Voices is the Dorset Echo's weekly youth page - written for young people by young people.

This week Billy argues teaching diversity should be as important as teaching maths or English.

Research has shown that ethnically diverse secondary schools have a positive impact on students later in life.

The research showed that schools with higher diversity were more tolerant and there was less hostility to other ethnic groups.

This would mean that as the teenagers of today become adults racism crimes in the UK would have dropped massively.

Therefore, the UK as a nation would be a diverse and accepting society and a wonderful place to live in.

Some may say that, this couldn’t make a difference because if they have a bad impression of different races at a teenage age then it would be hard to change that opinion. This is true, we learn and create opinions from a young age from the things around us.

Thus, we need to make from Nurseries to University more diverse to reinforce this good impression.

I think that, this is just as important lesson as Maths or English because it is one thing to live in a coherent nation and another to live in a coherent and acquiescent nation. And why should we stop there, this can spread to all types of prejudice from gender to age. This would mean that bullying rates would decrease. Success in school would increase.

By Billy Sullivan