At NGA we try to celebrate our diversity. We are so lucky to have pupils and staff from such a wide variety of different races, faiths and backgrounds - from countries all around the world. Our curriculum teaches about inequality and our policies state that we won’t accept it. But we are committed to doing more.

To challenge the present requires our pupils to understand the struggles of the past, to properly appreciate each other’s culture and heritage and to have pride in who we are. We challenge our teachers to constantly appraise the curriculum in their subject areas and whether it fully embraces the following
statements of intent:

“We want the young women who leave our academy to have choice. To feel they can challenge stereotypes and break from tradition. To be socially mobile. To be well rounded, self-confident and proud of who they are. To think both locally and globally.”

“We want our curriculum to reflect what it means to be a young, British woman today; for our pupils
to know about the struggle and sacrifice that has led to the freedom and opportunity they have. We want them to know about their heritage and culture, and that of others in our community, enabling them to celebrate it and contribute to the progress of democracy as global citizens.”

 

As a school, we understand that we are an essential part of the ongoing process of change. We continually reflect on our policies and curriculum and implement change where needed. There is no place for prejudice, of any kind, in any society or community and we will not tolerate it in ours.

We are determined that the young women who attend Nottingham Girls’ Academy continue to be educated about how essential equality is. We want them to be equipped with the knowledge and understanding to peacefully challenge inequality wherever they see it. The adults in our community need to model that for them. With your support we can make sure our children grow up in a fairer, kinder and more equal society.

Curriculum Equality Group

Updated 10 December 2020

In June 2020, we established our Curriculum Equality Group. This is an independent group of staff, parents and pupils, who review and advise on the content of our curriculum in order to achieve the above goals. 
 

Despite the challenges of meeting during the Coronavirus pandemic, they have begun to make progress. Below is a piece they wrote for the December Newsletter.

Back in July, like a lot of things the Black Lives Matter movement acted as catalyst for us to really be held accountable for the change that we want to see in our community and our curriculum. The first step we took in July was creating a staff Curriculum Equality Group. The role of this group aims to challenge, support and respond to subject curricular, to be the voice of the community and to facilitate change. We will highlight the protected characteristics in accordance with The Equality Act: age; disability; gender reassignment; race; religion or belief; sex; sexual orientation; marriage and civil partnership; and pregnancy and maternity. We will also create resources for staff and students to discuss and will facilitate training so that all our community feels empowered, confident and knowledgeable enough to have discussions about them all. 

Faculties have been revisiting their individual curricula, identifying changes to the literature we read and the topics we cover and finding ways to better highlight the diversity of key contributors to their field.

Last month we started a Year 9 Equality group, so far, we have discussed why they wanted to be there and what they wanted to get from the group. Our intention is to research, discuss and create a resource for the year group about what they think will help in understanding racism. We have expanded that now and the first Year 10 Equality group session was due to take place on Tuesday 2 December, it will be ran in a similar way, so if you still want to get involved then please send a message to curriculumequality@nottinghamgirlsacademy.org.

An important part of this is educating ourselves and a starting point for us has been to invest in some reading regarding race, bias, discrimination, equality and inspirational people.