Discrimination

Schools must be committed to creating an environment where staff do not suffer discrimination, harassment or bullying.

A school as an employer has an obligation to uphold the law and protect staff from harassment and bullying and expects all staff to abide by such legislation.

Preventing harassment or bullying and dealing effectively with complaints of such are important management tasks.

The terms harassment and bullying refer to a wide range of actions. Harassment and bullying can cause considerable stress and damage to health and confidence in those experiencing it as well as having a negative impact on work performance.

Discrimination includes any unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct of a nature that exploits or emphasises a person’s disability, gender or race.

Harassment and bullying guidelines

For further information on misconduct procedure, please refer to the harassment and bullying guidelines.

The guidelines include advice for managers and headteachers on different approaches to dealing with such incidents.

Information on race equality in schools is also available.

Race equality and racist incidents

May 2014 update: Discontinuation of the requirement to report racist incidents to the local authority (pdf).
Advice to schools to continue to record racist incidents to enable them to support their legal duties as outlined above. In line with current practice at many other London authorities, we will be discontinuing our collection of racist incident forms from schools.

Schools will therefore not be required to make a racist incident return for 2013/14 or for any subsequent years. Any future freedom of information requests relating to racist incidents will be directed back to individual schools.

Below guidance and forms might still be useful for schools.

Reporting and recording racist incidents involving staff (word)
General guidance

Reporting racist incidents - form RRI1 (word)
Form to be completed by manager with the employee.

Reporting and recording racist incidents (pdf)
Investigation checklist.

Action for reporting and recording racist incidents (word)
Flow chart detailing the action required.

Race equality in employment (word)
Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000. Guidance for schools.