The Sad Reality: Homophobia in British Schools

A few weeks ago in the Times Educational Supplement (TES) Magazine, there was a piece by Suran Dickson about her personal ‘mission’ to combat prejudice in schools. Suran is founder and Chief Executive of Diversity Role Models - an organisation which promotes positive LGBT role models in the classroom.

Due to our shared interest in education and our respective experiences of working in the classroom and with school-aged children, we were both engaged by Suran’s article and so decided to jointly write this post expressing our delight at what Suran is doing and adding some of our own thoughts.

One of the most powerful messages in the article – and one with which we can both sympathise - was how challenging Suran has found her quest. Anybody thinking that promoting equality in the so-called ‘modern’ or ‘liberal’ education system is easy can think again - you have to be pretty tough. Our classrooms are full of latent homophobic attitudes. Perhaps most noticeably, the use of the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory sense is endemic amongst students in our secondary schools; responding to a poll of lesbian, gay and bisexual students by Stonewall in 2007, 98% said the word "gay" was used as a synonym for "rubbish".

Whilst there are notable examples of many teachers out there who do stand up against this inequality and intimidation in their classes, there are many who don’t. For us, what is most concerning is the fact that the expression of homophobia is in many instances completely ignored by teaching staff, leading to a culture in which homophobia is tolerated rather than unambiguously condemned. For example, teachers may brush off use of the word ‘gay’ or ‘fag’ in an inappropriate context as slang or some sort of linguistic evolution. They may justify their lack of intervention on the grounds that such language isn’t ‘homophobia’ but is instead simply ‘modern’ language. They are wrong. This is homophobia and isn’t being taken seriously by enough people; whilst great progress has been made in tackling racism in our schools in recent years - by raising awareness of the issue across the curriculum - sadly the issue of homophobia has until very recently been ignored.

The picture is not however entirely bleak; encouragingly, the Coalition has made tackling homophobia in schools a political priority. However, the Government must not simply target those typically troubled inner-city comprehensives, whose poor classroom discipline and widespread bullying is frequently criticised in the media. Homophobia is asymptomatic. There is no pattern in who does it or why - it is just as prominent in the flashy ‘progressive’ schools higher in the league tables. Homophobia, like homosexuality, is classless and sadly, entrenched. The scale of the problem must be confronted before it can be addressed.

In many instances there are national solutions to these issues. For example, the Government needs to look at changes to the way teachers are given guidelines on tolerance. Diversity is a watery part of teacher training and the attitude of many seems to be that ‘diversity’ and ‘equality’ in the classroom are simply boxes to be ticked, something to prove when Ofsted come calling rather than a value that is actively promoted cross-curriculum. A pro-equality ethic is not part of some bizarre political agenda, it is something that simply ought to come naturally to our teachers. That can only happen when we stop treating the liberalisation of the curriculum as a partisan target or single issue but as a part of a push for a more tolerant society.

Aaron was working in a school in Lancashire and had a small group of children outside doing some maths challenges. I can’t remember how it came about but one of the children asked if I was married. When I replied that I wasn’t, he asked if I would want a wife. One little girl in the group immediately corrected him. “He could have a husband,” she said thoughtfully. “He might marry a man. You can get married to boys if you’re a boy.” The little boy, quite seriously, turned to her and replied; “Yeah but that would make him gay.”
I was lost in all this and didn’t need to say anything because at once, a third child entered the conversation and replied; “Yeah and that’s ok.” To which the first boy replied; “Yeah, I know it is. I was just asking if he wants to get married.”

Now if only all children had that attitude! Perhaps our teachers could learn quite a bit about the best way to have a frank and honest dialogue about sexuality from them.


- Aaron Spence & Andrew Bennison are both aspiring-teachers studying History at Lancaster & Oxford Universities respectively. Aaron tweets at @Aaronlspence & Andrew at @Andrew_Bennison.

Free Schools as a Liberation tool

I have a quiet confidence about the Government’s Free Schools programme. I liked the idea from the beginning, I’ll admit, so I haven’t really been converted in any way. However one area that I think the Free Schools will be a good contribution to our society, arguments over the teaching of Latin and vocational studies aside, is education on LGBT issues.

I hear a lot of talk from my colleagues on the Right about ending ‘political correctness gone mad’ (we all know that in reality it hasn’t gone far enough but we’ll let the Thatcherites cling to that for now). I also hear a lot from my friends on the Left about the Free Schools damaging the fight for LGBT rights as schools will not have an obligation to promote equality or diversity (I’ll freely admit this blog piece is in-part a reply to a contrary post).

Now the interesting thing is that whilst it is absolutely true that Free Schools will not have that particular obligation, they will be no more expected to promote or teach other questionable criteria such as Intelligent Design as a science or abstinence as a viable alternative to condoms. The beauty of the Free Schools is that is becomes the right of the educator and the parent to flexibly create a curriculum that is personal to the child.

Both Labour and the Conservatives have been harping on for years about the need to make an individual, personalised curriculum. This is our chance. I, for one, have made it my absolute life ambition to start a Free School mirroring “Egalia”, theSwedish gender-neutral pre-school. (OK, one of my 127 life ambitions; right between being on Question Time and being an Autism specialist.)

OK so we risk LGBT issues getting sidelined in some institutions but look at the flip side; schools with a completely secular, atheist and neutral agenda, schools that can teach LGBT as a separate subject if they wanted to or mainstream it into every subject very openly. This is a chance to get onto that ‘Liberating the Curriculum’ notion that we like so much and to run with it. Don’t want the religious right taking over our schools? Don’t want our children indoctrinated? Me either. So let’s all set-up some pro-LGBT, secular, gender-neutral Free Schools and really let Political Correctness run wild. They’ll wish they’d never complained.

A Prime Minister in the Lords?

After the discourse on the News of the World phone hacking had reached the Commons floor today Labourites started tweeting about what would happen to the Conservatives and the Government if David Cameron were to step-down in a VNC.

Now, I don’t think that this is very likely to happen. In fact, I’d put money on to say that it won’t. However a discussion with @tomilo revealed a slight issue; nobody is entirely sure what would happen if Cameron were to go. I suggested that the Party Chair would be the next best thing to a leader we’d have without an official Deputy.

The flaw being then that The Baroness Warsi is, well, a Baroness. How could she lead the party from the House of Lords? The simple answer is that she couldn’t. It’s far too impractical and would never be accepted but I’m not too sure about that.

The world of the Lords that we seem to insist is far away and a relic of the past is actually a lot closer than we care to think. Lords take part at all levels of government, from parliamentary secretaries right through to the upper echelons on the Supreme Court and right throughout Whitehall as policy advisors. They are sometimes even Ministers in the Government or Secretaries of State such as Lord Adonis.

We send them abroad and even push them for high-profile international roles. Lord Carrington, Foreign Secretary to Margaret Thatcher, served as the Secretary General of NATO and more recently Baroness Ashton of Upholland is off jet-setting as Europe’s face to the world. So why then is the thought of a Prime Minister being in the other place so unusual to us?

This is where I go a little populist and start to blame the media. I do however maintain that the now wide viewing of Parliament on television and especially Prime Minister’s Questions has led to some completely constructed idea that the PM must be available to the House of Commons. 

Of course, the House of Commons no more scrutinises the Prime Minister than I do in reality. They can call a Vote of No Confidence all they want but they could do exactly the same in the Lords. The only difference is that the Lords remain unelected. People begin to get queasy about our elected MPs having ‘no say’. A bit of a bizarre argument considering the absolute façade that is PMQs in the first place.

So could a Prime Minister work from the Lords? Constitutionally it’s not unheard of or unconstitutional. It just hasn’t been done in a while. Robert Gascoyne-Cecil was our last Lordly PM and as you can probably guess from his name, he was a 19^th Century Tory. Not the greatest defence of my argument, I understand.

However the fact remains that there is no real reason why a Prime Minister couldn’t do Prime Minister’s questions from the Lords. At the moment, the PM sits in the Commons and appoints a Leader in the Lords. Why then couldn’t he or she sit in the Lords and simply appoint a chief spokesman in the Commons? The Leader of the Commons post exists, why not use it more?

Natually, it will never happen. The public would, for one reason or another, oppose it and the party would never risk electing a leader from the Lords. It would be an interesting way of making a point about the need for Lords reform though wouldn’t it? I am told Labour leaders must be MPs. Sucks to be them. So how about it LibDems? Tories? Next time there is a leadership contest, why not make a point and cause a little mischief?

p.s My first blog post so play nice ;)