Belonging and community: addressing discrimination and extremism

Why teach about belonging, communities, discrimination, and extremism?

As well as promoting respect, challenging stereotyping and protective learning (such as strategies for managing influence, and developing empathy and respect for others’ rights), teaching about these topics will contribute to your school’s safeguarding approaches and help meet various legal requirements, as outlined in key documents, including:

Statutory RSHE guidance. The DfE emphasises that pupils should be taught about legal provisions that protect them and ensure that young people take responsibility for their actions.

Prevent strategy. Schools continue to have a duty to prevent pupils from being drawn into terrorist activities through radicalisation.

Keeping children safe in education, 2023. The statutory safeguarding guidance encourages coverage of this curriculum content through regularly timetabled PSHE education.

Ofsted’s School inspection handbook. The inspection handbook outlines how inspectors will explore how a school:

“[enables] pupils to recognise online and offline risks to their well-being – for example … radicalisation and extremism – and [makes] them aware of the support available to them.”

Inspectors will also consider how the provider prepares learners for life in modern Britain, as well as expecting schools to demonstrate that they do not tolerate discrimination and that they foster good relationships between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

About the lesson packs

Laying the foundations

At key stages 1 and 2, the lessons aim to give pupils foundational learning that will make them less susceptible to prejudiced or extremist narratives as they grow up.

• The key stage 1 lesson focuses on similarities and differences and introduces the concept of equality.
• The lower key stage 2 lesson for year 3/4 looks at the different groups and communities to which pupils might belong, and how they can help others to feel included.
• The two upper key stage 2 lessons for Year 5/6 explore stereotyping and extremism — supporting pupils to recognise how attitudes and opinions can be influenced by exposure to prejudiced or extremist views as well as how to challenge and resist these narratives

Leading the way

This learning is built on in the key stage 3 and key stage 4 lesson packs, where students explore these concepts in more depth and learn about the legal rights, responsibilities and protections provided by the Equality Act 2010 and other legal provisions.

• The five key stage 3 lessons explore: fostering a sense of belonging; how thinking patterns can affect behaviour; protected characteristics and reporting discrimination; values and managing disagreement constructively; and the different ways individuals contribute positively to the communities they are a part of, including through allyship.
• At key stage 4 (3 lessons) students will have the chance to consider how someone’s choices impact others, and how they can promote diversity and cohesion. The final lesson focuses on the radicalisation process, supporting students to understand recruiter manipulation, to help safeguard themselves and others.

All the lesson plans in this pack are available as both PowerPoints and PDFs, and accompanied by a comprehensive teacher guidance document to help you develop your subject knowledge and teach the lessons safely and effectively. The pupil facing content has been optimised for accessibility and engagement.

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