
In support of our school's mission 'to love God, love one another' and 'to provide a happy and secure learning envirornment', Hemisphere has joined forces with St Paul's to deliver an innovative initiative to promote inclusivity in education designed to disrupt unconscious bias and enhance racial literacy.
What is Hemisphere?
From hair to names to cultural norms, Hemisphere is a whole-school approach to building belonging. It provides staff with a toolkit to understand, safeguard and nourish students from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and empowers pupils in their peer-to-peer interactions.
Hemisphere has been developed by Rare, multi award-winning leaders in race equity in employment and education whose clients include Oxford University, Cambridge University, to build racial literacy amongst their employees, managers and senior leaders. Now, it’s being used by some of the UK’s top schools.
What will it help St Paul's Primary School achieve?
Hemisphere will help St Paul's Primary School to build racial literacy across the school, in order to support student and staff wellbeing, and to drive attainment and racial equity. Over 85% of teachers have never had any specific guidance about Black or South Asian children in education: this is a first. Through storytelling and education, the programme prompts honest reflection and gives staff the knowledge and confidence they need to create a safe and supportive learning environment for all their students.
St Paul's Primary School aims to create a school environment where children from every background have an equal chance to succeed. We recognise that students of Black and mixed Black heritage may experience acts of exclusion, discrimination or racism at school. These may be verbal, non-verbal or environmental. They are usually unintended, and can even be well-meaning, but that doesn’t lessen their impact on those subject to them. The way to address this is to a) ensure that we have and understand the relevant data and b) to make the appropriate interventions.
Hemisphere is completed annually. St Paul's staff completed their Hemisphere training on 23/01/2025.
The St Paul's staff action plan highlights the following areas that staff want to focus on -
- Remember, no one's perfect.
- Get to know the children you teach, and the families they come from.
- Normalise Afro-textured hair.
- Get names right.
- Assess on facts, not familiarity.