The EHRC logo.

Equality and Human Rights Commission response: Department for Education’s Consultation on Sex and Relationships Education and PSHE

The Equality and Human Rights Commission have published their response to the consultation on the changes to teaching of sex and relationship education, and PSHE, in February 2018.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission recommends:

Schools should take a rights-based approach to the whole-school environment, by addressing all subjects from the perspective of ensuring respect for individuals’ human rights
The Department for Education should improve training and guidance for teachers so that they can more comprehensively consider the needs of all pupils
When faced with requests to withdraw, schools should ask parents to state in writing their reasons for wishing to withdraw their child.
Read the full response. 

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The House of Commons logo.

House of Commons Library briefing paper: Workers Underpaid the Minimum Wage

The true extent of underpayment is very difficult to estimate, but a range of 1 to 2 million underpaid workers is likely, or between 4% and 9% of employees aged 25 and above.

This is according to the February 2018 briefing paper (pdf) from the House of Commons Library, which looks at what is known about workers paid less than the minimum wage. 

The paper finds:

HMRC found 98,150 underpaid workers in 2016/17. This was an increase of 69% from 2015/16, and the largest annual total on record
Data from the LFS indicates that 77% of those who usually do one or more hours of unpaid work per week are not paid a fixed hourly rate. In other words, most unpaid time is done by employees on a salary
For the same reason, ASHE does not capture the informal economy, for example, work paid cash in hand. Informal work is likely to have a higher rate of non-compliance with the minimum wage.

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Business in the Community

YouGov and Business in the Community survey: Race at Work 2018

Business in the Community have launched a February 2018 survey to build further on the findings of their 2015 survey, Race at Work. 

They are keen to hear from all ethnicities – everyone aged 16 and over, employed or self-employed in the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). 

The survey questions examine the following workplace issues:

How to talk about race
Pay gap monitoring and reporting 
Progression
Recruitment 
Workplace bullying and harassment 
The survey takes approximately 13 minutes to complete.

Complete the survey.

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