Lesson video

Hi, I'm Mr. Amott, welcome to our final lesson in the scheme of work called, Are People Treated Equally in UK Society? Today's lesson is what can we do to create a fairer society? As with most lessons, all you need for today's lesson is a pen, paper, somewhere quiet to work.

There's also a work queue with a video attached to today's lesson if you need, so it might be a good idea to make sure you've got access to that now.

This lesson covers some sensitive issues around discrimination, and it also looks at a case study of where somebody was murdered.

So it might be a good idea to talk to a trusted adult before you go any further in today's lesson, or to make sure that a trusted adult is nearby while you're doing the lesson.

I'm just going to give you a moment or two just to get all of that sorted out for me and then we can start today's lesson.

Okay, so what we're going to do today is we're going to do a recap on the laws relating to equality.

We're going to look at how the UK's trying to make society fairer.

Particularly, we're going to look at racism and the case of somebody called Stephen Lawrence.

And then we're going to think about what we can do to create a fairer society.

So, first thing we're going to do is a recap from laws relating to equality.

And so which of the below is not a real law? Is it option one, the Race Relations Act, option two, the Employment Equality Age Regulations, 2006, is it option three, the Equal Pay Act from 1970, or option four, the Everyone Equal Act from 1987? The answer is the Everyone Equal Act from 1987, that is a completely made up law.

Now, which of these laws gave women the right to vote? Was it option one, the Equality Act 2010, option two, Representation of the People Act 1918, option three, the Employment Equality Age Regulations 2006, or was it option four, the Equal Pay Act 1970? And the right answer is option two, Representation of the People Act 1918.

And again, a lot later than a lot of people think.

Which of these statements are true in relation to the Equality Act? So, is it option one, brought all previous equality laws together, option two, made equality laws easier to understand, option three, protects people with certain characteristics, with certain special characteristics, or option four, all of these statements are true? The correct answer is option four, all of those statements are true.

So, just a recap on what the Equality Act is.

So, we've looked at the Equality Act quite a lot previous scheme of work.

And it's really, really important that we go over it again because it's such an important law.

So, the Equality Act 2010 makes it law that every private, public, and voluntary organisation must not discriminate against employees and people that use our services because of particular characteristics.

The act brings together all previous equality laws, making them simpler, more effective, and easier to understand.

So, what we're going to do now is a task.

So, there's quite a few little tasks here, and what I want say, what I want you to do, is which of these do you believe shows discrimination based on a protected characteristic? So I'll read the task through.

I want you to pause and have a think and then I'll go over the answer for you.

So, "Charlie is 15 and has lots of female friends, but has never had a girlfriend.

A group of boys at school have been calling him names because they think he is gay, and have threatened to beat him up." So is that discrimination based on a protected characteristic? Okay, and the answer to that would be, yeah, it is discrimination.

We don't know if Charlie's gay or not, because we don't know from that little bit of information there, however, even if he is not actually gay, the law covers perception too.

Okay, "Andrew is a bank manager who has been involved with lots of community work helping refugees and asylum seekers.

Last month, his BMW was stolen by thieves who had never met Andrew before and didn't know he was owner of the car." So is that discrimination? Okay, and the answer to that would be that's not discrimination, okay.

It seems like the crime was not targeted at Andrew personally.

Remember, they don't know him, they've never met him before.

So, it could be if they would have stolen the car because he was helping refugees and asylum seekers, then arguably that could have been perceived as a hate crime because he was trying to help groups of people, groups of people who have got protected characteristics.

But because there's no evidence of that, arguably, they just stole his car because it was a nice car.

"Aisha is from a Muslim family.

She wears a headscarf when out in public, as do her mom and sisters.

Recently, the family had anti-Muslim slogans graffitied on their house, but haven't suffered any physical violence." So, is that discrimination? Okay, I think you've got the answer to that one, that one clearly is discrimination.

It's quite a serious crime, even though it's not physical, it's clearly discrimination and it's clearly quite a serious hate crime, putting that kind of graffiti on somebody's house.

So, "Catherine, who is mixed race, was mugged on her way home from work.

The mugger took her phone and purse, but didn't make any comments about her race." Is that discrimination? It's probably not discrimination because it seems the mugger was after money and not deliberately targeting Catherine personally.

Although as with most things like this we don't know for sure.

And the last one, "Mark has Down's Syndrome.

When walking through the park one day with his brother, some teenagers videoed them on their phones and uploaded the video to social media.

Other people posted abusive comments on social media, calling Mark abusive names." Is that discrimination? Clearly, Down's Syndrome would be a protected characteristic because it is seen as a disability.

And that would be serious and it would be cyberbullying, which is a serious crime.

So if that happened, it's important knowing your rights online.

So for example, if I've been put on YouTube, you have the right to request that YouTube remove that if you were videoed and it's a video about you.

It's important that you know that.

Again, that would be quite serious cases of discrimination.

Okay, so how has the UK tried to make society fairer? So we're going to look at racism.

We're going to mainly look at Stephen Lawrence.

We're going to look at a few other things as well.

So, racism is not always as obvious as abusive language or violence.

Often, it is shown through one race being treated equally than another, which creates inequality.

Now, look at the examples that are shown there, a survey of 1,000 people.

Okay, so 38% felt they'd been treated like a shoplifter in a shop when they hadn't done anything wrong, compared to 14% of white people.

43% had been refused a job that they felt was unfair, compared to 18% of white people.

41% said that in the last year somebody had assumed they weren't British.

And people from minority backgrounds were twice as likely as white people to be confused for staff in restaurants or shops.

So some quite shocking statistics there.

So hopefully you've watched that video.

I found some of the statistics in that video quite shocking.

If you've not done so already, it might be a good idea to go back and make sure you've got a few notes about that video clip.

Just to help you with one of the later activities.

But again, really, really shocking, I found when I watched that.

Especially some of the statistics in there.

So, we're going to look at one of our main studies now, which is Stephen Lawrence.

Okay, so what happened to Stephen Lawrence? Stephen Lawrence was a black teenager who lived in South London.

He was studying for his A-levels and wanted to be an architect when he was older.

On the 22nd of April, 1993, Stephen was killed by a gang of white men in a racist attack.

He had been waiting for a bus with a friend when a gang attacked them.

Stephen's friend escaped unhurt, but Stephen died from his injuries.

Why was the investigation into Stephen's death criticised? Okay, in the months and years that followed Stephen's murder, Stephen's mom and dad kept fighting for justice for their son.

Many people believed the police treated Stephen's case differently because he was black and that some office officers acted in a racist way.

A big inquiry into Stephen's death and the police investigation was held and in 1999 it was found that the Metropolitan Police were what's called institutionally racist.

Okay, this is quite complicated term, but this means that the racist attitude and beliefs were seen as normal in the Metropolitan Police and affected how they investigated Stephen's murder.

Did the family finally get justice? It took until 2012, but two of the original suspects in Stephen's killing, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were found guilty of his murder, and they were sent to prison after new evidence was found.

The impact of what happened to Stephen Lawrence.

So, for many people Stephen's murder and the investigation into it by the police, showed that there was still a lot of racism in Britain.

Stephen's father, Dr.

Neville Lawrence, said that his son's murder "opened the country's eyes" to racism.

His mother, who's now a baroness, Doreen Lawrence, set up a charity in his name to give other young people the opportunities that Stephen missed out on.

The investigation into his death led to, was called, that was ordered by the government was called the Macpherson Inquiry and it led to the Macpherson Report.

So, in July '97, more than four years after Stephen Lawrence's murder by a group of white youths, the Home Secretary at the time, Jack Straw, announced the establishment of an inquiry into his death.

Sorry about how many times I got muddled there.

It followed the dropping of charges against two youths, year of campaigning by the Lawrence family, the collapse of a private case by them, and subsequent announcement of an investigation into the case by the Police Complaints Authority.

So, the Macpherson Report, huge report, it was 350-pages long.

And the report concluded that the investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence was marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism, and a failure of leadership.

Specific officers in the Metropolitan Police were named and the entire police force were criticised.

So that's really, really quite shocking really, if you think about how big the Metropolitan Police is.

The report stated that the debate into policing and racism has been transformed by the inquiry.

So, it made some recommendations and it wanted to show zero tolerance for racism in society.

They include measures aimed at transforming the attitudes of the police towards race relations, improving the accountability of the police, steps for the civil service, NHS, judiciary, and other public bodies to respond and make changes in law about how they operated, and changes in the education to ensure pupils are taught about why racism is unacceptable.

So, this leads us into a task.

I'm not going to read this out for you at the moment.

So, just to recap what we did, I want you to read this information and then use the missing word set to fill in the gaps.

So, hopefully you've had a really good go at that task just to recap what happened to Stephen Lawrence.

So the answers are, "On the 22nd of April, 1993, at the age of just 18 Stephen was murdered in an unprovoked racist attack.

He didn't know his killers and his killers didn't know him.

After the initial police investigation, five suspects were arrested, but not convicted.

A public inquiry into the handling of Stephen's case was held in 1998, leading to the publication of the Macpherson Report, which has been called one of the most important moments in modern history of criminal justice in Britain.

It led to profound cultural changes in attitudes to racism, to the law, and to the police practise.

It also paved the way for greater understanding of discrimination in all forms and new equalities legislation." So, hopefully you've had a good go that.

If you've made any mistakes just pause the video now and just make sure that you've got the right words in the right gaps.

So, have things improved since the murder of Stephen Lawrence? One of the things that happened, as it says, as we've talked about already, is his mother established a charity.

And this is one of the things that she said, okay.

So, "Justice for Stephen is about all of us, every one of us in society having justice.

There are still too many young people who do not have a sense of hope, who just don't get the chance to live their dreams. I want all children and young people to feel inspired, be confident, and have hope in their future.

We are building hope but there is more to do." And one of the things that the charity did was they established something called Stephen Lawrence Day.

And Stephen Lawrence Day has three main objectives, and it is to inspire and support children and young people to make choices and actions that enable them and others to live their best lives, to encourage and enable children and young people to play an active role in building strong communities in which everyone can flourish, and the final one is to give children and young people a strong voice in driving safer change and creating a society that treats everyone with fairness and respect.

So, just to make sure that you've got this in your notes, what I'd like you to do is answer these questions.

So why is it important to have Stephen Lawrence Day and what is the role of education? So, what I'd like you to do is pause the video and answer those questions.

If you're a bit unsure, I would like you to go back and maybe just go over the slides that we've just looked at.

If you want to pause the video.

So, hopefully you've had a good go at that task.

And it's really important if that's going to lead us onto our main task that we're going to start looking at now.

We're going to look at schools.

You're all at school, and you might be thinking, what do schools have to do to promote equality? We've looked at this for six lessons now.

So, what does your school actually have to do? Obviously, the Equality Act applies to all schools in England and Wales.

The Act makes it unlawful for the responsible body of a school to discriminate, harass, or victimise a pupil or potential pupil.

So, obviously, that's really important to know the Equality Act applies to your school.

The OFSTED framework ensure that schools are applying the Equality Act.

So, OFSTED, people who inspect schools, makes sure they're doing their job properly, play really big role in this.

And some of these comments are directly from what OFSTED do when they go into schools.

Okay, so leaders, teachers, and schools create an environment where bullying, peer-on-peer abuse, or discrimination are not tolerated.

If they do occur, staff deal with them, staff deal with issues quickly and effectively, and don't allow them to spread.

And again, that's directly from an OFSTED report.

It also requests, and this is also what OFSTED do when they go into schools.

So, school prepares learners for life in modern Britain by equipping them to be responsible, respectful, active citizens, who contribute positively to society, developing their understanding of fundamental British values.

Okay, and the key bit here in bold, developing their understanding and appreciation of diversity, celebrating what we have in common and promoting respect for the different protected characteristics as defined in law.

Okay, so going on again, this is what OFSTED asks schools to do.

Schools need to keep records and analysis of bullying, discriminatory and prejudiced behaviour, either directly or indirectly, including racist, sexist, disability, and homophobic/biphobic/transphobic bullying, and use of derogatory language and racist incidents.

Schools are checked to see if they are promoting an inclusive environment that meets the needs of all pupils irrespective of their age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, their sex or their sexual orientation.

So, OFSTED directly, if you look at some of that language used in that last paragraph, they're all protected characteristics in the Equality Act.

And OFSTED go in and make sure that they are actually being protected in schools.

What I would like you to think, is think about the last few slides, and I'd like you to write a summary paragraph about what schools need to do to promote equality.

Great, so hopefully you've had a really good go at that task.

So here are the answers that I would have.

So all schools in England and Wales must follow the Equality Act 2010.

Therefore all students are protected from discrimination in school under the law.

When schools are inspected by OFSTED, inspectors will check that any acts of discrimination are being recorded and dealt with.

And they will also check to ensure that diversity is being promoted and celebrated.

What we're going to look at now is what does equality look like in school? Now, obviously, there's thousands of schools in England and the rest of Britain.

So, we're just going to look at some examples, okay.

There's loads more good practise.

You might know some good ideas what your school does or those in your local area do.

But these are just a few examples.

So, this is a case study from OFSTED.

And what this talks about, it says, "School A work closely with the primary and special schools on the same site.

Campus Council has been established to ensure that collective views inform the development of the wider campus community.

Pupils from each of the schools are involved in a range of projects together." And lots and lots of the key bits here in bold at the bottom, in the bottom paragraph.

So, "All of the above combined with the way in which staff treats pupils helps them to become strong advocates for themselves and others.

An openness to challenge and opportunities to voice their opinions help pupils feel as growing adults of equal worth.

It means that if occasional bullying or derogatory comments occur between pupils these are quickly dealt with, frequently by other pupils." And again, here I think the key thing is that the strong student voice and students feel comfortable to be able to say if there's an issue.

And we have another school here looking at promoting equality.

This was about LGBTQ+ equality.

And they were highlighted for good practise.

For ensuring that their LGBTQ+ students are treated equally.

So what did they do? So these are just some examples of what they did.

So they created a LGBTQ+ support group and encouraged all of their students to be allies.

And they ran campaigns to raise awareness.

And they used displays across the school to increase awareness of LGBTQ+ issues.

Okay, so that's just one example.

So, our final school that we're going to look at is School B and this is a student from School B wrote a detailed report about her school and how they worked with Show Racism the Red Card to promote equality within the school.

So, what they did.

This is directly from her report.

"Firstly, they held an assembly where they talked about racism, not just in society but in football as well.

They showed a video which shocked many of the pupils.

The severity of the racial abuse was shocking as was a story of a former Barcelona, Real Madrid player Samuel Eto'o, who received racist jeers and comments from some of his own fans.

It also told a tragic story of one teenager who was stabbed to death because of his colour.

The video also gave some pupils a reality shock and showed them how racism is part of life for people, including footballers, who just have to be brave and face up to it." So, what have schools done to create equality? So, I've just given you some examples.

What I'd like you to do is complete a mind map about what those schools have done.

So, pause the video here, just complete the mind map.

So, hopefully you've had a good go at that just to recap what I've just talked to you about.

So, what have schools done to create equality? They've done things like they've had support groups.

They've listened to their students.

They've invited expert speakers, such as the school that worked with Stand up to Racism.

I'm sorry, the school that worked with Show Racism the Red Card.

And you've got they raised awareness within their school.

So that leads us into our last task.

So, what do you think your school could do to promote equality? So think about not just what we've looked at in today's lesson, but over the last few lessons.

And what I'd like you to do is write to your Board of Governors with your suggestions.

And the key things to consider here are what special characteristics exist in your school? What could be done to promote equality and awareness? And what do OFSTED and the Equality Act need you to do? So, you might want to go back through your notes for this lesson, or go back through bits of this video.

Okay, so I want you want you to pause this task now and then have a good go at doing that.

Excellent, okay.

Obviously, this is very individual, so I couldn't model this for you 'cause every single school is different.

This is quite a good way to self-assess your letter.

So, does your letter include ways to ensure that all special characteristics are treated equally? Does it have plans to recognise and celebrate diversity in your school? Have you got some extra steps for groups to feel included? And is there space for students to have their voice heard and share their ideas? If you feel really strongly about that it'd be brilliant if you could share your letter with your Board of Governors.

And it'd be really good because they want to hear your ideas.

And they want to make sure that they're making school as equal as they can for their students.

So what we have looked at today.

So, we've looked at laws relating to equality.

We've looked at how has the UK tried to make society fairer, particularly we looked at what happened to Stephen Lawrence.

And we've looked at what we can do to make a fairer society.

And hopefully you've all written some really good letters about ways that you think your school could create a fairer society and fairer environment for everybody.

So, for the last time, thank you for all your hard work, not just in today's lesson but throughout these last six lessons.

It would be brilliant to see some of your letters and some of your ideas about what your school could do.

So if you would like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging it @OakNational with the hashtag #LearnwithOak.

Thank you for all your hard work.

And hopefully you've enjoyed and found these last few lessons really, really interesting as I did when I made them for you.