 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.

Our Equality Objectives
Our Equality Objectives reflect the school's priorities and draw upon available data and other evidence. Careful analysis of this is undertaken in order to ensure that we are working to achieve improved outcomes for different groups.

Our Equality Objectives are:

• To use performance data to monitor student achievement and respond to variations between groups of learners, subjects, courses and key stages, trends over time and comparisons with other schools.  In particular, we will seek to further improve the progress made by boys at Key Stage 4 whilst ensuring that the progress of girls continues to be promoted.
• To engage with our school values of Equality and Equity to ensure that our school continues our commitment to equality.
• To foster good relations between different groups through the use of assemblies, trips and the Religious and Personal Studies curriculum, which includes external visitors and sessions.   
• To challenge stereotypes that can deny opportunities to students through option and careers guidance.
• To maintain accessibility across the school for students, staff and visitors with disabilities, including access to specialist teaching areas.
• To continue to place staff and student wellbeing as a school priority

Specific tasks relating to these objectives can be found within the School Development Plan.

 Progress made 2016-19

• We moved into our new school building in 2016, with facilities and parking to ensure adequate accessibility for all
• We reviewed the RPS curriculum and assembly schedule in 2018 to ensure appropriate coverage of equality related content
• We achieved the Wellbeing Award in 2019 for our strategic work on supporting student and staff wellbeing, which was an outcome of the appointment of a Wellbeing Coordinator in 2017
• We achieved the Stonewall Bronze award in 2018 for our LGBT+ work
• We continued to move towards meeting the Gatsby benchmarks for Careers guidance, including planning for the reintroduction of work experience in Year 10 in 2020.
• Personal development, behaviour and welfare was judged to be good by Ofsted in June 2017
• Our data tracking systems continue to enable school staff to focus on identifying and addressing gaps in progress between boys and girls and we continue to closely track the progress and attainment of students with SEN
• Our uniform policy was adjusted in 2018 and now does not specify uniform by gender
• Greater use of the student leadership group and student council on particular equality related issues in school, including setting up an anti-bullying ambassador scheme in 2019
• Introducing a trans-gender protocol in 2018 and ensuring that all school policies, protocols and communications with home are LGBT+ compliant
• Changes to the behaviour for learning policy and behaviour ladder in 2018, to ensure that sanctions for prejudice based language and behaviour is clear, transparent and imposed where necessary

Equality Scheme Policy

Below is the information for our school's employees who have a gross annual salary of £100,000 or more in increments of £10,000.