At St Barnabas, we follow the Church of England’s guidance to schools on valuing all of God’s children. We live this through our Christian vision of “Inspired through Jesus, we encourage one another to be our best selves”.

We aim to teach the children to respect and accept difference and diversity using the Equality Act 2010 as a solid foundation. We have a duty to prepare them for modern life in Britain. In school and their future workplace, they will be working alongside peers and colleagues of different race, religion, gender, age, disability and sexual orientation.

We expect the children to express their views with kindness and consideration for the feelings of others. Our key message is that we are all equal and we all belong, we are all insiders, there are no outsiders in our school.

In order to promote this ethos, we have chosen to use a resource that embeds equality, called ‘No Outsiders.’ The Equality Act (2010) is British Law and protects people from discrimination in the workplace and wider society. It refers to following ‘protected characteristics.’

• Race
• Religion
• Gender and gender identify
• Age
• Sexual orientation
• Marriage and civil partnership
• Disability

The No Outsiders resource includes lesson plans based on 35 children’s picture books, many of which you may already have read with your children. The class discussion is child-led and offers opportunity for the children to make observations and consider the simple messages in the text, all of which link to the Equality Act in an age appropriate way