Discussing Inequality: Materials for the classroom and beyond

The best-selling book The Spirit Level: why equality is better for everyone (Wilkinson & Pickett, Penguin 2009), brought together several decades of research, to which a great many people contributed, covering the health and social effects of income inequality on societies. It suggests that societies with bigger income differences between rich and poor suffer more of most of the problems which, within societies, have social gradients making them more common at the bottom of the social ladder.

The Equality Trust is a politically independent, not-for-profit company that aims to make the evidence on the impact of larger and smaller income inequalities more widely known.

The proposed project is a collaboration between the academic authors of The Spirit Level and The Equality Trust, which aims to collect together research evidence on the impact of inequality and make it relevant, interesting, accessible and compelling to young people in secondary education and to produce short factual summaries of research which will be provided free of charge for interested people and organisations across society including politicians, civil servants, business leaders, trade unions and charities. The materials will be developed by a working group including Professors Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson, The Equality Trust, teachers from Stantonbury Campus and other schools, representatives from educational charities including ASDAN, youth workers and young people themselves.

The project will:

Produce teaching packs for different curriculum subjects and age groups
The evidence relating to income inequality fits clearly with a number of different subjects in the national curriculum, particularly in social sciences and statistics. We will take advantage of this synergy by developing template lesson plans for the most relevant subjects, adapted for different age groups. The materials will be developed with creative input and critical feedback from young people and will include clearly understood, eye-catching visual representations of the data and interactive games or other activities. The resources will be provided to teachers free of charge; electronic versions will be available to download online and printed copies will be available from The Equality Trust.

Produce a 30 minute film
As part of their performing arts course, 16-19 year old students at Stantonbury College will write, produce and appear in a 30 minute film about the impact of inequality on their lives. This film will then be produced as a DVD, which will be widely distributed free of charge with supporting materials.

Produce a series of Research Summaries and Research Updates
The Research Digests will provide summaries of particular areas of research, such as the relationship between inequality and crime, or between inequality and economic growth. The Research Updates, with a format rather like a press release, will draw attention to individual pieces of research related to inequality - whether on recent trends, or on topics related to mechanisms through which inequality could affect social, economic or environmental outcomes. These will be distributed to politicians, trade unions, industrialists, local councillors, charities, media correspondents and via electronic media. Members of the public will be encouraged to use the research evidence.

The direct and indirect beneficiaries of this Follow-on project are:

Direct beneficiaries:
(a) young people & their teachers
The project will benefit young people and their teachers by helping them to understand the scale and effects of inequality of income and wealth on their lives and the advantages and challenges of building a more equal society. The project will also encourage young people to understand data and think critically about the evidence, tools which are essential for everyone, and in particular for those who wish to pursue scientific or political careers.

(b) elected representatives
This project will also benefit elected representatives by informing them of how they can improve the lives of their constituents. For those who wish to be politically active, our materials will provide a rigorous evidence basis to consider. The work of local Fairness Commissions (established in Islington, Liverpool and York to date) will also benefit.

(c) citizens
The resources we provide will benefit citizens who wish to engage with issues of inequality, empowering them to engage critically with the evidence, and speak authoritatively about the issues to others.


Indirect beneficiaries:
As the research evidence suggests that extreme income inequality is damaging across society, it could be argued that all members of society might benefit from wider dissemination of research and discussion of inequality.

If the UK's inequality were half its current level, reducing it to levels seen in Japan and Scandinavia and in the UK in past decades, we could anticipate improvements to physical and mental health, educational performance, community and family life, and much more. The improvements would have most impact in the most deprived communities (which currently suffer most) but the positive effects would be felt by almost everyone across the spectrum of income and wealth.

Prof Alex Stevens recently reported evidence that policy-makers find it very difficult to challenge the status quo, even when they are convinced by evidence that supports such a change (Stevens, A. (2011). Telling Policy Stories: An Ethnographic Study of the Use of Evidence in Policy-making in the UK[21]. Journal of Social Policy, 40(2) 237-256). This has been supported by recent research by WWF (http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/campaigning/strategies_for_change/).

The proposed Follow-on project aims to make a timely and significant contribution to debates on economic and social strategy. In particular, the project aims to develop and enhance young peoples' and citizens' capabilities to influence local and national policy makers to incorporate evidence from the social sciences into policy.