Equality

Millfield is an inclusive school which focuses on the well-being and progress of every member of our school community and where all members are valued. 

We believe that the Equality Act 2010 provides a framework to support our commitment to valuing all students and staff equally.  It supports us in embracing diversity, tackling discrimination, promoting equality, and fostering good relationships between people. It also ensures that we continue to tackle issues of disadvantage and underachievement of different groups. 

Our approach to equality is based on the following key principles: 

– All members of Team Millfield are valued equally, whatever their ethnicity, national origin or culture, regardless of disability or their gender or their gender identity, whatever their religious or non-religious affiliation or faith background and whatever their sexual orientation. 

– At Millfield we recognise, respect and value difference. We strive to remove barriers and disadvantages which people may face, in relation to disability, ethnicity, gender, religion, belief or faith and sexual orientation. 

– We believe that diversity is a strength, which should be respected, embraced and celebrated by all those who learn, teach and visit here. 

– We actively promote positive attitudes to equality, mutual respect and relationship building between groups of people. 

– We promote the idea of Team Millfield to foster a shared sense of belonging. We want all members of our school to feel a sense of belonging within the school and wider community and to feel that they are respected and able to participate fully in school life. 

– We have very high expectations of all our students and support them to achieve to their highest potential. 

– We strive to raise standards for all students, with a distinct focus on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. We believe that improving the quality of education is central to raising standards for all groups of students. 

– We observe good equalities practices for our staff. We ensure that policies and procedures benefit all employees and potential employees in all aspects of their work, including in recruitment and promotion, and in continuing professional development. 

Promoting Equality: 

Equality is central to our whole school assemblies, PSHE and RSE in school.  We aim to prepare students for taking part in a diverse society when they leave school, so that they can be involved in and celebrate all aspects of society and are welcomed as part of it. 

Our Equality Ambassadors help to support and promote our dedication to equality, inclusion and celebrating diversity. 

At Millfield we track our student’s performance through our use of Learner Scores, which allows us to provide bespoke mentoring to students when necessary. 

We promote our extracurricular activities and trips as being fully inclusive and all activities are risk assessed so that mitigations can be put in place, if necessary, to ensure that all students can take part. 

Millfield makes regular improvements to the school as a result of student voice and parent voice.  We have tried to make our progress evenings more accessible to all parents. 

We have a strong ethos of pastoral support. 

Millfield’s Equality Objectives 2021-22 until 2024-25 

Objective 1 – To improve outcomes for all students including those with protected characteristics so that they make progress at least in line with expectations based on their prior attainment and ability by offering appropriate and timely intervention and support. 

Objective 2 – To undertake annual data analysis of all groups with a protected characteristic, noting changes from the previous collated data, investigate any areas of concern and report the outcome to the Equalities governor. 

Objective 3 – To enable all students including those in groups with protected characteristics, to make a positive contribution to school life by ensuring that the curriculum, trips and extracurricular activities are accessible to all students. 

Objective 4 – To increase the number of parents attending progress’ evenings (with particular emphasis on DA parents) by conducting a survey of parents to establish their barriers to attending and providing them with help and support they need to be able to attend. 

Objective 5 – To promote equal working conditions for all staff regardless of disability, race, ethnicity, sex, religion, pregnancy, marital status, sexual orientation, or gender re-assignment. 

Objective 6 – To review existing school policies to ensure that they show due regard to equality considerations and do not inadvertently discriminate either directly or indirectly. 

Objective 7 – To capture staff recruitment and promotion data relating to equal opportunities centrally.