RACE EQUALITY POLICY

This policy reflects consultation with pupils (Summer 2009) and staff, governors and parents (September 2009).

Mount St Mary’s Catholic High is a Catholic, inclusive school of around 920 pupils, aged 11-16. Approximately 30% of our pupils come from ethnic minority backgrounds. For 5% of our pupils English is an additional language.

The school is wholeheartedly committed to all its pupils. Our mission statement states:
The community of Mount St Mary’s Catholic High School is called to develop the full potential of each person spiritually, academically, socially and physically and to create a safe, happy and caring school.

At Mount St Mary’s Catholic High School we will continuously strive to ensure that everyone in our school is treated with respect and dignity. Each person in our school will be given fair and equal opportunities to develop their full potential with positive regard to gender, ethnicity, cultural and religious background, sexuality or disability.

We work within the Stephen Lawrence Education Standards Framework, constantly trying to improve our practice and ensure, through engagement with the SLES that this school actively promotes race equality, opposes racism in all its forms and fosters positive attitudes and commitment to an education for equality.

We aim to achieve this by:

Treating all those within the whole school community (e.g. pupils, staff, governors, parents and community) as individuals with their own particular abilities, beliefs, challenges, attitudes, background and experiences.
Valuing the contribution of all enhanced by breadth of diversity.
Creating a school ethos which promotes race equality, develops an understanding of cultural differences and challenges myths, stereotypes, misconceptions and prejudices.
Encouraging everyone within our school community to gain a positive self image and high self esteem.
Having high expectations of everyone involved with the whole school.
Promoting mutual respect and valuing each others’ similarities and differences and facing equality issues openly.
Identifying and removing all practices, procedures and customs which are discriminatory and replacing them with practices which are fair to all.
Monitoring, evaluating and reviewing all of the above to secure continuous improvement in all that we do.

Roles and Responsibilities

Promoting race equality and raising the achievement of minority ethnic pupils is the responsibility of the whole school staff, including support staff.

Governors
The Governing Body of the school has agreed this policy and will assess and monitor the impact of this policy by reviewing the action plan annually.
The Governing Body will receive progress reports from the Headteacher and other school staff on a termly basis, as part of the Headteacher’s report to Governors.

Headteacher
The Headteacher will ensure that all staff are aware of the policy and understand their role and responsibility in relation to this policy.
She will assess and monitor the impact of the policy through developing an action plan.
Outcomes will be reviewed in relation to the plan, and reported to the governing body on a termly basis.
Where additional funding is available for raising the achievement of minority ethnic pupils, the Headteacher will ensure that the additional resources are used appropriately and targeted on the basis of identified needs for this purpose.

Heads of Department/Heads of Year
Heads of Department/Heads of Year will be responsible for reviewing and monitoring curriculum policies and planning in their own subject areas to ensure that race equality is promoted.

Teachers
Teachers will familiarise themselves with this policy and know what their responsibilities are to ensure that the action plan is implemented. They will know the implications of the policy for their planning, teaching and learning strategies as well as for behavioural issues.

Administrative, Ancillary, Supervisory and Support Staff
All staff will familiarise themselves with this policy and know what their responsibilities are in ensuring that it is implemented.

Pupils
Pupils will share in the development of the race equality policy and be made aware of how it applies to them. They will learn to treat each other with respect and report incidents of a racial nature to an adult.

Complaints Procedure

If anyone in the school feels that this policy is not being followed then they should raise the matter with the Headteacher who will facilitate the appropriate action, which may include an investigation and report on the issue. If there is a formal complaint then the school’s complaints procedure will be used.

Implementing this Race Equality Policy

This race equality policy is linked to our action plan for promoting race equality and raising achievement of minority ethnic pupils. It also links to other action plans of the school.

The Headteacher will produce the action plan. The race equality action plan will identify key objectives, links to other plans, actions responsibility, resources, timescale, success indicators and targets as well as monitoring and evaluation. The race equality action plan will be integrated into the School Development/ Improvement Plan. The Governors will monitor this action plan.

Key Areas in Promoting Race Equality

The ethos of the school

This race equality policy reflects the ethos of the school and is explicit in all the school’s policies.
The school has procedures dealing with racial harassment which clearly set out actions and procedures for handling and reporting complaints and incidents.
Steps are taken to ensure that everyone associated with the school is kept informed about this racial equality policy and racial harassment policies and procedures, and abides by them.
The policies and procedures are regularly reviewed and their effectiveness evaluated, taking into account the views of all sections of the school community.
Reflection of all ethnic groups should be included in all marketing strategies.

Pupils achievements and progress

Pupils’ attainment and progress in individual subjects is monitored by ethnic group (and by gender and disability).
The school develops strategies for tackling differences in the attainment and progress of particular ethnic groups.
Targets may be set, as appropriate, by ethnicity. Teachers will be aware of the ethnic background of each child and will also be aware of current concerns regarding the underachievement of certain groups e.g. African Caribbean, Bangladeshi and Pakistani boys in particular.
The school values the achievements and progress of pupils from all ethnic groups.
All pupils have equal access to extra-curricular activities.
Every pupil is offered the support and guidance they need.
Staff challenge racism, stereotyping and promote racial equality in education, employment, training and career choice.
Steps are taken to ensure that pupils on work experience are not subjected to racism or racial harassment.

Curriculum, teaching and learning (including language and cultural needs)

This school promotes an inclusive curriculum which reflects the multi-ethnic nature of our society.
Racial equality and ethnic diversity are promoted and racism and discrimination challenged in all areas of the curriculum.
Curriculum planning takes account of the ethnicity, background and language needs of all pupils.
Departmental Heads provide guidance and examples of good practice for colleagues.
The school monitors and evaluates its effectiveness in providing an appropriate curriculum for all pupils.
The allocation of pupils to teaching groups and optional subjects is fair and equitable to pupils from all ethnic groups.
Assessment outcomes are used to: identify the specific needs of minority ethnic pupils, inform policies, planning and the allocation of resources.
Teaching methods and styles take account of the needs of pupils from different ethnic groups and encourage positive attitudes to ethnic difference, cultural diversity and racial equality.
The school takes active steps to ensure that resources in all areas of the curriculum are inclusive. It promotes a greater understanding of cultural diversity and racial equality. There is acknowledgement of the importance of challenging racism and racial discrimination in all areas of the curriculum.
Resources available to meet the specific needs of pupils from minority ethnic groups including dual language resources are used appropriately.
The school makes full use of the resources available within its local minority ethnic communities.

Guidelines on working with pupils who have English as an Additional Language (EAL)

The school recognises and values Bilingualism.
The language and learning needs of black and bilingual pupils are clearly identified and appropriate support identified and used.
The school will reflect and develop pupils’ and communities’ languages and cultural backgrounds through resources and displays throughout the school.
The school will explore a broad range of other media e.g. Computer software, the internet, audio and video tapes, films, songs, games etc, to support the maintenance and development of home/community language skills and cultural heritage.
The school will seek to provide community languages and dual language texts, both fiction and non-fiction, in order to facilitate pupils and communities access developing literacy in first language.
The school will draw on the skills of parents and local communities in producing resources.
The school will seek to provide high quality interpretation and translation across all areas of the school’s work as appropriate.

Pupil behaviour, discipline and exclusion

The school’s procedure for managing behaviour and disciplining pupils are fair and applied equally to all pupils, irrespective of ethnicity.
Where possible the school identifies and adopts good practice strategies in order to reduce any differences in rates of exclusion between ethnic groups.
The process of excluding a pupil is fair and equitable to all pupils.
Strategies to reintegrate long term truants and excluded pupils address the needs of pupils from all ethnic groups.

Racism and racial harassment

There are established procedures for dealing with incidents of racism and racial harassment which is understood by everyone in the school community (see Staff Handbook).
The monitoring system used by the school enables the school to report the relevant details to Education Leeds on request.

Admissions and transfer procedures

The Governors will take active steps to ensure that the admission process is fair and equitable to pupils from all ethnic groups.
The school monitors pupil attendance by ethnic group and uses the data to develop strategies to address poor attendance.
Provision is made for pupils to take time off for religious observance, leave of absence and authorised absence.

Staff recruitment and career development

Recruitment and selection procedures are consistent with the statutory Race Relations Code of Practice in Employment and other Equality legislation.
Everyone involved in recruitment and selection adheres to this Code.
Steps are taken to encourage people from under represented minority ethnic groups to apply for positions at all levels in the school.
The recruitment and selection process is monitored and reviewed to ensure that discrimination is not taking place and to identify examples of good practice.

Parents, governors and community partnership

Parents are welcome and respected in school.
People from minority ethnic communities are encouraged to become school governors.
Governors will be encouraged to play an active role in the life of the school in order to fulfil their monitoring duties.
The school seeks to support all governors in performing their role, for example, through school induction procedures for new governors and through access to the West Yorkshire Black Governors Service.
All parents are regularly informed of their child’s progress.
Proactive steps are taken to involve minority ethnic parents in the school.
The school’s premises and facilities are equally available for use by all ethnic groups.

Monitoring the Race Equality Action Plan

The school will monitor the impact of this policy and action plan on pupils, parents and staff from different ethnic groups. In particular, we will monitor the impact of our policies on the attainment levels of our pupils.

To monitor our pupils attainment, we will collect information about pupils performance and progress, by ethnic group, analyse it and use it to examine trends. To help interpret this information we will monitor other areas that could have an adverse impact on pupils attainment such as:

Exclusion
Racism, racial harassment and bullying
Curriculum, teaching and learning (including language and cultural needs)
Punishment and reward
Membership of the governing body
Parental involvement
Working with the community
Support, advice and guidance

Monitoring information will help us to see what progress we are making towards meeting our race equality targets and aims. In particular it will help us to:

Highlight any differences between pupils from different ethnic groups.
Ask why these differences exist and test the explanations given.
Review the effectiveness of current targets and objectives.
Decide what further action will be necessary to meet particular needs ant to improve the performance of pupils from different ethnic groups (which might include positive action).
Rethink and set targets in relevant strategic plans.
Links may be made with Performance Management objectives which will include qualitative information as well as quantitative data.
Take action to make improvements.
Assessing the impact of policies

As a school we will assess the impact of this and other policies on pupils, staff and parents from different ethnic groups. We will assess whether the policies have, or could have, an adverse impact on the attainment levels of pupils from different racial groups. We will assess the effectiveness of our policies through existing arrangements for developing and reviewing other school policies.