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

CG: …um there is a lot of talk about um the need for statutory monitoring of homophobic
incidents in schools because throughout a lot of the work we do around homophobia and
homophobic bullying we always draw parallels with racism and racist bullying…
AM: {yeah}
CG: …and of course now there is a statutory duty on schools to monitor racist incidents.
The problem there is that they don’t, they don’t know what to do with that information
and so a lot of schools are sending…
AM: {I’ve heard that a lot}
CG: …there sending back their monthly reports which say zero zero zero to their local
authority. Because they don’t know what they are supposed to do once they have that
information, so as much as we’d like to see um a statutory requirement on local
authorities to be um monitoring homophobic incidents, we don’t want to see that until we
know that local authorities and schools understand what homophobia and homophobic
bullying are and then how to deal with that. Otherwise we’ll just be stuck there with all
these policies and rules and regulations and not knowing what to do with them.
AM: Yeah, that’s a really excellent point. Ok moving on to the next question. Same sex
relationships at primary level are routinely discussed in other European countries…
CG: {um}
AM: …do you think the same sort of polices should be adapted here?
CG: There’s definitely room to talk about these issues in the primary school environment
and we know its quite a contentious and delicate issue in a lot of schools and a lot of local
authorities. We, ur, at present out campaign works across primary and secondary schools
and we take very different approaches in the way we deal with that. So in secondary
schools we talk about being gay, how that feels and how it can affect you when people
discriminate against you. In primary schools we talk about very generally different
families…
AM: {yeah}
CG: …so you take a class of twenty-five you know key stage one and two pupils, you
look at them you know across that class you’ll have some who come from single parent
families, some who come from very nuclear 2.4 families, um families which have um a
mixed heritage, some who are adopted, live with carers, live with grandparents and there
will be children in that class who come from same-sex parentage families. They may
have gay uncles, gay aunts, gays brothers, gay sisters, gay you know what I call gay by
association, so they’ve got sort of you know they they have a link to the gay community.
So it’s very important that when we talk about cultures, society, families, we talk about
those issues that accurately reflect what young people experience. So there is definitely a
place to talk about these things within primary schools. Whenever the SEAL agenda,
which is the social emotional aspects of learning primary school agenda which has been