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To comply with the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED), schools must publish at least one equality objective. This makes their priorities for equality available to the public.
The objectives should be:
clearly defined
specific and measurable
agreed with the school's governing body or academy trust board
reviewed and published at least every four years (this is a legal requirement).
As far as possible, the objectives should align with the most significant equality challenges facing your school.
Larger schools are likely to have more objectives than smaller ones. We recommend that schools:
publish more than one objective at least every four years
include their objectives in their school's improvement and development plans.
Showing whether you have achieved your objective
Schools should be able to measure how successful they have been in achieving the objective. For example, if the objective was to improve low levels of attainment in mathematics for girls, or reduce the number of homophobic incidents, how will your school know it has succeeded?
We recommend asking pupils about their attitudes to, or experiences of, their school. This may reveal problems that lead to new policies. Following the creation of any new policies, schools can ask the questions again to see if pupils' attitudes or experiences have changed. This could help with increasing understanding between faith groups, for example.
Good practice example: prioritising equality objectives
A school collects evidence that identifies a number of equality issues. It needs to prioritise the issues that are the most significant and prepare and publish its equality objectives.
To do this, it shares a ‘shortlist’ with its board of governors, school council and parent and teacher associations (PTA). By publishing the feedback it receives from this exercise, the school can help the public to understand why they prioritised one equality issue over another. This should help to prevent the school from being questioned over its choice of equality objectives.
The PSED will help schools to focus attention on gaps in performance between different groups of pupils such as:
girls and boys
pupils from different ethnic groups
disabled and non-disabled pupils.
Good practice example: identifying priorities
An inner-city academy needs to decide what action to take under the PSED. It analyses its data on attainment. It finds particularly concerning data showing that Gypsy and Roma pupils at Key Stage 4 are underachieving compared to other pupils at the same level. The school's data also reveals that this is leading to fewer Gypsy and Roma pupils progressing to higher education.
The academy has a relatively high number of Gypsy and Roma pupils so it decides this is a priority issue. It decides to set an equality objective under the PSED to tackle the underachievement of its Gypsy and Roma pupils.
To achieve this, it plans to organise a range of activities, including:
study skills support
mentoring
additional classes
higher education visits.
As part of its improvement plan, the school will continue to monitor the achievement levels of Gypsy and Roma pupils and where the pupils go after they finish school. The school is able to report a positive impact of its targeted activities.
This example shows that decision-makers will have to balance competing priorities and use their discretion when setting their equality objectives. It also illustrates the importance of having good evidence in the early stages of decision-making. In this case, good evidence supports the school's decision to focus on this group of pupils. It shows that it is reasonable to set an equality objective focused on this group's attainment levels.
