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Celebrating Differences
At WPA, 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, not only as part of our Annual Diversity week, but in our day-to-day lives.
Culture
Our curriculum has been revised 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.
Religion
Our rich and diverse RE curriculum provides children with the knowledge about the main religions of this country. We follow the Sutton SACRE Agreed Syllabus. This provides opportunities for children to learn about and learning from religions. We have planned to ensure that all pupils have the opportunity to visit a range of places or worship as well as welcome visitors from different faiths into our school.
Families
LGBT stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender. The “plus” represents other sexual identities.
At WPA, 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 at WPA 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 WPA, the children learn about and celebrate different family structures primarily through our RHE 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.
Resources and useful links
BBC Radio 4 - Woman's Hour, 17/08/2019 - How to talk to your children about race and racism
How to talk to your child about race | BabyCentre
LGBT+ Books & Educational Resources | Pop'n'Olly (popnolly.org)