Accord Coalition Inclusivity Award 2012

Unitarians have a strong concern for inclusive schooling and have been working  with like-minded partners in the Accord Coalition. Accord today named Lammas School and Sports College in Leyton, East London as the winner of this year’s Inclusivity Award.

The Inclusivity Award, open to all schools in England and Wales, recognises and celebrates those schools that do most within the legal framework and community that they find themselves in to promote inclusiveness, the growth of mutual understanding and forge links within and between different communities.

Lammas School won strong praise from the expert panel of judges for its use of inclusive assemblies to forge shared values, the importance assigned to community cohesion, the popularity of its Religious Education, which was the school’s strongest subject at GCSE in 2011, its sensitivity towards the diverse backgrounds of it pupils, who speak over fifty languages and its ability to adapt to the changing cultural and religious profile of its student body

In second place is St George’s Voluntary Aided School, a Christian faith school in Harpenden, Hertfordshire which earned high praise from the judges for its outstanding work in tackling homophobic bullying. The Independent had an article today which focused on the exceptional anti-homophobic bullying work of the second placed St George’s School.

In third place is Crown Hills Community College in Leicester. The College, which is in the top 4% of schools for Oftsed’s Value Added Score, was praised by the judges for its effort to challenge prejudice and the dangers of stereotypes, such as through focusing on conflict in Israeli and Palatine, and for its attempts to broad the horizons of its pupils through a range of external and extra curricula activities.

I was pleased to be invited to be one of the judges for the 2012 Award earlier this year. The others on the panel of judges were:

• Baroness Kishwer Falkner (Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice in the House of Lords)

• Lisa Nandy MP (Labour MP for Wigan and member on the House of Commons Education Select Committee)

• Manzoor Moghal (Founder and Chair of the Muslim Forum)

• Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE (former Chairman of the Assembly of Reform Rabbis and Minister of the Maidenhead Synagogue)

For more information on the Award and the Accord Coalition