Throughout this post, we will delve into one of the school website requirements; information to publish in your school website equality objectives report. The requirements can be found under Section 16 of The School Website Requirements Guide.
This requirement is often neglected by schools. Even if a school do have this on their website, it is often incomplete or tricky to find.
The details below will help you to meet this specific requirement.
Do I need to publish My Equality Objectives Report?
As the requirement details state, "Public bodies, including Maintained Schools, Academies and Free Schools must comply with the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act 2010 and the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017."
All schools must publish their Equality Objectives on their website.
What goes into My Equality Objectives Report?
There are 6 parts to Section 16 of the school website requirements.
1/ Public Sector Equality Duty
In this first section, you are required to "publish details of how your school is complying with the public sector equality duty."
You should update this every year.
Ensure that when you make policies or decisions you consider people who are protected under the Equality Act. This part is quite often done by schools, however, they miss the part where it says it needs to be updated every year. Therefore, they don't comply with this section.
More often than not, schools do have a current report in place. Make sure you publish the latest report on your school website.
2/ Your Schools Equality Objectives
"Publish your school’s equality objectives." – You should update this at least once every 4 years.
Detail how everyone is treated as equal no matter of age, gender, disability and religion. This content should be guided by these 9 principles:
- All learners are of equal value
- Recognise and respect difference
- Foster positive attitudes and relationships and a shared sense of cohesion and belonging
- Observe good equalities practice in staff recruitment, retention and development
- Aim to reduce and remove inequalities and barriers that already exist
- Consult and involve widely
- Society as a whole should benefit
- Base our practices on sound evidence
- Measurable objectives
Structure your report around these principles and how they are evidenced within your school. Also, it's best to write your Equality Objectives in relation to your school rather than copying and pasting from the Legislation.
Inspectors are always looking for ways in which you are adopting principles and applying them to your setting.
3/ Eliminating Discrimination
Be sure to read the section on Eliminating Discrimination from the Equalities Act (2010). To comply with this section of your report, use the Equalities Act when detailing the processes you take to eliminate discrimination in your school.
Also, make sure to reference and link to the Equalities Act (2010) to be compliant with this section. This is missed so often by schools and all it needs is just one sentence.
Avoiding simple mistakes that raise unnecessary questions with inspectors is one of the key skills in school website compliance.
4/ Improving equality of opportunity for people with Protected Characteristics
Visit this site to find the details of Protected Characteristics. You will need to reference this in your report. Also, ensure to detail how everyone has equal opportunity, even if they have a Protected Characteristic.
5/ Consulting and involving those affected by inequality
"Consulting and involving those affected by inequality in the decisions your school or college takes to promote equality and eliminate discrimination". This could include parents, pupils, staff and even members of the local community.
Detail the process you follow to ensure you are involving different people from your community. Then, add how you might act upon the results of your conversations. This will be unique to your school and is a powerful way to demonstrate how seriously you take equality.
As with anything related to school website compliance, documenting and reporting on what you do is critical.
6/ You are required to publish information on your website about the gender pay gap in your school.
Under the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017 you are required to publish information about the Gender Pay Gap. This link will give you all you need to finish off your Equality Objectives report with the Gender Pay Gap.
How to publish the Equality Objectives Report on your School Website?
Once you have completed your report, you need to decide where this will live on your website. You have two main options. The first is a must.
1/ On your policies page.
This page is the place to always add all your policies, including your equality objectives. The Schudio school website software provides a built-in solution through the use of Document Groups. Keep your policies page easy to use by creating several Document Groups, and grouping the documents together. This makes it easier for users to navigate the documents and saves a lot of time.
2/ Create a 'policy-specific' page.
You could opt to create a whole new page specifically for Equality Objectives. If you decide to do this, make use of the Document Groups feature to ensure that you do not have content that differs, depending on where the user looks for this information. So, use the Document Groups feature to ensure that the content is the same in however many different locations you decide to add this content.
A word of note; if you decide to create a page which is dedicated to your Equality Objectives information, do not merely add a link or an embedded file on the page. It's simply a waste of a page on your website. Group policies together on pages that work well together or add supporting content to a dedicated page.
What's next?
Download the very latest School Website Requirements Guide to ensure you are compliant in all areas. Everything you need to know is available within this guide and includes step-by-step instructions on key areas of compliance. Plus, the guide includes a wide range of best-practice to apply across all areas of compliance.
