Celebrating Difference at Gainsborough Primary School
At Gainsborough, we celebrate diversity through our lessons, assemblies, events and day-to-day interactions. We promote tolerance and understanding amongst our community and as such, we want to instil these values in our pupils, encouraging them to be engaged in issues surrounding race, gender and other aspects of diversity.
We recognise that our community is diverse in many ways. Whether this be through culture, religion or family make-up and we activity celebrate these differences across the school year.
Culture
Our curriculum has been created to embed diversity through culture and race so that this becomes part of our children's learning journey. We continue to celebrate national events. Through our curriculum we ensure that our children develop an understanding and appreciation of cultures and beliefs which are different to their own.
Throughout the year we celebrate key individuals in each year group that represent people from a range of different communities. This forms our Black History Month and LGBT+ Month learning.
As well as day to day celebrations of diversity, we also celebrate:
- World's Biggest Coffee Morning with MacMillan
- Dyslexia Awareness Week
- Children's Mental Health Week
- Anti Bullying Week
- Martin Luther King Day
- Holocaust Memorial Day
- International Women's Day
- Autism Awareness Day
- Windrush Day
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Families
LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender. The “plus” represents other sexual identities.
At Gainsborough, we celebrate that our children come from different families. We know that like many other schools in the UK, some children have a mum and a dad, some children live with just one parent, some children live with their grandparents and some children have two mums or two dads.
In 2018, almost 250,000 people in London identified as Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual and there are now at least 20,000 children growing up in same-sex parent families. Many children will have or know relatives, family friends or neighbours who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Trans. It is important to us that we represent different families in our community as we know that children who see their families reflected in class and around the school will grow up to be confident, respectful and successful citizens.
Aside from our moral duty, it is also our statutory duty to teach children about different families and relationships and therefore all primary schools in England are expected to teach Relationships Education. In teaching Relationships Education we ensure that the needs of all pupils are appropriately met, and that all pupils understand the importance of equality and respect. We ensure that all of our teaching is sensitive and age appropriate in approach and content.
In order to prepare children for the diverse society they live in and to prevent bullying and discrimination, it is important to talk about difference in general and different families in particular. At Gainsborough, the children learn about and celebrate different family structures primarily through our RSHE curriculum and science scheme of work. All children are encouraged to talk positively about their own and each other’s families and the school does not tolerate any homophobic, biophobic or transphobic language.
Religion
At Gainsborough, we follow the Newham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education in accordance with Newham’s Standing Advisory Council of Religious Education’ (SACRE). We ensure to be inclusive of not only the study of religious and non-religious teachings and beliefs, but its relationship with the children’s developing personal worldview. This develops the children’s open-mindedness and understanding of other cultures and religions in line with British Values. We aim to show the significance of learning Religion and Worldviews through showing different career opportunities available as part of our ‘Future Me’ initiative, e.g. linking religious beliefs from sports to politics, as well as humanitarian.
Throughout the year we celebrate religious festivals, as well as visit places of worship.