The curriculum

Within this developing framework it is evidently not enough just to include festivals, foods or dances from various cultures as ‘elements’ of culture into the curriculum and life of a school, as a goodwill gesture. Equality and diversity need to be built into all aspects of the curriculum so that all cultures can be valued and utilized in all schools and in all classrooms. Following research by the Birmingham Advisory Service, Birmingham’s lead adviser on equalities, Karamat Iqbal commented: ‘At the moment the curriculum does not reflect the ethnic mix of the city, or of most schools’ (Lepkowska, 2004). Edwards (1998) goes even further in demonstrating the importance of representing cultures equitably by suggesting that all pupils who leave school with only a monocultural perspective are actually ill-prepared to meet the needs of twenty-first-century society.