Equality Statement

At Brightstone Academy our vision is to create a school of excellence where pupils develop their skills to become independent, lifelong learners, thinkers and leaders. We strive to ensure everyone feels valued and respected and our ethos brings together our children, community, staff and parents to provide a safe and nurturing environment for all. Our aspiration is to make every day a rewarding, creative and unique experience; inspired by our inclusive and welcoming Islamic faith, everyone is encouraged to grow intellectually, morally and spiritually.

As a school, Brightstone Academy understands its duties under the Equality Act 2010, The general duties being to:

• Eliminate discrimination
• Advance equality of opportunity
• Foster good relations

We understand the principal of the act and the work needed to ensure that those with protected characteristics are not discriminated against and are given equality of opportunity.

A protected characteristic under the act covers the groups listed below:

• Age (for employees only)
• Disability
• Race (includes ethnic or national origins, colour or nationality)
• Gender (including issues of transgender)
• Gender reassignment
• Maternity and pregnancy
• Religion and belief (includes lack of belief)
• Marriage and Civil Partnership (for employees)

In order to meet our general duties, listed above, the law requires us to do some specific duties to demonstrate how we meet the general duties. These are to:

• Publish equality information – to demonstrate compliance with the general duty across its functions

We will not publish any information that can specifically identify any child

• Prepare and publish equality objectives

To do this we will collect data related to the protected characteristics above and analyse this data to determine our focus for our equality objectives. The data will be assessed across our core provisions as a school. This will include the following functions:

• Admissions
• Attendance
• Attainment
• Exclusions
• Prejudice related incidents

Our objectives will detail how we will ensure equality is applied to the services listed above however where we find evidence that other functions have a significant impact on any particular group, we will include work in this area.

We also welcome our duty under the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to promote community cohesion.

We recognise that these duties reflect international human rights standards as expressed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and the Human Rights Act 1998.

At the Brightsone Academy we take pride in the following values:

1. Respect everyone to maintain a positive atmosphere.
2. Autonomy in independent and collective learning.
3. Equality, diversity and inclusivity.
4. Strive to accomplish aspirations.
5. Tolerance and Freedom.

Every member of the Brightsone Academy community has the right to:

• Fully participate in a safe, supportive and inclusive educational environment that stimulates and challenges pupils to be active participants in their learning
• Learn or teach in a safe, secure and welcoming school environment
• Be treated with respect, dignity and understanding regardless of their cultural, religious, racial and linguistic backgrounds