Equality Objectives
Statutory Requirement – Publishing your Equality objectives IS a statutory requirement. This information is applicable to both Maintained and Academy schools.
Public bodies, including local-authority-maintained schools, are covered by the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act 2010. This means you have to publish:
- details of how your school is complying with the public sector equality duty– you should update this every year
- your school’s equality objectives – you should update this at least once every 4 years
Details of these publishing obligations are set out in Equality Act 2010: advice for schools
You need to include details of:
- eliminating discrimination (see the Equalities Act 2010)
- improving equality of opportunity for people with protected characteristics
- consulting and involving those affected by inequality in the decisions your school or college takes to promote equality and eliminate discrimination (affected people could include parents, pupils, staff and members of the local community)
How to publish information
It will be up to schools themselves to decide in what format they publish equality information. For most schools, the simplest approach may be to set up an equalities page on their website where all this information is present or links to it are available. The regulations are not prescriptive and it will be entirely up to schools to decide how they publish the information, so long as it is accessible to those members of the school community and the public who want to see it.
