Advancing equality of opportunity: guidance for schools

What is meant by advancing equality of opportunity?

Some groups of people who share a protected characteristic, such as race or disability, may have a particular disadvantage or have particular needs. The Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) means public authorities (including schools) must consider whether they should take action to meet these needs or reduce inequality.

The Equality Act 2010 says public authorities should think about the need to:

1. remove or reduce disadvantages experienced by people because of their protected characteristic

 2. meet the needs of people who share a protected characteristic

3. encourage people with protected characteristic to participate in public life and activities when their participation is disproportionately low. 

Schools should consider how each decision, action and policy may affect pupils with different protected characteristics. This can help identify what the priorities are.

Equality is not necessarily about treating all pupils in an identical way. It is about developing different strategies to meet the various needs of pupils. These strategies should be monitored to find out how they are working.

Advancing equality of opportunity encourages schools to consider how to increase the participation of their pupils with different protected characteristics in areas of school life where it is disproportionately low. This extends beyond the curriculum to activities such as organising work experience opportunities.

Three questions to answer

When creating a new policy, taking an action or making a decision, you may find it useful to answer these three questions:

1. Does this remove or reduce disadvantages experienced by pupils with particular protected characteristics?
2. Will this affect different groups of pupils differently? (If 'yes' what will you do to make sure nobody is disadvantaged?) 
3. Is there any way you can encourage these groups of pupils to become more involved with the school or create opportunities for them that they wouldn’t otherwise enjoy?

Collecting and using information (data)

Where appropriate, schools should ask pupils to tell them about their experiences of school activities. This is a good way to understand the needs of different pupils with protected characteristics and give all pupils a positive experience at school.

The following case study shows how you can make improvements at your school by separating (disaggregating) your data according to different protected characteristics.

Positive action can help schools meet their PSED obligations, particularly the need to advance equality of opportunity. Schools can take positive action to support pupils with protected characteristics if they have reason to think that those pupils:

• experience a disadvantage because of their protected characteristic
• have needs that are different from those who do not share that characteristic
• participate less often in an activity compared to pupils without that characteristic.

Positive action is not a requirement but it can allow schools to take proportionate action to reduce or remove the disadvantages experienced by particular groups of students. For example a school could create targeted resources to benefit a particular disadvantaged group of pupils.

Positive action and positive discrimination

Positive action is not the same as positive discrimination. Positive discrimination involves giving a particular disadvantaged group more favourable treatment over others.

Positive discrimination is not allowed under the Equality Act 2010. There are some specific exemptions to this. For further information on the difference between positive action and positive discrimination, see paragraph 10.7 of our statutory code of practice for services, public functions and associations.