Public Sector Equality Duty
The public sector Equality Duty (PSED), part of the Equality Act, came into force in April 2011. It requires organisations to eliminate unlawful discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations.
The duty has a key role to play in making sure that fairness is at the heart of public bodies’ work and that public services meet the needs of different groups. It covers a range of public bodies, including academies, schools, NHS organisations, government departments, local authorities, and police authorities.
The duty replaces the three former duties that required government departments, local authorities and other public bodies to take into account gender, race and disability equality both as employers and when making policy decisions and delivering services. The duty standardises this requirement and also extends it to cover age, marriage and civil partnership, religion or belief, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment.
The general equality duty
Section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010 puts various requirements on academies when exercising their functions. The general duty requires academies to have due regard to:
- eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited under the Act
- advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it
- foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.
Having ‘due regard’ means consciously thinking about the three aims of the PSED as part of the process of decision-making. This means that consideration of equality issues must influence the decisions reached by academies, such as:
- how they act as employers
- how they develop, evaluate and review policy
- how they design, deliver and evaluate services
- how they commission and procure from others.
The Trusts Equality Act Duty information can be found here.
The Trusts Equality policies can be found here, Trust Wide Equality Objectives are here
Gender Pay Gap Equality Act Duty
Any UK organisation employing 250 or more employees has to publicly report on its gender pay gap in six different ways:
- The mean and median gender pay gaps;
- The mean and median gender bonus gaps;
- The proportion of men and women who received bonuses; and
- The number of men and women according to quartile pay bands.
The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average earnings between all men and women in an organisation. Nexus MAT Gender Pay Gap Reports can be found here
Modern Slavery Act:
Abbey School adheres to the Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement of the Trust and supports its commitment to preventing modern slavery in all its forms. The Nexus Multi Academy TrUST Modern Day Slavery Policy Statement can be found here