Teaching the Protected Characteristics
At St John's Catholic Primary School, in line with our Christian values of respect and acceptance, we believe in the importance of equality and everybody having the same opportunities. This is modelled by our staff and taught through lessons and other experiences both discretely and explicitly.
As part of our PSHE curriculum, we follow a programme called No Outsiders. No Outsiders has three core values:
- Respect for diversity through education in schools;
- Commitment to community cohesion through understanding and acceptance of difference;
- Promotion of dialogue to counter fear and hate in society.
The No Outsiders programme involves the use of age appropriate story books to explore seven of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010. These include:
- age;
- disability;
- gender reassignment;
- race;
- religion or belief;
- gender;
- sexual orientation.
We strive to ensure that our pupils are surrounded by a consistent message:
- There are no outsiders here;
- God loves each and every one of us;
- Everyone is different;
- We like being different;
- We are all equal in our difference;
- I can get along with you even if we are different;
- We live in the U.K., our British values support this and the law says this too.
