Racial Equity
At St Matthew’s, we proudly welcome the diversity of cultures, backgrounds, faiths, and beliefs within our school community. We aim to promote, in the widest sense, a happy and nurturing environment in which individuals are appreciated, respected and truly feel like they belong.
As a school, we commit to the AfC Anti-racist pledge and use these principles to guide our actions:
Curriculum
Our curriculum aims to reflect the context of our school. In each curriculum area, teachers are asked to reflect on the texts they are using, the images presented and the events that are referred to. By seeing themselves reflected in the curriculum, we want our children to feel welcome and have the confidence to express themselves and their culture and heritage.
‘If you look into any of our classrooms, you will see people from all backgrounds learning together about the world.’ Y6 child
Parent Voice
We hold a termly parent working group for racial justice. These groups help us to understand more about our context, and we are always keen to learn more about the lived experience of our pupils, families and staff. The ideas discussed in these groups then go into informing our actions, as we move forward on this journey. If you would like to be involved in this group, please contact the school and we can let you know when our next session will be held.
We [parents] want… to help enrich and diversify’ experiences and provision for our children’. Parent working group attendee
Pupil Voice
At St Matthew’s we also hold a termly pupil voice group. We want our children to feel heard and it has been a privilege to listen to their thoughts on ideas ranging from books in the library, to how we should celebrate the cultural diversity within our school.
‘For me, diversity means being able to see different people who look like me. We are all different in how we look , where we’re from and what we enjoy…and that is really special.’ Y5 child
Multicultural Day
Each year, to celebrate our community at St Matthew’s we hold a multicultural day. Our parent working group help to choose different themes that explore a different aspect of our cultural heritage. It’s an amazing opportunity to come together and share and learn more about each other.
Food forms a very important part of different cultures, and each dish has its own story to tell. At the end of each multicultural day parents are invited in to share food with their children in their classes. We love to use food to help unify and bring everyone together, and we hope you enjoy it too!
‘It was a wonderfully organised event. My eldest in year 2 never tells me much about school and what he got up to but he came home buzzing about spelling his name in Korean, talking about Albania and all the delicious food. It was…a lovely event.’ Y2 parent
