Intent

Diversity and inclusion are not stand alone subjects that just occur in lessons or topics: they are essential elements that underpin not only the curriculum but our entire school ethos. Ensuring all children are included in all aspects of school life and feel valued, seen, represented, welcome, safe is a responsibility that falls to all Hillstone staff.

Diversity is defined as the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.
Inclusion is defined as the practice or policy of providing equal access to opportunities and resources for people who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized, such as those who have physical or mental disabilities and members of other minority groups.

An excellent resource that can be utilised for various different year groups, topics and subject areas is the British Council website:

As well as weaving diversity, inclusion and equality throughout our curriculum, it is also so important that we are intentionally thinking about everyday things such as:

• the language that we use in the classroom and around school
• the images that we use on our IWB for every lesson, whether it is spelling, science, maths etc for example: when showing images of families, ensure you include same sex families, blended families, adopted and foster families, single parent families as well as families of different races, ensure you are intentionally challenging stereotypes with these images too (whether that’s gender, age, race etc)
• promoting and reading diverse books that we have in school (as class readers, during reading, writing, topic lessons where suitable, for discussion points)