Month: October 2015

Meeting Minutes

October 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Apologies
Alistair
Ms White

Review of last week’s minutes

  • Konditor and Cook morning could unfortunately not take place. CW will pursue it further.
  • Categories on SIMS have been reinstated but are still incomplete.
  • Racist incident has been taken further and a restorative justice meeting has been agreed to take place.

 

This Week

  • Governors took nearly all of our objectives on board. One was challenged by JT, who felt it would be difficult to identify certain categories of students. JT will come here and explain how he believes it should be re-worded but the decision will still rest with our group. The group must now set up targets as to how these goals will be achieved. We must also have reasonable timeframes.
  • Planning for the training meeting took place on Monday. Those in attendance were: Jamal, Jack, FS, CW and JN. There will be three role plays. All details of the meeting are on our blog. We will be meeting again on the first Monday back.
  • Ed, Lethaniel, Alfie have volunteered to go with SW to help organise the International Day with NM.

Meeting 15/10/15

October 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Chair: Michael Adjei-mensah

International Day – SW has had little luck finding out about the school Health & Safety policy regarding food. She will now pursue this with ML

This Week

  • baking lessons – Konditor & Cook have offered us free baking lessons because of our involvement in pride. There are 6 places available. This will take place next Wednesday (Alistair, Jack, Dewi, Ed Crowley, Michael, Barnaby)
  • Categories of discrimination have been added to SIMS once more. Sexism needs to be added to the SIMs incident categories.
  • advice on a racist incident – a student in the school was encountered by another student who was handling black bin liners. The student said to another student – ‘how did you manage to peel off your skin?’ This has been logged on SIMS, but no further action has been taken. How do we believe we should proceed?

The students were friends, and this was originally used as part of justification for ‘resolving the case’. CW and TD disagreed with this judgement and this was put to the group.

The incident was logged on SIMS, forwarded to the HOY, a week passed and then the teacher and student chased the incident, it has still not been addressed.

The incident has been logged as a C3, this was previously decided that this would the code for incidents that would be classed as illegal outside of school.

We must revive the school’s protocols for dealing with these matters as this will potentially set a precedent.

It was suggested that the boy be held accountable to the student’s parents and suggest an apology.  Both sets of parents should be present at this meeting. This is a good opportunity to focus on the empathy of the situation.

It was also proposed that there should also be an equivalent sanction in school, for instance – had this been bullying or a fight, there would be time for the student in the LSC.

It was also agreed that ‘they’re friends’ or ‘banter’ was not an acceptable excuse.

  • date to be arranged for planning of Equalities inset – Monday after school.

Group needs to be ready to show something for the first week back after half term.

Minutes 8/10/15

October 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Review of the last week

  • Enrichment resources for teachers have been shared with teachers via google docs and have been well received.
  • Jack and SW have discussed a range of ideas for the Calais fundraiser. The idea of an International Day was met well : concerns were raised about the school’s food hygiene policy and SW said she was happy to pursue this.
  • CW did present the objectives to the Board of Governors. They were accepted with an ammendment (to be discussed further). The goals have been published on the shared website.

This week

Teacher training – this inset has been set for the 18th November after school.

Members involved

  • Tobias Sonnex
  • Jack Elderton
  • CW
  • Conwright Simon
  • Milo Rothschild-Davies
  • SW
  • Matthew Searle
  • Joao Crillo
  • FS
  • JN

Students responsible will have to plan the structure of the inset. Date and Location to be confirmed.  It was agreed that the inset would confirmed with the whole group before the delivery.

Proposed Equalities Goals for Governors

October 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments
  1. All school documents and curricular resources reflect the diversity of the wider school community.
    • We can be much more inclusive with resources and how we position them towards gender, religion, sexuality and ethnicity in language and representation. For example: We should not present Mr and Mrs as our default in letters, not simply choosing a male scientist when making a PowerPoint slide/handout.
  2. Progress for students who come from minority groups within the school (Multi-ethnic, LGBT, diverse religions, different genders) is monitored to ensure parity with whole-cohort averages and national averages.
  3. Regular audits of school behaviour incidents reflect a reduction in bullying and harassment of identified groups within the school and track trends in broader behaviour to ensure specific groups are not over-represented.
  4. Equality training is run annually for all staff and regular events are run on the school calendar that promote positive messages about all members of the diverse school community.

 

Minutes

October 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Henry Howeld reported to the group about the Enrichment teacher meeting. Teachers did not have a long term plan and said that some of the problems they faced ranged from class size to swapping classes. Teachers were positive in response to the year plans suggested and the informal student observations. Henry also arranged for a follow up meeting where teachers would share ideas. Jack Elderton apologised for not being there.

CW praised the action on Henry’s part and said that he believed that now would be the time let the wider staff know about the Equalities group, possibly speaking at a staff briefing. Lethaniel and Jack volunteered, Zakk volunteered from ks3.

Jack and Calais Update

Jack and FS have come up with the idea of having the band do a gig during lesson 6, students could choose to contribute funds or needed resources or both. Jack has approached the headmaster and he has not responded positively to this taking place during lesson time.  Could the gig be moved to an afternoon slot? There are advantages and disadvantages to this – negotiations are to continue.

CW is meeting with the Pupils, Parents, Partnership this night. The school’s goals for equality come from that group.

Gender balance and neutrality – we can be much more inclusive with resources and how we position them towards gender with language. For example: We should not present mr and Mrs as our default in letters, not simply choosing a male scientist when making a PowerPoint slide/handout. This must be done across the school community.

To find a better way of framing achievement, which groups are achieving/underachieving?

SIMS audits, presenting a way to see how minority groups are having their needs met and how action is being taken for them. Should we be specifically looking at sub-groups and their experience of the curriculum?

Possible problems might be that some people might not want to identify with particular groups.

One possible approach might be to have a whole school online survey that people can do in their own time.

SIMS audit of events.

the school should have a commitment to positive awareness raising. Teacher trainging by the equalities group.