Best Practice

Gwinear School

Gwinear School is a small, rural primary in the West of the County. In 2007 they identified that the school was not doing all it could to be inclusive of all peoples, cultures and backgrounds. They decided that the best way to change this was to complete an equality and diversity ‘audit’ to show what was working well, and which areas needed improvement. The school sent a questionnaire to every parent, member of staff and governor. Every child was consulted during school time and the younger children were led in a ‘circle time’ discussion about differences. The school came up with an action plan of points to improve its inclusive ethos. These points included buying new books and materials which better reflected contemporary British culture, peoples and communities and staff training on all aspects of equality and diversity. They updated their anti-bullying and equality schemes to ensure they were as inclusive as possible.  

The school also decided to take all of the children ‘off-curriculum’ for a week in July 2008 allowing them to run a collapsed timetable and a ‘Modern Britain Week’. The school made sure that the children learnt something about all the different equality strands. In partnership with the Equality and Diversity Service and ABC Gwinear ran activities including Russian Art and lessons on migrant workers in a Yurt, work on gypsies, roman and traveller people in the Traveller-Space bus, LGBT stories with a local gay dad, Samba drumming and the preparation of a big, Moroccan feast on the last day. All the children went on trips to Goonhilly Earth Station to learn how communication is making the world seem even smaller, and the Royal Cornwall Museum to study traditional Cornish stories. A musician led the children in singing fusion songs merging traditional Cornish sea-shanties with Eastern European chants. 

Ofsted had just assessed Gwinear as an ‘outstanding school’.