The UK’s Equalities Act 2010 seeks to protect people from discrimination and ensure that everyone is treated fairly. In 2011 the UK government published an easy read document – Easy Read: The Equality Act - to make concepts within the Equalities Act easier to understand.
Table 1. Core Legislative Concepts Defined
| Diversity | The variety of demographical traits that indicate human difference. The mixture of axes of difference (i.e., age, class, disability, ethnicity, gender, race, religion and sexuality etc.) that culminate to produce a given people group. |
| Discrimination | The unfavourable treatment of one person compared to another because of their particular characteristics/traits. |
| Equality | The state of being treated fairly and given the same rights and status as everyone else. |
| Positive Action | The actions taken to ensure that those who are, and have been, disadvantaged because of personal characteristics receive equal and equitable opportunities and treatment both in and outside of the workplace |
| Protected Characteristics |
A category of people who share a particular characteristic and have been granted special legal protection because of their historic, and ongoing, vulnerability to marginalisation. The Equalities Act list of protected characteristics:
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Equality and Equity (2019) Social Change UK – “Although both promote fairness, equality achieves this through treating everyone the same regardless of need, while equity achieves this through treating people differently dependent on need.”
Equity and Equality Are Not Equal (2014) – a useful article by Blair Mann published by the Education Trust.
Inclusion is the opposite of exclusion. It is an approach to policy and practice that intentionally includes and integrates people who might otherwise be marginalised or excluded.
Critical Theory & Critical Thinking
“Critical theory is a social theory oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole. Critical theories aim to dig beneath the surface of social life and uncover the assumptions that keep human beings from a full and true understanding of how the world works.”
Changing Mind. What is Critical Theory?
John Spacey (2020) 16 Characteristics of Critical Theory
What does it mean to Decolonise the Curriculum? A TEDx Talk by Melz Owusu
New York Times (2021) Critical Race Theory: A Brief History
Colombia News (2021) What Is Critical Race Theory, and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?