EQualities @ Highcrest
"Underpinned by its strong pastoral practice and reflective inclusive culture, the school has established its identity as a caring, versatile and safe educational establishment, serving the local community the best that the school can achieve in such a diverse residential community." IQM Flagship Assessor: December 2023
At The Highcrest Academy, we actively strive to promote equality and to celebrate the diversity within our school, our community and the world beyond High Wycombe.
As a school, we have a duty under the Equality Act 2010, to ensure protection on the grounds of specific characteristics (referred to as protected characteristics). For schools, this means that it is unlawful to discriminate against students or treat them less favourably because of their sex; race; disability; religion or belief; gender reassignment; sexual orientation; pregnancy or maternity. Marriage and civil partnerships and age are also ‘protected characteristics’. Naturally, these apply to our staff and not our students.
What is our duty?
- To eliminate discrimination, harassment, and victimisation
- To promote equality of opportunity and outcomes for all
- To foster good relationships between people of different groups
- To support our students in becoming kind, responsible and knowledgeable global citizens
- To meet the statutory duties of the Equalities Act 2010
Equalities Award
This academic year (2024/2025) we are working towards achieving the new Equalities Quality Mark (Bronze award), awarded by EqualiTeach.
This award provides us with support and guidance so that we can effectively promote equality, diversity and inclusion within Highcrest, and provides us with an opportunity to showcase our commitment to equality. The Award has been designed by a team of equality and education experts to allow the development of best practice around four main themes: Leadership and Management, Behaviour and Welfare, Teaching and Learning and Personal Development of Pupils. There are three levels of award: bronze, silver and gold. We are working towards the silver level, and we expect it will take approximately 12 months to achieve this award.
As a richly diverse academy, we have always worked hard to meet our statutory duties: we have numerous initiatives within the academy to promote both the diversity and disability agendas, all of which are well attended by students and supported by staff. Our Well-being Manager is Stonewall trained on how to offer LGBTQ+ support and in turn has trained a staff working group.
We are also currently working on a programme called Equally Safe to help us to reduce incidents of identity-based bullying within the academy and to develop tailored, whole-school approaches to support equality. The programme, funded by the Department for Education, has provided training for key members of staff and has supported us in drawing up an action plan to plan out future initiatives. The programme will also train a group of students to become agents for change and the Academy Council will be involved in this project.
Click here to view our Equal Opportunities (Pupils) Policy.
Click here to view our Equality Objectives for 2024 – 2027.
Accessibility Policy
The purpose of the accessibility plan is to increase the extent to which disabled pupils can participate in the curriculum, improve the physical environment of the school to enable disabled pupils to take better advantage of education, benefits, facilities and services provided and improve the availability of accessibility information for disabled pupils and parents.
Click here to view our Accessibility Plan.