Advancing equality of opportunity: guidance for schools

Published: 1 August 2022

Last updated: 1 August 2022

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What countries does this apply to?

  • England

Some groups of people who share a protected characteristic, such as race or disability, may experience 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:

Remove or reduce disadvantages experienced by people because of their protected characteristic
 

Example –
 

A school has been informed that pupils from the local Irish Traveller community do not have access to the internet at home. The school makes sure the pupils are able to access the work in an alternative format.

Take steps to meet the needs of people who share a protected characteristic

Example –
 

A school that is based in an area where a significant proportion of the school’s pupils are Jewish decides to not put on a performance on a Friday evening.

Encourage participation of people who share a protected characteristic when participation is disproportionately low 
 

Example –

A school identifies that boys are much less likely to participate in arts classes compared with girls. It decides it will make plans to actively encourage more boys to join these classes.

What schools should do

The PSED can remind schools that 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 also be monitored to find out how they are working.

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

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 areas of the school’s 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 suffered 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 and data

Where appropriate, schools should ask for pupils to tell them about their experiences of school activities. This is a good way to understand the needs of different protected characteristics so they are taken into account and bring about positive experiences for these groups.
 

Good practice example: making and revising policies
 

A secondary school decides to revise its literacy policy. The school governing body is responsible for overseeing the implementation of the new policy.

It analyses its data on GCSE English results at Key Stage 4 and discovers there is a significant gap opening up between boys and girls. The head teacher asks those who are developing the policy to consider this gap. In doing so they shouldn’t overlook the needs of girls who are also falling behind in English. As a result, the school decides to try a variety of things, including:

  • inviting male authors to visit the schools and discuss their work
  • developing English lessons which break down stereotypes and misconceptions about boys (for example, that they are not interested in arts or academic success).

These activities are included in the school development plan so the head teacher can report to the school governing body on their progress.

Case law example: making decisions about budgets

A local authority had reduced the school budget for special educational needs and disability without doing a consultation first. A court found that it had breached the PSED (broken the law).

For the local authority to comply with the PSED it needed to demonstrate they had consciously considered (given due regard to) the equality of its pupils. The local authority had been under a duty to gather more information and understand the effect of its decision on disabled pupils and pupils with special educational needs.

Good practice example: making effective use of data and information 
 

A primary school sees from its online performance data that achievement levels of disabled pupils are below national figures. They are also significantly below those in comparative schools.

The school seeks to improve the learning experiences of its disabled pupils to help close attainment gaps. Members of the senior leadership team and staff consult disabled pupils and their parents to get a more in-depth understanding of pupils’ needs, abilities and aspirations.

Staff combine this information with their academic data on pupils to design a series of initiatives for pupils who have special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). The school decides it will:

  • ensure all disabled pupils have the reasonable adjustments they need
  • give training and support to staff
  • monitor the success of the initiative by collecting feedback from parents and pupils and tracking individual progress.

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

Good practice example: improve careers and progression
 

A secondary grammar school looks at its information on what their boys and girls do after they finish school. It finds that few girls are going into science or technical careers or working in trades (this is ‘occupational segregation’ or job stereotyping). It also discovers that many boys and girls from a specific racial group are not choosing engineering subjects. It finds that there are striking differences between the choices made by this racial group and others.

As a result, the school:

  • starts running taster sessions in year nine for all pupils
  • invites male and female speakers who have made non-traditional career choices to share their experiences with pupils.

The school monitors its progress by collecting new information. Early indications show that girls and pupils from this racial group now are more likely to consider non-stereotypical career options and choose science and technical subjects.

Using positive action to advance equality of opportunity

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 who share 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 the 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 faced by particular groups of students.

The Department for Education's guidance on the Equality Act and Chapter 7 of our Technical guidance for schools in England contain more information and examples of positive action.

Page updates

Published:

1 August 2022

Last updated:

1 August 2022

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