Characteristics 

Your school's contribution to community cohesion should reflect your understanding of the diversity of the school population and the community it serves. 

The following planning tools and resources can be used to create a diversity profile for your school community:

• Northumberland demographic data, extracts from NCC Single Equalities Scheme 2009 summarising the equalities characteristics of the County
• Northumberland Infonet locality profiles
• Features of Northumberland and potential  issues for schools
• Ethnicity profile of Northumberland pupils, School Census 2010
• RAISEonline charts:
  • basic characteristics of your school, showing the school deprivation indicator, level of free school meals and the proportion of EAL pupils
  • by National Curriculum year group, showing how the school community changes year by year
  • ethnicity chart
  • census information chart, linked to the school's deprivation indicator
• SEF Part A: The school's context, as a starting point for creating a profile of the community your school serves
• A diversity profile of your community: reflective tool to amplify the basic characteristics of your school including religion, ethnicity, socio-economics, partnership/multi-agency involvement
• School Improvement Planning Framework (TDA), to audit, plan and evaluate practice
• Pupils' views - some suggestions:
  • Religion
  • Ethnicity
  • Socio-economics
  • Online surveys. This example is a high school survey designed to collect pupil's views on socio economic status, culture and religion 
  • An evaluation of how well your school enables young people's participation in decision making
• Learning together to be safe: a toolkit to support schools in the prevention of violent extremism (DCSF), and further information about the national Prevent strategy
• Information and guidance about Forced Marriage - a characteristic or concern for your school?
• A planning grid onto which you can map the characteristics alongside your community cohesion action plans and how you expect this to impact on your school and community

Northumberland schools that would like support in using and developing these resources are encouraged to contact Gill Finch and Jane Walker.