'The special qualities, differences and abilities of everyone in our Almond Hill community are valued and celebrated'
Miss Porter - Diverity Lead
Equality and diversity at Almond Hill
Our school is committed to ‘Aim High’ and ensuring equality of education and opportunity for all pupils, staff, carers, and parents who form part of our school community and receive services from our school. We aim to promote an ethos of inclusivity and to celebrate the diversity of all those who are connected with our school to ensure all groups prosper regardless of the protective characteristics.
At Almond Hill, we aim to foster good relationship between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. We promote friendship, tolerance, and understanding of uniqueness. This may be achieved through teaching in RE and PSHCE lessons, in reading text and stories from different cultures, learning a modern language or exploring music from different parts of the world for example. We discuss world and current issues in assemblies and invite our children to lead assemblies. We promote links with our local community and welcome visitors with special knowledge to support our learning and understanding.
What is equality?
Equality is ensuring individuals or groups that are not treated differently or less favourably on the basis of specific protected characteristic, including areas of race, gender, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation and age.
How is the Equality Act 2010 relevant to young people's lives?
Discriminatory behaviour often stems from ignorance. A lack of understanding of different cultures, beliefs or lifestyles is often a factor in things like bullying.
It’s essential to educate young people about equality, diversity, identity and human rights so that they learn to respect others, celebrate diversity and recognise prejudice and discrimination.
As children get older, they’ll increasingly find themselves in positions where issues of inequality and discrimination can impact them: in school, in further education, in work and in wider society.
Teaching children about their rights and the rights of others is important, and knowledge of the Equality Act 2010 will mean children can speak out on issues related to equality, now and in the future.
What is diversity?
Diversity involves promoting and celebrating the differences between us. It’s associated with promoting human rights, and is based on principles like dignity and respect. It requires taking into account and valuing people’s different backgrounds, knowledge and experiences, and creating an environment that makes positive use of these differences.
What’s the difference between equality and diversity?
Equality involves making sure everyone has equal opportunities, ensuring that nobody is treated differently because of protected characteristics.
Diversity involves considering the differences between people and valuing these differences as a positive.
On Tuesday 11th November, year 5 and 6 welcomed Emma, an 'expert by experience', who gave an assembly on her experiences of going through primary and secondary school with autism, scoliosis, learning disabilities and social anxiety. She spoke to the children about what makes her different and the pros and cons of this. She spoke about her positive and negative experiences at school and how her role now is to help other children with special educational needs and disabilities to have a more positive schooling experience. The children listened really respectfully and asked some interesting questions at the end. A massive thank you to Emma for coming in and speaking to our pupils and teaching us lots of new information as well as reminding us that it's okay to be different.
A massive thank you to all of the volunteers who came in on our diversity day- the children loved learning about such a range of different parts of diversity. We hope the children can take all the learning from the day forwards with them and keep Almond Hill, and our wider community, feeling inclusive and celebrative of everyone's uniqueness! Thank you to everyone who helped contribute to the children's half term project too. So many children had something to share with their class which made the day really successful!
From Miss Porter our Diversity Lead
Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed discussing what they felt made them unique. We celebrated the rich diversity in our classes and researched diversity in the world around us. A huge shout out to the lovely parents who came in to talk about their backgrounds and interests. The children loved it! At the end of the day, we created artwork to celebrate our diversity. What a super day!
Year 3 Team
On Tuesday 4th November, we learnt about what diversity is and how it makes us all different. We learnt about how being different can impact our daily lives. Many visitors came in to our classes and talked to us about their diversity and how they are different from others. Being diverse can make you successful and happy. We learnt about each other, our teachers and other people too.
Written by Elliot and Ishaq in 5P
A note from Miss Porter Sharks were so lucky to have lots of parent visitors come into class on Tuesday 4th November - Diversity Day. Parents shared their stories about family heritage, culture and the importance of recognising the beauty in being different! We had parents that came in, photographs sent in and even parents on online Teams calls! The Sharks learnt how to sign their name in BSL and even learnt some Welsh (which they have since got quite good at!). Big thank you to all parents who supported this lovely day.
Children from Almond Hill visited Fairlands School on Monday 27th January to represent the Voices of Hertfordshire. They discussed what SEND means and how this impacts on inclusion and designed posters around this. We also played a game to promote thoughts around inclusion.
Our volunteers for Voices of Hertfordshire had their second session at Shephalbury Park primary school. They were involved in discussing scenarios where those who are neurodivergent might find it challenging. They were fully engaged and gave many great suggestions. There were representatives from the NHS mental health teams who were interested in their views on what mental health means. They also started developing their ideas for when V of H take over social media on 3rd December.
On Monday, the Y6 children were very lucky to have a visitor from the local Jewish community. Mrs Lederman spoke about her life growing up as a Jew and the religion in the broader sense. This linked in really well with the work the children are currently doing on World War II in both English and History. The children got to try on some traditional Jewish clothing: The 'tallit gadol' and the 'kippah'. The children were even treated to some honey cake - a favoured Jewish treat.
This week, Almond Hill were the host to a county wide initiative which aims to give children with a disability, hidden disability or a lived experience of one, a chance to share their views with a wide audience. The children involved were great at sharing their opinions and showed maturity when they were asked to contribute in front of others.
The next meeting will be at a different Stevenage school in November (date to be confirmed) and we will be working towards developing ideas of how to provide social media content for #SENDtakeover2024. This is when Voices of Hertfordshire have been given the chance to be in charge of Hertfordshire County Council, Voices of Hertfordshire, Services for young people and Health social media channels for the day on the Tuesday 3rd December 2024 as part of World Disability Day. Well done to our school representatives!
Each classroom throughout the school has a wonderful, unique board dedicated to the heritage and culture of the children in that class.
Some children in Year 5 recently took part in a survey about diversity, heritage and racism. They were asked a variety of questions and below are some of the things they said.
The children liked having their heritage shown on display and found it interesting to learn about other children's heritage too.
Some children referred to specific lessons where their personal heritage was mentioned (learning about Denmark in history and a Polish architect in art) and said it made them feel proud and they liked other children learning about something special to them.
One child learnt things about their heritage that they didn't know before!
The children felt that adults in the school knew a lot about racism and could deal with incidents well.
-The children all said they felt safe at our school.
The children knew what to do if they saw or heard something they thought was racist.
Have a look at the fabulous classroom displays below:
Thank you everyone who took part in our Easter home learning project. We have had a huge number of amazing work showcasing how different and special we all are. The children (and parents, I'm sure!) have put in so much hard work into their beautiful posters, many of which are on display in classrooms now. Here is a lovely selection:
