BAYTON C. E. PRIMARY SCHOOL
Specific Equality Duty
2012-2016
Specific Equality Duty 2012-2016
The Equality Act of 2010 consolidates and replaces much of
the previous equalities legislation – including Disability
Discrimination and Race Relations legislation.
The Act now has nine Protected Characteristics, 3 of which
have been added * :
Age, Disability, Race, Religion, Sex, Sexual orientation,
*Gender re-assignment, *Marriage and civil partnership and
*Pregnancy and Maternity.
The Public Sector Equality Duties (PSED) which previously
existed in respect of Disability, Gender and Race have been
consolidated into one Duty which applies to all but one of the
Protected Characteristics.
Public Bodies, including schools, must have due regard to the
need to :
 Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment,
victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the
Act.
 Advance equality of opportunity between people who
share a Protected Characteristic and people who do not
share it.
 Foster good relations between people who share a
Protected Characteristic and people who do not share it.
The Specific Equality Duty requires schools to :
 Publish information to demonstrate how we are complying
with the Public Sector Equality Duty.
 Prepare and publish one or more specific and measurable
equality objective at least every four years and inform on
its progress annually.
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The law on disability is different from the rest of the Act in
that schools are allowed to treat disabled pupils more
favourably than non-disabled pupils and in some cases are
required to do so, by making reasonable adjustments, to put
them on a more level footing with pupils without disabilities.
Schools must implement accessibility plans which are aimed at
 Increasing the extent to which disabled pupils can
participate in the curriculum
 Improving the physical environment to enable disabled
pupils to take better advantage of education, benefits,
facilities and services provided
 Improving the availability of accessible information to
disabled pupils
There are some general exceptions which apply to schools with
a religious character, such as Bayton.
With regard to admissions, for example, a Church of England
School may allocate some places to children from other faith
families if it wanted to ensure a mixed intake reflecting the
diversity of the local population but this must be done on the
grounds of faith, not ethnicity.
Educational provision or the way in which we allow access to
other aspects of school life, not necessarily part of the
curriculum are also affected, e.g. If Bayton, as a Church of
England School, organises a trip to a site such as a cathedral,
we do not have to arrange trips to sites of significance to the
faiths of other pupils. Likewise, if an object symbolic of the
school’s faith, such as The Bible, were given a special status in
school this would not be deemed as being less favourable to
children of other faiths.
These exceptions allow schools such as ours to conduct
ourselves in a way which is compatible with our religious ethos
but do not permit less favourable treatment of a pupil in
relation to other protected characteristics.
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The daily act of worship, which is mandatory for all maintained
schools, should be of a broadly Christian nature. Schools are
not acting unlawfully if they do not provide an equivalent act of
worship for other faiths.
Schools are also free to celebrate religious festivals and are
not discriminating if they choose to put on a nativity play at
Christmas or celebrate Divali.
The content of the curriculum is exempt from the Act whereas
the delivery of the curriculum is explicitly included. An
example of this might be that we teach food technology which
is acceptable but if we only offer this to girls then this would
be discriminatory.
What we do to fulfil our duties:
In this school we have already developed inclusive policies and
practices which address areas of known inequality e.g. antibullying, whistle blowing, behaviour and discipline, racial
equality etc. Such policies state the way in which we treat our
pupils, prospective pupils and staff.
Our policies and practices are mindful of the need to adhere to
the Act and the spirit of the Act with regard to direct and
indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation.
Our policies are published on our website
www.baytonpri.worcs.sch.uk as they become due for review.
They can be found by using the left hand list to select either
policies or publications. Not all our policies are online currently
but we are adding to them rapidly.
The staff receive regular training on the equality act and its
implications for them.
The way in which we foster good relationships between people
and groups of all kinds is inherent in many things which we do
as a matter of course e.g. aspects of the curriculum which
promote tolerance and friendship or which share understanding
of a range of cultures and religions, involvement with our local
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communities, twinning arrangements with other schools which
enable pupils to meet and exchange experiences with children
from different backgrounds or initiatives to deal with tensions
between different groups of pupils within the school itself.
We visit and invite into school people who have special
knowledge which can inform the school’s approach, such as
disability equality groups and other relevant special interest
groups.
Below is a list, by no means exhaustive, of the opportunities we
have offered to our children during the last year in the spirit
of tolerance and understanding:
 Open the Book has been introduced, run by a local lay and
church group offering a common introduction to The Bible
to all feeder schools before secondary School
 Praise assembly weekly whereby effort and approach is
recognised equally with academic achievement and checks
are maintained to ensure there is fairness and objectivity
 Pupil premium, information published on the website
showing how we have used additional funding to narrow
the gap between groups of children.
 Booster classes, 1-1 tuition and a range of intervention
programmes offered to pupils throughout the school in
Maths and English, again to narrow the gap in attainment
and progress between groups
 Work with a range of charities e.g. Acorns Hospice,
NSPCC, Children in Need, Sports Relief, Guide Dogs for
the Blind to raise funds (well over £4000 this year)
 Police in school to talk about anti-bullying, e-safety
 After school clubs balance between Sports and Arts. All
for boys and girls. Sports teams always mixed sex.
 Pupil progress meetings termly with staff to discuss
needs of individual pupils and how they might be
addressed
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 Counselling, family support and life skills sessions by
external agencies
 A child with autism has been offered regular off-site
experiences to develop life and independence skills
 Regular governor visits incorporating talking to children
about their experiences and views of school
 Twinning arrangements with a school in Sandwell where
staff and classes visited each other and experienced
different ways of doing things
 Chinese New Year celebration week with Reception and
Nursery
 Olympic and paralympic projects with our cluster of
schools
 Governors’ pastoral committee which monitors and
discusses relevant issues
A large amount of data is collected by schools. RAISEonline,
which presents performance data for individual schools, is
broken down into a number of protected characteristics, such
as sex and race.
Below is a summary of some of the relevant data this year:
 The basic characteristics of our school indicate that we
have less pupils on roll than average, (104 as opposed to
251)
 less take up free school meals (6.7% as opposed to 26.2%
nationally)
 less are from minority ethnic groups and have English as
a second language. (2.2% and 0% as opposed to 27.7% and
17.5% nationally)
 However, we have 8.7% of pupils on the SEN list as
opposed to 10.6% nationally and 9.6% with a statement
against 7.9% nationally.
 46% of our pupils are girls which is inline with national
averages.
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 In the 2012 year 1 phonics test, 83% of our boys
achieved the expected level and 78% of girls, indicating
that there is no gender issue (nationally it was 54% boys
and 62% girls). There were no pupils with English as a
second language in Y1. 6% of pupils were on the SEN list
and did not achieve the expected level.
 In the 2012 KS1 results, there was no discrepancy
between boys and girls in Reading, Writing or Maths.
There were no pupils with English as a second language.
38% of pupils were on the SEN list which is significantly
above national averages.
 In the 2012 KS2 SATS, there was no discrepancy
between girls and boys in Maths nor in Maths and English
taken together but slightly fewer boys achieved level 4 in
reading than girls. (89% as opposed to 100%) There were
no pupils for whom English was a second language. Again,
35% were on the SEN List which is well above national
averages and 80% of these achieved level 4 or above in
English and Maths, 100% of those without statements
achieving level 4 in Reading and Writing which was
outstanding progress. Slightly fewer boys achieved level
5 in English (44% as opposed to 63% of girls) but more
boys achieved level 5 in Maths (56% as opposed to 50%
girls).
 The report regarding pupil premiums and narrowing the
gap showed our value added scores to be above national
averages in all areas.
Our objective is to increase the accessibility of the physical
environment for all our pupils so that their participation in the
curriculum is not disadvantaged in any way.
Over the last few years we have improved disability access by
installing external and internal ramps, building a disabled
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bathroom with hoist and changing facilities, installing wide
doorways into the new classrooms we have built and installing a
pathway down to our Reception and outdoor areas.
All areas within school are now accessible to all on the ground
floor. We are aware that access to the upstairs floor would be
particularly challenging for a staff member or visitor who was
disabled and this would need to be considered carefully should
the issue arise. At present there are bathroom facilities
downstairs and refreshments and a working area can be
provided on the ground floor but we realise this is not ideal and
that reasonable adjustments would have to be evaluated.
We have begun developing the outdoor vegetable area and this
should be completed in the next 2 years. We intend to
facilitate movement between beds and to the beds for all
users, both disabled and non-disabled. The beds are also
intended to be accessible for working by all users and potential
users. Progress on this objective will be reported on next year.
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