Belonging

Our commitment to Equality, diversity and actively promoting belonging at EGA

Dear parents, students and members of the Islington wider community,

Inclusion and social justice are principles we hold dear at EGA. We are a school committed to changing lives for all our students for the better and are guided through this by our commitment to work, believe, achieve and innovate without limits, celebrating and valuing the rich diversity at the heart of school life.

As a school we are committed in our journey to being actively anti-racist and celebrate the diverse nature of our school. School must be a place where challenges about society are tackled to support everyone. Education plays a critical role in tackling injustice and discrimination of all kinds, and we must ensure that we are supporting our students through both our curriculum and the building and developing of skills and knowledge, to question racism wherever they encounter it.

We started our ‘Belonging’ work in 2020 and continue on this journey and have much more to do and to learn as we progress.An equalities panel consisting of all members of the EGA community come together to look closely at all aspects of school life to make sure everyone is respected, valued, treated fairly and protected. We continue to think of ways to promote equality and diversity at EGA. Parents of course are a key part of this process and we will be looking to engage with you, our families, to support our journey as it progresses.

I will not have the first-hand experience that many of you will have, however I want to assure you of my absolute and ongoing commitment to address injustice wherever it occurs, and am confident that together we can emerge stronger and more united for the betterment of all.

Sarah Beagley

Headteacher EGA School

Our Belonging Statement

EGA is committed to work to become a school you can truly belong in order to benefit every member of the school community. Set out below is the framework within which we are working:

To ensure the voices of all members of the school are heard in order to develop a collective understanding of the experiences of our community
To interrogate and modify the curriculum we offer, ensuring that we are representing in positive ways the rich cultural heritage of all members of our community
To ensure that we teach challenging and culturally diverse content with honesty, confidence and integrity, and that through our curriculum we question existing ideas of canons and cultural capital
To ensure education, dialogue and reflection - as opposed to judgement - are at the heart of how we approach change
To look at the systems and structures which underpin the work of the school to ensure that no staff are held back from developing, as and when opportunities arise
To be clear in our message to the wider community the values which are at the heart of our school in relation to diversity
To ensure all students are supported to develop themselves through both the academic curriculum but the range and accessibility of the 'super curriculum’ and the pastoral curriculum
To provide ongoing CPD to staff to ensure we continue to develop our conversations around diversity in a meaningful way
To recognise the unconscious bias that can exist in our society and in ourselves, and seek to challenge and erase it wherever possible
To look at the power of language and how we use it positively, sensitively and consistently when discussing issues of race and inequality and also when addressing students and each other
To normalise a culture in which dialogue about race and cultural diversity is possible, good intention is assumed, feedback is welcomed, and fear of making mistakes does not hinder progress
To ensure student leadership gives a voice to students in the running of the school and is encouraged to be active in the positive promotion of anti-racism
To continue and promote our universal educational offer of ‘belonging’ to all our students who have a firm commitment to EGA being an anti racist school
To find innovative and engaging ways in promoting equality and diversity through our Equalities Panel forum

Our Equalities Panel

Our team is made up of representatives from all areas of the school community: teaching staff, non teaching staff, senior leaders and administrative staff and most importantly students. Our Student Equalities Panel is drawn from all year groups. Students are supervised by one or more of the members of the adult diversity team.

Our commitment as a school and our journey so far

We have acknowledged and responded to students as they tell us about their experiences online, in the community and at school.
There has been active recruitment of staff to better represent our diverse community.
In 2019 we delivered “Power of language” workshops to our year 7 students as part of our “Belonging” commitment to students and staff. In September 2020, we held an all staff CPD focus on becoming an anti racist school.
Our SPSHE curriculum from years 7 to 11 regularly covers issues on racism, islamophobia, unconscious bias , LGBT inclusion and gender equality.
We have embedded training for our staff on scrutinising the curriculum at EGA and have begun work on reviewing our curricula across the school
We have created a resource bank/ bibliography for our staff to access in regards to addressing issues relating to race and anti racism
We continue to promote CPD opportunities to further develop our students and staff understanding of equality, diversity and inclusion.

Our pledge:

We will continue to confront challenging issues face on
We commit to zero tolerance on racism and discrimination in our school community
We continue to listen to our students and staff regarding their experiences
We will continue to train our staff to have difficult conversations around race and racism