Non-Normative Gender and Sexual Identities in Schools: - Schools Out

AM: Ok, ur recent research has clearly highlighted problems for LGBT pupils in
schools…
CG: {uh hum}
AM: …which as your role within Stonewall you know well. Um, there are a number of
policy, statutory and non-statutory and also campaigns, of which one you’ve just
mentioned…
CG: {uh hum}
AM: …which I believe have the potential to help elevate these issues, but my question is
how useful do you think theses polices and campaigns actually are and if they are not
useful, where they are not useful why do you think this is?
CG: I think, you need to take, you need to look at legislations and policies and campaigns
together and how they all have different roles to play in bringing about change. Um we
know that there is a lot of very useful and strong legislation out there um employment
equality regulations, education inspections act 2002 about safe guarding young people
and the recent um goods and services facilities regulations which means that you cant be
turned away from a school for being gay or being thought to be gay or having gay
relatives etc. this is all very useful in itself, however you also need policies within schools
and local areas which support teachers and school staff to bring about those changes in
schools um we speak to teachers all the time at Stonewall who say well we understand
what the legislative background is, but we don’t know what to do if a young person tells
us they are gay so school need to be, have very strong policies and an understanding
around issues of LGB in general um and of course campaigns like ours Education for All
highlight and um highlight sort of within the public domain the you know policy domain
the issues that are going on so that we um carried out a survey in 2006 called Speak out
where we ask young people, young gay people about their experiences of homophobic
bullying. 1145 young people responded to that and the results of that were collated as the
School Report which is our our research which has been widely um supported and
endorsed especially by national government who are using that as very much a sort of the
baseline for all of the work that they are trying to do cos the stats of course said that 65%
of gay young people have been, had experienced homophobic bullying at school. Given
that that data the department for children schools and families has knowing
acknowledging that this is something that has to be dealt with seriously. So the legislative
framework is there and now how do you implement that practically.
AM: Yeah, that’s sort of the main thing I’ve been looking at. I mean would you agree,
my opinion is that we [//] I don’t think we need any more policy I think the legislative
framework is there….perhaps policies within schools, but at a national level I think the
policies are there, you know the new DCSF policy I think is fantastic, but its not
statutory, but that’s…
CG: …sure yeah the homophobic guidance itself isn’t statutory but it sends out a great
indicator to schools…
AM: {yeah yeah}