This document discusses how to promote inclusion and equality in schools based on the Equality Act 2010. It emphasizes curriculum design and representation to foster understanding between groups. Specific strategies are proposed, such as choosing inspirational students to design lessons around, addressing institutional prejudices in policies, and using literature and artworks to represent diverse identities and lived experiences. The goal is to embed inclusion naturally across subjects to promote participation and minimize disadvantages for protected characteristics like disability, race, and sexuality.

1. USUALISING
Understanding the Equality Act
2010 as an inspiration for
sustainable school inclusion
Dr Anna Carlile
Goldsmiths, University of London

2. About me...
■ Teacher
■ Parent
■ Researcher
■ Senior Lecturer in inclusive Education at Goldsmiths, University of London

3. ■ The EqualityAct
■ The role of institutional prejudice
■ Curriculum
■ Environment and representation
■ Balancing the protected characteristics
■ Unintended consequences of inclusion and
equalities work

4. The EqualityAct 2010
Your legal mandate…
The equality duty for anyone working in public services
■ Eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation and other conduct prohibited by the Act.
■ Advance equality of opportunity between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.
■ Foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. This is
described as tackling prejudice and promoting understanding between people from different groups.
■ Removing or minimising disadvantages suffered by people due to their protected characteristics.
■ Taking steps to meet the needs of people from protected groups where these are different from the needs
of other people.
■ Encouraging people from protected groups to participate in public life or in other activities where their
participation is disproportionately low.
■ The nine protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex,
sexual orientation, marriage and civil partnership and pregnancy and maternity
Your legal mandate…

5. Addressing institutional prejudice
■ Stephen Lawrence and the Macpherson Report
on police procedure
■ a weight of administrative occurrences or
representations that consistently push against
anti-prejudice actions and concerns
■ ‘…the racism that needs to be contested is not
personal prejudice, which has no authority
behind it, but institutionalised racism, woven
over centuries of colonialism and slavery into
the structures of society and government.’
Sivananden (2005)
The EqualityAct 2010
public duty gives schools
a mandate to remove or
minimize disadvantage,
and take steps to meet
the specific needs of
people from protected
groups

6. School exclusions and
institutional prejudice
■ Where are our children going? Is there a child
you have in mind? A higher proportion of black
pupils are excluded:
‘The representation of black men as having
particular tendencies…has justified their exclusion
from school and their constant presence before the
criminal justice system…It fed in teachers…the
widespread belief that …Afro-Caribbean students
were especially prone to threatening teachers’
authority’.
(Blair 2001: 37-38)
‘a weight of administrative occurrences or representations’
The EqualityAct 2010
public duty gives schools
a mandate to remove or
minimize disadvantage,
and take steps to meet
the specific needs of
people from protected
groups

7. SENDs and institutional prejudice
■ Boys 5-9 times more likely to be diagnosed with
ADHD
■ Heteronormativity (‘boys will be boys’) versus
appropriate classroom behaviour
■ A rise in girls being diagnosed eg with autism-
impact on services
■ ‘White’ 7.5%; ‘black’ 5.7%; ‘Hispanic’ 3.5% (USA)
■ ‘there are no statistical differences between
racial/ethnic categories regarding the prevalence of
clinically significantADHD symptoms’
■ In need of support, or in need of discipline?
Sociocultural reasons
■ Access to the money to pay for or the resources to
push for medical/psychological treatment
■ Negative expectations about treatment
■ Cultural differences in approaches to/trust in mental
health care
■ Different attitudes to the use of psychotropic drugs
■ Cultural variations within expectations of
appropriate behaviour
■ Social biases of diagnosis experts
‘a weight of administrative occurrences or representations’
The EqualityAct 2010
public duty gives schools
a mandate to remove or
minimize disadvantage,
and take steps to meet
the specific needs of
people from protected
groups

8. Curriculum: inclusion
by design
- compare the two
approaches
Equality Act Public Duty:
Advancing equality of opportunity
Fostering good relations
Minimising disadvantage

9. Be inspired by specific students
■ How can you create a lesson expressly to inspire and
support that one student who you always find difficult
to include?
■ You might find yourself producing an amazing lesson
which everyone loves!
■ One teacher asked me how she could try this with a
child who ‘has no strengths’; ‘never speaks’- we
suggested a silence competition and then an activity
where children wrote a list of their own strengths
■ What about the 24 EAL learners in your room- they are
experts on growth mindset! Can they teach the others?
Can you go round the world without leaving the room,
with their help?

10. Teachable moments
Think/Pair/Share
In pairs, discuss:
■ How have you turned an incident into a teachable moment?
OR
■ Was there a moment this year that maybe should have been converted into a
teachable moment but for some reason it felt not possible at the time?
Feed back

11. Not just PSHE or Black
History Month: setting the
tone for all subject areas
to be inclusive and
usualising
Frida Kahlo just happens to be...
■ Bisexual
■ Disabled
■ Mexican
She’s great for geography, history, art, maths
Audit your curriculum for inclusion of the protected
characteristics. Weave them throughout the year

12. DISCUSS
BLACK
CHARACTERS
FROMTUDOR
TIMES IN
HISTORY

13. Read about
Caribbean aircrew in
the RAF during WW2
Available at www.caribbeanaircrew-
ww2.com

14. Read off script
■ Change the gender of the main protagonist in
Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, or A Christmas
Carol
■ Change the ethnicity of the characters in
Shakespeare

15. Be inspired by art by autistic people
“Manhattan Floating in the East River” Seth Chwast
Image available at: https://www.specialneedsalliance.org/young-artist-with-autism-finds-critical-acclaim/

16. Change word problems in Maths to make them more culturally
relevant/inclusive/usualising
Oak and beech
trees?
Sadia and Marek?
Word problems with
books/caring boys'
names?
Katja and
Halima?
Football stickers?

17. Think about the
experiences of
refugees with
disabilities in
geography
What ideas do you have?

18. DISRUPT
HETERONORMATIVE
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT
WHAT JOBS WOMEN
CAN HAVE IN DRAMA
OR P4C OR IN OUR
STORYTELLING

19. Environment and representation
■ If you don’t know any, where do teachers and other parents
get their ideas about LGBT parented families, Muslims, or
Eastern European people?
■ Representation matters

20. TEACHING ISA POLITICALACT
How you teach
What you include in your curriculum
What you put on your walls
Who you call on to answer a question
What you call the students
All of these are unavoidably political
decisions. And yet…
The EqualityAct 2010 public duty
gives schools a mandate to foster
good relations between people
from protected groups, promote
understanding, and encourage
participation in public life
The DfE has just released guidance
which is very clear on teaching
about the existence of lesbian and
gay relationships

21. Representation
■ Who is on your walls?
■ Representation matters
The evidence shows ….
■ Around ages 2/3, children begin to associate activities and
possessions with male or female. Qualities associated with
male are more highly valued than female traits.
■ Between ages 3 and 5, children learn to attach value to
skin colour.This puts white at the top of the hierarchy.
■ Young children’s racial view is independent of their own
ethnicity and the ethnic make-up of their environment.
The EqualityAct 2010 public duty gives
schools a mandate to foster good
relations between people from protected
groups, promote understanding, and
encourage participation in public life

22. Imagined
contact:
usualising
■ Crisp &Turner, 2009
https://www.gold.ac.uk/news/playmobil-
friendships-at-the-science-museum/
Imagined contact, Eg in a P4C
session/storytelling/drama/book, enabled
children to develop positive views of categories
of people they may not have met
The EqualityAct 2010 public duty gives schools
a mandate to foster good relations between
people from protected groups, promote
understanding, and encourage participation in
public life

23. A note on ‘behaviour management’
■ Behaviour is
communication
■ Pathologising the child
takes attention off the
institution
■ Relevant curriculum;
engaging teaching
■ Be inspired by
individual students
(again!)
■ What do these people
have in common?
■ They all haveADHD!
The EqualityAct 2010
public duty gives schools
a mandate to remove or
minimize disadvantage,
and take steps to meet
the specific needs of
people from protected
groups

24. Balancing the
protected
characteristics■ LGBT+ inclusion work in a school serving a faith community
■ conversations with parents helped to make them feel that this
work was all part of celebrating the school’s diverse
community:
‘…by the time we’d talked about the legislation and the reasoning
behind it and the parallels with race in terms of well actually you
know, we’re a very multi-ethnic community and how would you feel
if your child was in a school where they didn’t feel comfortable,
where you didn’t feel comfortable and you didn’t feel recognised,
where you didn’t feel that your identity was celebrated, I’m sure that
you wouldn’t feel happy about that so why would you think it should
be anything less than for another minority group or any other group’.
■ No religion condones bullying
■ The students are adept at talking through the apparent
contradictions
What experience,
knowledge and training do
you already have to
promote equality
and inclusion?

25. Sustainability
■ Audit and update the curriculum
■ Audit and update policies
The protected characteristics
The charity Educate&Celebrate offers this amazing
model:
■ Whole-school training on the legal mandate
for this work; understanding key terms and key
issues in relation to people with the protected
characteristics; dealing with bullying; and
developing policy and curriculum
■ The creation of a visibly inclusive school
environment
■ Updating school policies in line with the
Equality Act 2010
■ The usualising of people with the protected
characteristics and related issues across the
curriculum
■ Lunchtime clubs, community music
performances, baking competitions and other
celebrations
■ https://www.educateandcelebrate.org/

26. This is a
learning
issue…
If a child
doesn’t
…feel comfortable to be themselves in the classroom
…feel visible and accepted at school
…feel included by peers
…feel safe from violence in the playground
…feel able to take friends home
They are not going to have the mental or emotional
space to learn to the best of their potential.

27. This is not just one person's role
Like safeguarding, it's for everyone to weave
through everything we do
The information, knowledge and understanding we
have in the room is a rich resource