Introduction
This has been designed to be informative to Devon schools most common questions, whilst exploring misconceptions around the protected characteristics for those supporting children and young people.
What are the Protected characteristics?
The Equality act 2010 outlines 9 different characteristics, of which it calls the Protected characteristics. The Equality Act came into force in 2010 to protect everyone, including children and young people, from discrimination and to advance equality and opportunity for all. We must be mindful to not discriminate against people for their protected characteristic.
These Protected characteristics are:
- Age
- Sex (Gender)
- Sexual orientation
- Religion/belief
- Disability
- Marriage and civil partnership
- Race
- Pregnancy and maternity
- Gender reassignment.
The Equality act 2010 outlines what advancing equality of opportunity means:
- To remove or minimise disadvantage associated with a protected characteristic
- To take steps to meet the needs of individuals who share a protected characteristic (where these are different to others)
- To encourage people who share a protected characteristic to participate in public life or other activities where the participation by that group is disproportionately low
Answering your questions
Through the delivery of training and professional development the Ethnically diverse education achievement service has collated the most common questions about protected characteristics and provided clear answers to support you, children and young people.
1) Should our school have an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) policy?
Yes, having an EDI policy is essential. It not only outlines your legal and statutory responsibilities but also demonstrates your commitment to fostering an inclusive environment. Additionally, it serves as a valuable framework for reviewing other policies.
You can access Devon county council’s policy exemplar and guidance from the Devon education services shop.
2) How do we complete the Equality Duty cycle?
The Equality Act 2010 requires schools and educational settings to follow an Equality Duty cycle. As part of this legal obligation, schools must publish Equality Objectives every four years. These objectives should be reviewed annually, with a comprehensive evaluation (deep dive) at the end of the four-year cycle.
All related information must be publicly available on your school’s website. Your objectives should be based on observed areas of concern.
This might be Traveller children not joining residentials or missing out on school trips, or understanding why there are more breeches of your uniform policy from ethnically diverse children (studies show that ethnically diverse children are monitored more on their uniform than White British children).
You can view our Equality duty cycle template on the Devon education services shop.
3) What is Positive action?
Positive Action, as outlined in the Equality Act 2010, is a proactive strategy designed to advance equality of opportunity and reduce disadvantage for underrepresented or marginalised groups. It allows schools to take targeted steps to address disparities and ensure fair opportunities for all students.
For example, various studies show that LGBTQ+ children are over 27% less likely to participate in school sports. 12 To combat this you may outline this area as a concern in you Equality objective and devise a Positive action plan. This plan permits you to go ‘above and beyond’ to mitigate the impact of a child’s gender or sexual orientation to participate in sports in school.
Another useful example can be that when you review the chosen careers your year 10s have chosen for work experience you may notice gender bias – particularly for the girls. In this case your Positive action plan can be to incorporate more education around careers for all genders, bringing in successful female engineers, scientists, fire fighters and entrepreneurs.
A positive action plan should be clear, outlining the concern, steps and intended outcomes. This will provide reassurances to anyone challenging you on your actions.
4) Should I be using the Gender questioning children’s guidance published by the government in 2023?
No, this was published during the previous government and was published for consultation as a draft. This has now been removed from the Government portal for review.
This guidance has had quite considerable pushback from organisations and legal teams for its potential breach of well-established legislation and also the lack of awareness for the positive impact supporting children with their gender can make. All legislation always supersedes guidance and so you should seek to follow the Equality act 2010 and all other legislation in regard to gender questioning children.
Your school and setting should be ensuring that gender questioning and gender diverse children are not being discriminated by in any way. A supportive approach is very much needed for their well-being, attendance and learning outcomes.
5) Aren’t children just picking and choosing their gender identity and sexual orientation – isn’t this just a fad?
In 2019 the World Health Organisation removed gender questioning and Transgender as being classified as a mental health and behaviour disorder. Coupled with updates withing Keeping children safe in education highlights the importance of this area in a child’s development.
Transgender people have deep historical roots, dating back millennia and spanning cultures worldwide, so gender questioning it is not a new concept.
Our children definitely have more exposure to different gender identities and sexual orientations than many of us adults. This is through social media, improving acceptance, recognition and education reforms. With this does come its challenges but also children are developing their own identities more fluidly and confidently. I would include a sentence or two stating that identity development and exploration is an entirely normal part of child development. Allowing a child freedom to explore will not ‘make them gay or trans’, it merely allows them to explore if they are or not.
The Cass review, published in 2024, was an independent nation review of the medical provision for children and young people. Although this focussed on the medical provision, it made it clear that children need a non-judgemental space in which explore their gender identity. Failure to provide this may result in more harm coming to such vulnerable and often misunderstood children. Our roles in schools is to raise awareness, acceptance and bring support to children experiencing questions over their gender or sexual orientation.
6) How can I help to prevent incidents involving assailants with SEN?
Through the Bullying, prejudice and racism incident (BPRI) reporting system we saw last year that over 55% of incidents had assailants with some special educational need.
To reduce this impact on the school community and on the assailants with SEN you should:
- Ensure additional education and clear intervention around racism and discrimination is outlined in your SEND policy. It is crucial that an understanding of identity is thoroughly explored, as often many children with SEN can’t link skin colour, gender/sexual orientation etc as part of someone’s identity – thus they find it easier to dissociate racism and discrimination from an actual person.
- Incorporate reflection activities in your intervention, such as reading or writing social stories, creating a comic strip or designing a poster of a positive role model.
- In every day learning include the practicing of other forms of communication. This is useful as many incidents stem from children being dysregulated and not knowing how to communicate their needs effectively.
- Don’t ignore language or behaviour due to a child’s SEN need. If they have been racist or discriminatory this needs to be dealt with. Excusing this behaviour because they were dysregulated or because they ‘wouldn’t understand’ is not preparing them to be safe adults. You may need to have a separate plan for particular children during these incidents.
7) Are their different forms of discrimination?
Discrimination is any unfair treatment because of a protected characteristic. Broadly speaking there are different forms of discrimination, including Unconscious bias and Micro-aggressions.
Unconscious or implicit bias is when we act with a range of assumptions and biases that we are not aware of.
Examples include:
• Affinity bias – for example being more inclined to hire someone as they share the same culture as you.
• Perception bias- for example that an East Asian child will need less support in Maths.
• Halo effect – this is when you observe a trait in a person and this then feeds the rest of your decision making. For example, assigning a black child to run the 100m, based on their ethnicity.
• Confirmation bias – for example you have a new ethnically diverse child in your class (such as Hindu or a Traveller) and so you research their culture online, but unconsciously dismiss all the information that isn’t what you originally thought.
Micro-aggression
An act or remark that discriminates against one or more of an ethnically diverse group deliberately or by mistake.
Examples include:
- Where are you really from?
- Go back to where you came from.
- You’re dirty, you live in a caravan.
- Is that your real hair? Can I touch it?
- I can’t pronounce your name, can I shorten it?
- You speak English so well.
- You’re really pretty for an Indian girl.
- You’re not like other black people.
- Does your dad own a takeaway?
- Are you forced to wear that?
It is also important to understand that we often talk about overt and covert racism. Overt racism is the easiest racism to spot and can include deliberate isolation or naming calling. Covert racism is the ‘subtler’ racism but can equally have negative impacts on a child. Examples include, only portraying African Americans as slaves and not including positive black role models, or not understanding cultural norms. For example, it is common for many South Asian communities to find looking into someone’s eyes as disrespectful.
Racism is increasing in our Devon schools, and antisemitism is on the increase, with 12% of Jewish children saying they have experienced antisemitism in the UK3 . These global trends very much impact our children and young people
8) What steps can I take in the next term to improve our diverse children’s sense of belonging in school?
- Only 4% of Devon schools website landing pages have a visibly ethnically diverse child. Ensure your publications, school displays and website reflect all your community, including those with disabilities.
- Have an Equality committee. This committee will bring together children, staff, parents and organisations to help discuss equality and support in the review of policies. Having children involved in policy making is key.
- Have a Cultural champions group in your school. This is an amazing opportunity for ethnically diverse children to come together, prepare activities for cultural and religious celebrations and to share concerns or experiences.
- Have an LGBTQ+ or Pride group, where appropriate.
- As part of your subject or year group audits, includes questions around Equality and diversity – exploring where positive role models appear in the curriculum, such as the famous artist with a disability or the famous LGBTQ+ Scientist. Through our pupil forums children have told us that they don’t see themselves in their learning and rarely see positive role models.
- When you are covering equality and diversity topics in assemblies, give children pre-warning. Through pupil forums children have made it clear that they want the true facts about areas such as racism and homophobia – but that they would like some warning before hand, so that they don’t feel targeted.
- As part of your Relational or Behaviour policy explicitly outline what intervention will look like for any assailants of racism or prejudice. There are lots of resources on our webpages and in our Good practice page.
- Agree consistent language with your school staff.
- Have a Healthy relationships week, where you tie in relationships, identity, respect, racism and discrimination. These are often taught separately in schools, and this makes it difficult for children to ‘connect the dots’
- By the age of 7 most gender biases have been formed. If you are a primary school or early years setting set out a Positive action plan to reduce the risk of negative gender biases
9) What should we be doing following the April Supreme court ruling regarding gender?
In April the UK Supreme Court made a ruling in relation to the Equality Act 2010 that will have implications for the schools and the wider community.
The UK Supreme Court ruled last week that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer specifically to biological women and biological sex. This decision will have implications for policies across the UK.
As part of the ruling, Lord Hodge was also clear in stating;
“The Equality Act 2010 gives transgender people protection, not only against discrimination through the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, but also against direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment in substance in their acquired gender.”
The legal implications of this ruling for schools and the wider community are yet to be fully understood. Therefore, we await further guidance from the DfE and the government’s Gender questioning guidance in this respect, along with the Government and other public bodies. We will update you further following this.
In the meantime ensure your risk assessments have been reviewed and that you have a clear supportive plan in place for transgender and gender questioning children and staff. Transgender and gender questioning children and staff may find this an extremely anxious and distressing time. For children who are anxious and feeling unsafe you can complete a My safety plan with them to help ease this anxiety.