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Rio Ferdinand wants anti-racism to be part of school curriculum

Rio Ferdinand has urged the government to make anti-racism part of the school curriculum.

The retired soccer star wants the Black Lives Matter movement to inspire a change to what is taught in schools so people can learn more about black history.

He said: "It can’t just be campaigns. We’ve seen far too often different charities and organisations doing some fly-by campaigns. Yes, their intentions are great, but they’re not sustained. They don’t make change over a long period of time, because the foundations of that aren’t in education. I believe that education has to be at the real foundations of that. It has to be in the curriculum, the government have to get behind it."

And Rio has urged all sports outfits – whatever level they stand at – to make changes to stamp out racism.

He added to BT Sport: "These players, yes they have to be at the forefront of it, but side by side, next to them needs to be … the sport broadcasters, the FA, the Premier League. All of the clubs, all together, sitting together with the same message, pushing out the same message, so this next generation of children … aren’t confused with each organisation having their own message here and their own message there. It needs to be from one centre point, all singing from the same hymn sheet. Every organisation will sit there and they’ll be ticking boxes and saying, ‘We’ve done our but her and we’ve done our bit there.’ But doing it on your own isn’t good enough. It has to be a centralised unit that they’re all working from. All of their messages are very clear, there’s no grey areas and we’re all saying the same thing."