Penwortham Girls’ High School has been awarded the full Lancashire Equality Mark.

The secondary school is the first in Lancashire to achieve the award, which is given to schools that can demonstrate a commitment to embedding equality throughout their practice, and who enable all their students to thrive in a supportive learning community.

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The Penwortham school has been working towards the Lancashire Equality Mark for the past three years.

There are six different strands, which must all be achieved individually before the school can be granted the full mark: Socio-economic, Race, Religion, Gender and Gender Variance, Sexual Orientation and Disability.

During the last term, the school has been working towards the final strand of the mark, Disability.

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A spokesperson for Penwortham Girls’ High School said: “We were very pleased to be awarded the Disability mark and the full Lancashire Equality Award.

“Working towards these different strands has created lots of opportunities within our school to celebrate our diverse and amazing school community.

“We have enjoyed celebrating International Women’s Day, where we were able to welcome some of our incredible PGHS alumni back into our school, such as Dame Sue Ion and the BBC’s Nazia Mogra.

“We have also looked for lots of opportunities as a school community to broaden our knowledge of equality in the wider world, such as in our research competition for Black History Month, or our sessions with ‘Solutions Not Sides’ during our school drop down days.

“Last year, we even held our very own ‘Unitee’ fashion show, which challenged each form to create their own t-shirt inspired by the theme of unity.”

Last week, a representative from Lancashire County Council visited the school to see what had been done to ensure and promote equality.

The spokesperson continued: “We were incredibly proud of the feedback we received from the council, which described the work that we have made on ensuring inclusivity as ‘exemplary’.

“They also said our learning environment was ‘particularly inspiring’ and wanted to pass on their congratulations in achieving the full award to all staff and pupils in school.”

The school is looking forward to finding more opportunities to celebrate and support its diverse community, including working with the newly-elected School Respect Council Leader, who is full of exciting ideas about different ways to promote equality.