Minutes

Equalities Group

 

Week 2:

• Teens + Children vulnerable – process of coming out most difficult.
• Students more comfortable with approach
• Teacher development should be addressed to all teachers
• Issues of inequality being addressed with equal seriousness.
• Increasing understanding of prejudice in the school
• Challenging the casual forms of racism/homophobia/islamophobia/

Week 3:

• Audit: Incident – Claire, Chris
• Stonewall: Lethaniel, Conwright, Jack
• Backlash: Ms Wright, Ms Schuil
• Henry: Define the terms, Chris, Dewi, Jack, helping.
• Sexuality Education – integrate this into curriculum. Sex education system is outdated.
• Joel Ms Wilberforce Conright, Barnaby, Daian, Henry.
• Adam: Senior staff.

Week 4:

Stonewall meeting with N Atherton: Jack and Lethaniel have been busy during this last week because of GCSE music recordings and were unable to arrange a meeting with N Atherton.  They have agreed that they will meet over the holidays and plan what they want to say to him.

Incidents of backlash (F Schuil and S White): support group needed but also a very clear policy on the issues surrounding diversity. It would be helpful to have this clear policy on the website as current policies are not clearly communicated to parents and staff.

S White raised the concern that some students use sexist/homophobic terms without understanding what they mean.  She cited a recent incident where she educated a student on the definition of the term twat and he then agreed that it was an inappropriate and sexist term.  This further highlights the need for clear definitions of discriminatory behaviours.

Defining terms (Henry Howeld, Dewi Bowen, Jack Elderton): Solid definitions are on the way, but boys are busy and the task is broad.

Jack and Henry will definitely work on this over the Easter break, defining discriminatory behaviours and suggesting possible appropriate reactions.

Diversity across the curriculum (J North): Joel met with Daian and Henry, asking them their views on how diversity is met with across the curriculum.  The following views were raised: (C Wilberforce’s responses are in bold)

Diversity is not celebrated across the curriculum (views of different faiths in assemblies for instance) (Acknowledged – this is something that will be looked into).

Assemblies tackle homophobia, racism and bullying, but rarely is anything else done in lessons in support of this. (Acknowledged – CW agreed that this was a need and a definite problem.  In the past, HOYs had designed a timetable that decided how tutors might re-visit ideas raised in assembly – would this be something that might be a good idea.  JN agreed that whilst this might be a good idea in principle, tutor time is incredibly short and does not really cater for this).

Enrichment seems to be lacking in purpose, most of the time students watch videos.  It was acknowledged that D Merrick teaches his enrichment lessons from a philosophy perspective and this is a good thing.  Both boys raised the idea that Enrichment should be evaluated and given a focus that celebrates diversity. (In the past, teachers either volunteered to teach enrichment or were selected because they were trusted with this role – this is not the case anymore, teachers are often selected where there are gaps in their timetables.  There is an idea to re-evaluate the purpose of enrichment, looking for opportunities for PSHE).

– the days where outside organisations come into the school to focus on specific aspects of PSHE are not effective and often boring. (Agreed)

– Religion sometimes gets in the way of the curriculum, especially in science, where students are disruptive and rude, using their faith as an excuse to undermine the teacher. (CW was very concerned about this).

Inviting SLT to meetings of the group (Adam Cellmer): Will do this with Chris Waugh.

Week 6:

• Audit: Incident – Claire, Chris – Next week.
• Stonewall: Lethaniel, Conwright, Jack –
• Backlash: Ms Wright, Ms Schuil – Roleplays
• Henry: Define the terms, Chris, Dewi, Jack, helping.
• Sexuality Education – integrate this into curriculum. Sex education system is outdated.
• Joel Ms Wilberforce Conright, Barnaby, Daian, Henry – Meeting with Cath will happen this week.
• Adam: Approach, present options – attend the Stonewall conference.
• Friesia – Roleplays and Pride

WEEK 7

• School Ball – Adam
• Boys Schools – Issues for Transgendered Students.
• School Council – Baback
• Friesia – sign up to Pride

WEEK 8

Incident Audit – 4 Incidents.

Pride – 27 June – Sign up as a walking group.

Roleplays –

Stonewall Conference is booked.

2 Weeks for Henry + Chris to submit draft school objectives for equality

Week 9

Equalities Group Minutes 14/05/15

A good level of activity over the last week. There are a few details that have become apparent that the group will have to begin to deal with.

Behaviour Audit

There is nothing major that has been registered. This has not changed over the last few weeks and it is not going to change until we take more action.

There was a debate about the label ‘slag’ and whether this should be labelled as sexism on SIMS.

SW and CB made the argument that this is an act of sexism as the student would not have called a male member of staff ‘slag’.

CW’s argument was that the issue is with the action rather than the words.

The diversity across the curriculum group were due to meet Ms Wilberforce on Tuesday P6. Ms Wilberforce was unable to attend this meeting and this was the second time that she had done this. The meeting has been re-scheduled.

Henry has started a google document that the governors will have access to in order to keep account of our discussions. Please have a look at this documentation and add comments.

CW has asked for email addresses from the group so that we can have access to the equalities group blog.

Ms Wilberforce has set up a display board for the equalities group.

There was debate amongst the group about the support for Equalities and this was labelled as a matter where leadership did not show real priority for the group.

CW was keen to underline that he and Ms Wilberforce are keen colleagues but this is an instance where he felt disappointed with Ms Wilberforce.

Henry’s document underlines the priorities of this group, our responsibilities and the direction of our guidance to the governors.

Teacher Training

Inter-personal relationships between teachers and students to be developed as priority.

We should be a group open to all members of the school, including allied members of staff.

Henry mentioned Gerry and his importance as he deals with a large proportion of students outside of lessons. This would lead to seeing the school as a wide community where all respected.

To be investigated: A student was removed from CW’s room and they made homophobic comments. Dewi raised this issue at the meeting and addressed this act with the boy.

CW: How would you have liked this to have worked out?

Dewi:  ‘the room was quiet – I would expect that other students or hopefully the teacher would have addressed the matter’

Proportional response: all forms of prejudice treated equally.

The action for us to do here is to go back to Henry’s work with defining acts of prejudice.

CB: too often we don’t have the time to take the student aside and explain why their words are offensive

CW: or the confidence.

Re-education and enlightenment are the suggested ways forward.

Henry asked for more guidance from the group about his definitions of acts of prejudice. The idea of freedom of speech but not the right to insult was mentioned.

CW praised Dewi for bringing the group the incident to the group  (this is helpful as it brings back the reality of the issues we are trying to tackle) but underlined the importance of not mentioning names.

We are now becoming clearer at articulating our issues.

The people going to Stonewall, it is important that we have a clear idea of how we will use this organisation and make them work for us.

Please begin to comment on the documents that we will begin to circulate. It is very important that you are represented accurately and that your possible disagreements are registered.

Week 10

Jamal as chair of meeting in Jack’s absence.

Begins with a conversation with Ms White and Mr Waugh. This was a conclusion to the conversation from last week where sexism was addressed. Mr Waugh issued an apology and felt it important that the group knew that Mr Waugh felt responsible for the way that matter was perceived last week.

Diversity and the curriculum meeting with Ms WIlberforce

– how can we ‘attack’ the content of enrichment. How can this be improved and perhaps modelled in the medium of PSHE.

– the group will help to define an enrichment curriculum where themes would be set but teachers would be free to tackle the issues in ways that are fit for them. The group would provide a stimulus bank of questions to be tackled.

• what about form time? This should be used for a similar focus.
• set of goals to be achieved before the next meeting with Ms Wilberforce. These were
• defining areas to be tackled/explored in enrichment
• using form time for more debates

Mr Waugh suggested using members from this group to help deliver form time activities.

The annual Brook workshops were discussed and it was believed by the group that these were unsatisfactory sessions. Could this be changed so that Brook would come in more regularly as this would help to build student/teacher relationships that would improve focus and behaviour.

Mr Waugh suggested that teachers and students could fill the place of Brook and this was met positively by the group. Alistair expresses a strong preference for this.

Mr North will arrange the next meeting with Ms WIlberforce.

Pride

We are definitely attending this. FS will give us an update on this when she is available.

Stonewall conference has been paid for.

Week 11

Apologies – Matthew, George Davis

Thanks to Jamal for Chairing in Jack’s absence

Diversity in Curriculum group to meet with JN before a new meeting is arranged with C WIlberforce. C Waugh asked to press upon the idea that students deliver to teachers.

Incidents – there has only been one registered incident of bullying/homophobia. We need to push forward with this, reviewing the events of incidents.

The real issue this week is lack of recording of incidents.

Henry: there are instances that an incident should be recorded but the student remains anonymous. For instance, when a group or persons are unidentifiable during an incident.

We should ask from staff that more active and detailed recording should be going on.

Stonewall it would be much more purposeful if we attended this with an agenda.

Agenda

Pride

Do we know why we want to take part in Pride. We want to assert that we are an active organisation within the school.

What change are we trying to achieve? We are proud to be a diverse organisation, and of ourselves.

One of the things that needs to be clear is that we will be representing the school and we are proud of our school.

More specifically: we are representing the fact that we exist within the school, as opposed to representing the school.

Documentation and board

CW: Can people write real life based scenarios?

Henry: I’m concerned that people will stick to the wording

CW: I will define sub-categories for you. Can you now visit individuals (for instance, female members of staff) and ask them to provide their own experiences of discrimination within the school.

There was a Governors meeting this week, they have confirmed that we will provide a set of goals and a mechanism to see if these goals have been achieved by September. As a group, we will be responsible for assessing these mechanisms.

C Waugh will begin to write the letter for students to take home and we want to be sure that this would reflect you.

We will be going as a school, the group has agreed that we should go in school dress. We may invite other members of the school.

Barnaby: we should invite other members of the school. This was agreed by the group.

Pride takes place on Saturday 27th June.

Role play did not happen this week.

Week 12

11 June

Apologies: Mr North

Stonewall Group – reschedule

Curriculum: (detailed minutes from that meeting available here) Ms Wilberforce was very supportive of the idea.

There is a belief that this equalities group has the capacity to provide the proposed support.

Next step: present

That’s perfect.

Week 13

18 June

Apologies: Mr North, Barnaby, Alistair, Jamal, Diaian, Bruke, George Davis

MATTERS ARISING:

Stonewall Group:

Gained agreement for an extra staff member at Stonewall conference.

In the analysis the services from Stonewall we were the most responsive to were the support for individuals via counselling.

Curriculum:

Henry has developed a Year 7 Term Plan and will distribute for us.

The next priority, for which Mr North has taken responsibility, is to get dates for enactment of the various training and curricular activities.

Role play:

Response from last week: Important to moderate the humour so that the message is taken seriously. Developed discussion about the place of humour

PERMANENT ITEMS:

Incidents Report

Chris had a bit of trouble getting into his room to access his computer to generate the report as the students locked in there were listening to that particular brand of grime that rendered his knocking at the door futile.

SPECIAL TOPIC:

Pride:

We will distribute invitations to the wider school via Form time tomorrow – Dewi: Year 7, Blert: Year 8 , Jack: Year 9, Lethaniel: Year 10. Chris has the consent letters – we also need to communicate what we’re doing to the Sixth form.

Miss Boardman will see if school parade can be cancelled for the purpose of a more intimate approach to students inviting them to join us.

Banner making will happen Tuesday after school in Miss Schuil’s Room – in that time we can rehearse the sort of questions that media might ask at Pride.

Mr MacGregor has confirmed that he will be in attendance, as will Miss Wilson.

Week 14

Apologies – Jack Elderton

New Business – reveal of banner

Matters Arising From Last Week

Stonewall Conference – Agreement not given by school for a third person – this was due to cost

Diversity Across Curriculum – Date of inset needs to be finalised, as well as format. CW suggested tabling the motion until an agreed format on the inset would be finalised.

Incidents – ‘intimidating behaviour’, hitting, 4x homophobia, 5x racist incidents. All homophobic incidents were related to language.

Incidents were accurately recorded but have focused on incidents that were audible and easy to classify.

What do we do with this information? How do we advise teachers on how to react and the nuances of situations and how they record incidents.

When we start helped by teachers to record this information, this will help us move forward.

Pride – CB delivered an assembly on Pride today. Can we please centralise the forms with CW? Students need to know they must be in uniform.

Can guests please be advised to wear clothes in coherence with us – this will ensure that we appear united and in support of each other.

Banner unveiled.

Meeting at Midday (12pm) on intersection of George St and Baker St

Make sure CW has your email so that we can all communicate.

We must meet together because CW has the official documents that allow us entrance.

Week 15 – 9th July

Possible Role-play scenarios for inset – how to deal with:

• It’s just banter
• You’re so gay
• Teacher over-hearing a racist/homophobic comment and not acting upon it. ‘Turning a blinded eye.’
• Racist comments where students of a similar ethnicity are attacking each other for fun
• Promote open discussion to address ignorance and learned behaviour and consistency amongst staff

Constructive behaviour policy (proposed by Nick Martindale & Joel North) – presenting teachers with a clear form of address, student committing the offence is allowed to have their say and then the member of staff has clear guidance on how to act consistently.

There should still be a focus on the inset on the encouragement of celebration of diversity. Ideas mentioned were: International Day and bringing in of food.

Ms Downes expressed her feelings on Black History Month and why this failed in the past. She found that it would only be black members of staff that would organise and partake.

JN raised the idea that the strength of the group could take on events such as Black History month or faith assemblies tied in with separate religious Calendars (Eed, Diwali, Easter…).

NM: there should be a group that would take responsibility for planning assemblies throughout the year. This should then be taken on by the Diversity across the Curriculum group and raised with Ms Wilberforce.

Stonewall conference those meeting should be at reception at 9am

10th September 2015

• Lethaniel – feedback from Stonewall conference. Particular homophobic and racist terms used more than others. Often people use the word without knowing the meaning. Lethaniel has lots of resources, please speak to him if you would like them. Dewi and Lethaniel attended workshops where ideas for tackling prejudice were suggested. Jack found the workshops reassuring.
• JN to arrange dates with Mr Curran for whole staff equality inset and Enrichment staff inset
• Next week’s meeting to be defining school’s goals for equality – please think about these in advance.
• Group to speak at a year 7 assembly to promote the group.
• Jack would like to arrange a collection in school for the refugees in Calais. Can people help with arranging this?

17th September 2015

• Dates have been agreed for insets – Enrichment Inset 23rd September; Whole School Behaviour and Equality Inset 18th November.
• People who want to be involved with each inset should put themselves forward. We must come up with a system for measuring our impact. For instance, a positive impact of equalities training might be that more incidents are recorded. This means that awareness has been raised.
• Mr Waugh has promised that he will distribute to all members of this group some examples of whole school objectives that will give us an idea of how to develop our own goals. Mr Waugh would like to take members of the group to the Board of Governors meeting on the 1st October. The Board of Governors have welcomed this. Dewi has agreed to take responsibility for coordinating this meeting (who takes part and helps develop ideas).
• SIMS Classifications have been removed, we must talk to the pastoral team and ask them to re-classify incidences of prejudice so that we may go through these with the group.

Sample Equalities Objectives for Governing Body (not a proposal, just an example)

• 80% of pupils to make at least 3 and 40 % to make 4 levels progress across KS 2-4 in English and mathematics
• Achieve a year on year (over three years) reduction in the attainment gap in English and mathematics @ KS 4 between pupils with a SEN/D statement and their peers
• Achieve a year on year (over three years) reduction in the % of fixed term exclusions for pupils in specific groups ( PP, SEN/D, WB and Caribbean, African
• Achieve year on year reductions in instances of racist, Homophobic , anti- Semitic , Islamophobic and Slavophobic abuse.