Equality Act 2010 and SEND Regulations

Under the Equality Act, schools are required to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ so that all children can access their facilities and services.

The Equality Act 2010 replaced a number of different pieces of discrimination legislation, including the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (‘DDA’). It provides people with legal protection from discrimination in a variety of circumstances. Part 6, Chapter 1 of the Act addresses education specifically and talks about the protections offered to children in schools.

Under the Act, schools must not discriminate, harass or victimise a person seeking to be admitted as a pupil. This includes the terms on which a person is offered a place or is not offered a place.

We also ensure that no pupil is discriminated against in the manner in which education is provided, the way that pupils are able to access facilities/services, or through excluding a pupil or subjecting them to any other detriment.

With regard to disabled pupils in particular, in order to meet this duty, the ‘responsible body’ of a school (such as the governing body) has an ‘accessibility plan’, after having regard to the resources required to implement the plan.

The accessibility plan is designed to do a number of things:

• To increase the extent to which disabled pupils can participate in the school’s curriculum
• To improve the physical environment of the school in order to help disabled pupils to take advantage of education and benefits, facilities or services provided or offered by the school; and
• To improve the delivery to disabled pupils of information which is readily accessible to pupils who are not disabled

You can see our Accessibility Policy here

In addition, we ensure that disabled pupils receive the same quality of education as their peers. The school has a duty to make ‘reasonable adjustments’, where typical provision might put a disabled pupil at a ‘substantial disadvantage’.

An example of a ‘reasonable adjustment’ might simply be arranging for a student who uses a wheelchair to have classes on the ground floor of the building or ensuring that a teacher faces a deaf student to enable them to lip-read.