At St Mary’s our mission statement is clear: We endeavour to give all children the best educational opportunities within a Catholic Christian community that values the individual, recognises the worth of each person and welcomes everyone. When speaking to pupils recently they stated that the best thing about St Mary’s is “the diversity of pupils in the school community and how the school celebrates these.”  

We aim to combine excellence in teaching with enjoyment in learning through the provision of an inclusive broadly-based curriculum that promotes spiritual, moral, cultural, social, mental and physical development and prepares children for the opportunities and responsibilities of secondary education and later life.

Our school aims to provide an environment where all feel valued and free from discrimination, reflecting the world in all its rich diversity. We are committed to promoting the understanding of the principles and practices of equality – treating all those associated with our school as individuals, according to their needs, with an awareness of our diverse society and appreciation of the value of difference.

We are required to publish equality information as well as equality objectives, which show how we plan to reduce or remove particular inequalities or disadvantages. This information is reviewed and updated annually.

The equality duty supports good education and improves pupil outcomes. It helps us as a school to identify priorities such as underperformance, poor progression, and bullying. It does this by requiring it to collate evidence, take a look at the issues and consider taking action to improve the experience of different groups of pupils. It then helps us to focus on what can be done to tackle these issues and to improve outcomes by developing measurable equality objectives.

We welcome our general duty under the Equality Act 2010 to eliminate discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to foster good relations, and our specific duties to publish information every year about our school population; to explain how we have due regard for equality; and to publish equality objectives which show how we plan to tackle particular inequalities, and reduce or remove them.

We also welcome our duty under the Education and Inspections Act 2006 to promote community cohesion.