No Outsiders

We are a Rights Respecting School with No Outsiders!

At The Acorns Primary and Nursery School, we believe in the importance of equality and everybody having the same opportunities. This is modelled by our staff and taught through lessons and other experiences both discretely and explicitly. One way this is acheived is through our Equality Weeks, where important themes are taught through our No Outsiders chosen texts.

The No Outsiders scheme was created by Andrew Moffat MBE, who was nominated for the Global Teacher Prize in 2018-19. No Outsiders has three core values:

• Respect for diversity through education in schools;
• Commitment to community cohesion through understanding and acceptance of difference;
• Promotion of dialogue to counter fear and hate in society.

No Outsiders is a scheme that involves the use of age appropriate story books (see below for a list of the books we use) to teach about seven of the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010. These include:

• age;
• disability;
• gender reassignment;
• race;
• religion or belief;
• gender;
• sexual orientation.

It is important we create a school culture in which children, staff and the whole school community work together to foster an environment of inclusivity through effective spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) and character education.

We believe that it is vital that our pupils can discuss inappropriate and discriminative language and understand how to address boundaries in order to prepare them for a future in modern Britain.

We strive to ensure that our pupils are surrounded by a consistent message:

• There are no outsiders here;
• Everyone is different;
• We like being different;
• We are all equal in our difference;
• I can get along with you even if we are different;
• We live in the U.K., our British values support this and the law says this too.

We will work alongside our families, parents and carers to deliver this message of inclusivity. You are very welcome to book an appointment to speak to a mmeber of the Senior Management Team or your child’s class teacher to discuss this approach and to view the picture books we use for this.

At The Acorns, there are no outsiders – Everyone is welcome!

• No Outsiders Parent Information Booklet