In September of 2015, world leaders committed to the Global Goals for Sustainable Development.

There are 17 goals designed to achieve three extraordinary things in the next 15 years — end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and fix climate change.

As part of their Advanced Placement Human Geography course, Saltus graduate year 2 students are studying “Development Issues” with Head of Geography, Ms Briley Habib.

Students were given the task of creating and designing an assembly for S6 students based on this year’s topic of “Gender Equality” as part of the United Nation’s World’s Largest Lesson.

Saltus’s theme for the year focuses on “Diversity and Acceptance” and the assembly enabled students to further reflect on the challenges many people face due to prejudice and discrimination.

According to SGY Amy Palmer: “The UN goal is to eliminate all forms of discrimination against all women by 2030.

“It’s going to be very difficult to achieve this because it’s very difficult to change peoples’ opinions but hopefully we will move closer to an equal world.”

The SGY students made their presentations to each of the three S6 classes.

Jordyn Morris felt that religious beliefs play a part in the ability to achieve gender equality. “We worked together to present the World’s Largest Lesson to the younger students ... defined what gender equality is and presented the younger students with the facts.”

Sinder Daniels said: “Through a PowerPoint presentation which included a video (showing them an example of inequality with a solution) and interactive games, we addressed issues surrounding gender such as employment, pay imbalance, product price imbalance and gender roles.”

The S6 students were asked the following questions/statements and, voting with their feet, went to one side of the room if they felt the statement was “True” and the other side if they thought it was “False”:

• Are girls all over the world allowed to go to school?

• Who do you think gets paid more?

• More girls can’t read and write than boys.

• On average boys pay more for products than girls do.

• Girls on average pay more for haircuts than boys.

Students were able to see the connection, for example, between the fact that around the world, not all girls are allowed to go to school and that more boys than girls can read and write.

According to Sinder Daniels: “By the end of our presentations, we had an almost 100 per cent rate of understanding from the S6s on modern day gender inequality.”

Jessica Godfrey pointed out: “The S6 students realised that we are not all equal and they came up with ways to make women and men more equal at Saltus and around the world.”