At Dalestorth Primary and Nursery School, we have children from over 20 countries who speak over 20 different languages. This had made our school a richer and much more culturally diverse place to learn and work. We want every child at Dalestorth to feel as though they belong. That the children trust our staff to have their best interests at the centre of what we do at all times. We want our children to feel seen and heard and that their culture, interests and identity are celebrated by everyone. As part of this, leaders have carried out visits to partner schools locally and looked at how they have increased the children's awareness of our children's different languages, cultures and race. Staff have introduced displays in classrooms which reflect all the children and their backgrounds. 

Over the past few years, we have seen the number of children from BAME backgrounds double from 14% in 2021 up to almost 30% of our pupils in January 2026. We are passionate that all of our children are taught how to embrace, understand and celebrate the cultures of all of our children. Helping to ensure that Dalestorth children are tolerant, kind and thoughtful young people is crucial to all staff at our school. Since the summer of 2025, we have been working with Deepa Vasudevan from the TETC team at Nottinghamshire County Council to introduce a new Anti-Racist Education Programme (AREP) unit for all year groups. This has been trialled in the autumn term and will be launched across school this summer. We are excited to see the impact of the work the children will carry out during a celebration week at the end of May. 

We are also working alongside Deepa, having refreshed our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) action plan last summer. Key facets of this is improving the unconscious bias of all stakeholders across school. Training with Deepa was delivered in February. The impact will be measured through staff and pupil voice activities and then next steps will be planned. In tandem with this we have introduced a series of assemblies and in-class sessions which have introduced children to important news items and how they relate to British Values and Protected Characteristics. Both of these areas are key development threads for us this year and also moving forward. 

From Summer 2025 we have been re-modelling how our Five Busy Bee school values can be linked to British Values. The graphic above has made the links easier for staff to make in assemblies and for teachers in class. We designed this so that children can see the links and how they fit with what they are already so familiar with. Each week we link the theme of at least two assemblies to this graphic and discuss how it fits with our British Values. Please see our assembly floor book for examples of how this has been working.  The staff are enjoying sharing some amazing texts to help our children understand what each British Value means and how it links to our Five Busy Bees.

Since the summer of 2025 in tandem with the work we have been doing on British Values, we have also started a conversation with our staff and children about Protected Characteristics. Each half-term, we are looking at a different  characteristic through the lens of children and with a focus on stories and picture books. To enable our children to be able to access terms like gender reassignment or pregnancy we have worked with partner schools locally, worked with our LA advisor and done our own research about the terminology could be changed or softened. We have so far spent at least 2 assemblies each week linking race and disability to different stories and news items. The children's understanding of these different terms is developing quickly. In a recent assembly children could discuss disabilities you can see and those you cannot, how schools need to ensure that people with disabilities have to have their needs met by law so that they are able to be successful in each piece of learning. Equally, the children's understanding of what is meant by race and culture has changed considerably. They are able to tell their teachers about how a person's race, culture and language should be celebrated. This will develop our children's sense of identity and make them feel like they belong and want to belong at Dalestorth. 

In Autumn 2025 we introduced the protected characteristic of race. This was very relevant for our school which has changed so much in its mix of families from different countries and who speak many different languages. The books above have enabled our children to develop a good understanding of why race is so important to us all through some beautiful stories and non-fiction books about famous people. 

In Spring 1 in 2026 we have moved onto the theme of disability. Our children have rapidly been able to tell us about the differences between visible and invisible disabilities such as ADHD, ASD or deafness. They are also keen to tell us about how it is the law under the 2012 Equality Act that school staff will adapt what they do to make sure there is equity for all of our pupils.

 In Spring 2 our assemblies will focus on the protected characteristic of age. We will look at stories, different videos and non-fiction texts which will show how age should be no barrier to anything you want to do. We will also discuss how age, wisdom and experience should be respected and cherished.