Our Values – Ensuring Equity

This links to the fact that we are starting from a position whereby we know that there is inequity in our school when the pupils arrive. This can come from socio-economic issues such as poverty; trauma in childhood with at least a tenth of our cohort experiencing trauma, neglect, abuse before they come to us; religious and cultural inequities which are being played out nationally and globally; academic inequity which plays out in terms of exposure to vocabulary, cultural capital, cognitive and learning difficulties and EAL. With regards to EAL a key piece of thinking is that our pupils may be bilingual – but they are often not academically fluent in any of the languages they speak. Ironically, our success as a school is making these inequities even more apparent to us as a community as we really are a true comprehensive with pupils representing a full range of identities – academically, ethnically and socio-economically. Whatever we do, we have to remember that we are driven to make improvements through a strong sense of social justice. When we talk about equity therefore it encompasses all aspects of school life.