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

curriculum there is a lot of change taking place and we’re talking, we work with the
QCA, the qualifications, curriculum authority to look at um ways in which in citizenship
and PSHEE as it’s now going to be called from September, Um.
AM: It’s getting longer and longer!
CG: Each year, no no no they’ll add as many letters as they can! Um that within those
subjects and that within English literature and drama there are you know um there are
ways to talk about LGBT issues. They don’t have to be shoe-horned into every subject.
So we know that there’s some staff who might want to do it in the maths lessons or you
know Sally and Sarah have go t a joint mortgage and there’s that danger of it being a bit
tokenistic. And we are not at that stage where you can drop same-sex couples into any
example. We need to be talking about you know LGBT people in history, um talking
discrimination and prejudice, civil partnerships, same-sex relationships, homophobic
bullying, um [//] you know there’s an awful lot of issues out there that we can talk about
that don’t make it look tokenistic. Um so [//] I I we try to side with teachers and I
understand, you know especially the teachers we talk to who are really really positive
about it but just don’t have the support and resources they need.
AM: Do you fond the presence of out LGBT teachers in schools is a factor? Do you get a
lot of, these teachers that you talk about coming to you, are they mostly LGB or T or are
a lot of them straight.
CG: Their, the ones I speak to are mostly LGB, if they are T, they don’t say um [//] but
um I [//] yeah it does tend to be them, but we do also speak to heterosexual staff who also
want to deal with this as well and a lot of head teachers who we deal with who we speak
to want to deal with this for their school because they realise you know, it doesn’t take a
rocket scientist to realise that if you’ve got happy students and if you’ve got productive
students and head teachers, you know teachers, and school governors and local
authorities, they want results.
AM: Yeah.
CG: As well as looking after young people they also have to say well you know we get
results, so this is a good school and they have pressures on them from national
Government to do so. So they you know, those those, really canny teachers will realise
well if we look after all of our young people and you know create a really positive
learning environment then we are gonna have good and productive young people. Um, so
we do hear from a range of teachers who want to put this on their agenda.
AM: That’s great, that’s good to hear, positive.
CG: Well, yeah there’s definitely a lot of positive stuff out there.
AM: Actually, that links on to the next question, because um I’ve found some very
successful examples of schools changing there ethos’ and challenging homo/bi/trans
bullying, um Stoke Newington for example, there’s a school in Bradford that I recently