Lewisham and Southwark Colleges are committed to promoting equality and opposing discrimination on the grounds of:
- Race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
- Religious or political beliefs, unless in the exercising of those beliefs an individual offends the letter or spirit of the single equality scheme
- Age, gender, marital status or family responsibility
- Disability
- Social class, economic/employment status or trade union activities
- Sexuality or HIV/AIDS status
- Transgender, gender identity or gender reassignment
Lewisham and Southwark Colleges have formulated their own equal opportunities policy, embedded in our single equalities scheme, along with grievance, bullying and harassment, and whistleblowing policies to combat discriminatory attitudes and practices whether these are expressed by individuals or through institutional practices.
The Colleges are committed to:
- A programme of positive action to make these policies effective
- Monitoring and evaluating our progress
- Targeting areas for improvement.
The Colleges also wish to champion diversity and inclusion by ensuring that:
- We create a visibly diverse environment that values difference and raises aspiration
- We offer flexible opportunities that meet local learning need and enable all students to realise their potential
- All governors and staff are clear about standards and strategies to meet diverse learner needs and are equipped to respond to these needs effectively
- We secure the fullest participation of all students and staff in all areas of College life and act to address under-representation
- We develop a staff profile, management team and governing body that reflect the student community
- We undertake rigorous and open monitoring of learner and staff performance and experience, to identify and act on equality gaps
- We develop comprehensive and imaginative feedback systems to capture learner, staff, governor and stakeholder perceptions of how we are doing and how we could improve
- We value learner and staff feedback in order to remain alert to patterns of inequality and related concerns that are not identified through statistical monitoring tools
