Cultural Diversity Quality Standard

Bacon's College has been awarded the Gold Award.

At Bacon's College we pride ourselves on working as one in our community and this has been recognised by the College receiving a Gold Award, the highest available for Cultural Diversity.  We provided evidence in six categories. A selection of our work in these areas are included below:

Standard 1: Ethos

‘Bacon’s students are drawn from a diverse local community and represent a wide range of ethnic, social and faith backgrounds.’
‘The sixth form has a real sense of community...’
Students in tutor groups write and deliver year group assemblies each week.
This is a video of a year 8 tutor group assembly delivered to year 8 following the theme of ‘Languages – our international responsibilities.’

 

Standard 2: Achievement:

‘Results for 2010 are historically the best ever for five or more GCSEs at A*-C including English and Mathematics (72%).’
‘Non-native English speakers outperformed those with English as the main home language, as well as performing significantly better than national averages. This demonstrates the College’s commitment and hard work in ensuring these students achieve their potential.’

 

Standard 3: Curriculum

Year 10 work:

Blessing
 
I have chosen to speak about the poem Blessing. This poem struck me the most because it is the one that I can relate to the most. This poem makes me think about how many things I take for granted. The poem is about water and the lack of it in a certain community. In this country water is seen as just another factor of everyday life. I know that I personally waste water everyday and we use water for entertainment such as swimming and water fights. It makes me feel guilty to know that the water that I am wasting could have potentially saved many lives in other countries. Even though the community mentioned in blessing don’t get water often, they are grateful for it when they do and they make the most of it.
 My favourite line in the poem is ‘the voice of a kindly god’. The fact that they refer to the water as a god tells us how much they appreciate it and how important it is in their life. The poem also talks about a pipe bursting. Everyone drops what they are doing to go to the water. The poem is full of imagery and that is also a part of the reason I chose it. I can picture everything that I’m reading and that makes it more personal and helps me to empathise more with them.

By Helena Year 10

Jusna Year 13, A Level textiles examination piece: 'East meets west' (photo on the right)

Year 7 Art: Aboriginal Art Project (photo on right)

Lauren Year 13, A Level English work on 'The Kite Runner'

Examine and evaluate the depiction of the Taliban through Assef.
 
-          Consider how he is portrayed as a monster.
-          What is it suggesting about the leaders of the Taliban?
-          Is this just propaganda?
-          Does it work if seen as a fairytale/fable?
 
Assef’s attack on Amir is described almost as an animal attack. As if a monster is attacking an innocent person. During the attack Amir describes Assef as having a ‘snarl all spit shining teeth, his bloodshot eyes rolling’. These are animalistic qualities, if not read in this context would be taken as perhaps a dog or wolf attack.
 
Assef does not display any emotion or human- like qualities and one of the ways that this is shown is through the fact that he attacks Amir despite the fact that Sohrab is in the same room, in fact he tells Sohrab to stay ‘let him watch’ Throughout the whole attack it is plainly obvious that this is terrifying for him, repeatedly Amir tells the reader of ‘Sohrab screaming’. This displays the lack of emotions, empathy and care that Assef has and in turn also portrays him as a monster
 
Assef is a leader of the Taliban, one of the most powerful in his sect. The actions that he takes therefore reflect on the Taliban as a whole and in particular the leaders. It shows that leaders are not used to being contradicted and certainly not used to being beaten. This becomes evident when Assef tells the guards to let Amir free should he win ‘but Agha Sahib..’ This shows that they feel uneasy about letting someone who has beaten their leader walk free. This provides the reader with an insight into the way that these followers are used to treating people that oppose the Taliban.
 
Propaganda or a fable? The way in which this part of the story is read can greatly influence the effect that it has on it’s reader and the meaning that it holds.
To read these events as a piece of propaganda is to read it politically, taking the events as factual and this is how the real world is. Propaganda would be reading this passage and using it to prove a point, speaking hypothetically a point such as the Taliban are evil.
 
To read this passage as a fairytale/ fable would be to understand the events as fictional. The purpose therefore would change and be to demonstrate an idea rather than a point. Propaganda is to use certain events or information to prove a point you want to make. A fairytale would be making up a set of fictional events in order to illustrate an idea or belief that you have.
 
Taking all of this into account and applying it to this section in ‘The Kite Runner’ is going to decide in which way the reader takes the events unfolding on the page. If it is in a political way then what happens between Assef and Amir can be seen as a talking factually about what happened. If read and understood in an opposite light it becomes a series of events woven together in order to prove an idea.

 

Standard 4: Parents and Carers Involvement and Community Roles

Mediation Award (photo on right)

 

Year 8 poster on Chinese Music (photo on right)

 

Standard 5: Staff and Governors

‘We celebrate and value our differences, our diversity while being united in a common humanity.’ (Equal Opportunities policy.)
 
‘Staff at the College are from a range of backgrounds. The College has recruited a team of Learning Mentors who represent a range of ethnic and social backgrounds of the students. The ethnic identities of these Mentors have significantly improved the effectiveness of their work.’
 

Standard 6: Projects and Innovations

Year 6 summer school for EAL students joining us in September. They produced a quilt representing their ethnic backgrounds which is now on display in the College. (photo on right)

Language Diversity
‘The College is sponsoring one of our 6th form students to do further study on her ‘first language’ Arabic.
Students are able to take GCSE and GCE in their own languages. In the past 3 years these have included Russian, Turkish, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, Chinese, Spanish and French.’
 
Culture and Identity work for year 8 girls
A group of black and mixed race year 8 girls looked at the impact of their race, culture and experience on how they think about and represent themselves to the world around them both in and outside school. These were led by Elena Noel from Southwark hate Crimes and Juliette Marshall Learning Mentor.

 

 

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