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Case Studies > No Outsiders

No Outsiders

The primary school where I am Deputy Head was directly involved in delivering this programme. Our work in combating homophobia and promoting greater understanding and tolerance of gender issues, gender stereotypes, same-sex parents and same-sex relationships in an open and honest environment shows how all schools should now demonstrate how to respect diversity and act with integrity.

The programme has given children the vocabulary to describe different types of relationships and to develop an awareness of relationships they may not have yet encountered but will most likely meet in the future.

I am proud of how receptive the children have been towards LGBT issues. They have had no problem understanding how all forms of discrimination, including homophobia, are wrong.

This programme has helped children see that it's ok to be different, that we are all different and therefore we all deserve respect.

One of the key achievements of this programme is that it has ‘usualised’ relationships: children perceive same-sex relationships no differently from the more ‘traditional’ family relationships. The attitudes our pupils are continuing to develop will foster greater tolerance, acceptance and understanding in our society.

Although the project has now officially finished, the ideas underpinning the programme continue to resonate throughout all the schools involved in the project as well as the other schools involved in training from the “No Outsiders” teachers. It was like a huge rock being dropped in a pond – the ripples just go on and on.”

By John Harold, Deputy Headteacher

List of books used during this project

All these books are available from Gay's the Word bookshop, Amazon.co.uk and other suppliers.

• The Harvey Milk Story
• The Princesses Have a Ball
• The Boy Who Cried Fabulous
• Priscilla and the Pink Planet
• And Tango Makes Three
• Oliver Button is a Sissy
• The Sissy Duckling
• Totally Joe
• Something Else
• Who's in a Family
• The Family Book
• Spacegirl Pukes
• If I Had a Hundred Mummies
• William's Doll
• The Different Dragon
• Inventing Elliot
• King and King
• King and King and Family
• Hello Sailor
• Friends
• We Belong Together
• Prince Cinders
• The Paperbag Princess
• Two Weeks with the Queen
• The Lion Who Wanted To Love
• Giraffes Can't Dance

Lesson plans and further information

Some lesson plans to go with the books will be on the Tackle Homophobia by the end of 2009.

School's Out teaching resources

LGBT History Month school resources

No Outsiders

NO OUTSIDERS: RESEARCHING APPROACHES TO SEXUALITIES EQUALITY IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

About the project

‘Everyone is an insider, there are no outsiders – whatever their beliefs, whatever their colour, gender or sexuality.’ Archbishop Desmond Tutu, February 2004

Desmond Tutu’s insistence that there are no ‘outsiders’ provides us with the inspiration to work toward a society where his words are true. At the same time, these words remind us that continuing discrimination, whether in relation to ‘race’, class, gender, disability, sexuality or other features of identity, still conveys a message to ‘outsiders’ that they have no place in ‘our’ society. The 'No Outsiders' research project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, supported primary teachers in challenging that message within their own schools and classrooms from September 2006 to December 2008. Over the course of this time, participation extended to include nursery providers, primary teacher-advisers and primary teacher-trainers.

Ofsted and DCSF have both identified homophobic bullying (bullying based on assumptions about sexual orientation) as a key priority for all schools. Recent guidance on transphobic bullying published by the Home Office recognises that children as young as 2 years old may have a sense of being gender variant, or they might have parents who identify as transgender, which means that gender discrimination and transphobia can also have profound implications for primary aged children.

Many children will have a connection, through family or friends, to non-heterosexual relationships and transgender experience, and some will come to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered, but the life experience of all children will be profoundly affected by the ethos of their school, and this means creating a school environment where no-one is an outsider. This might involve, for example, including non-heterosexual relationships and non-gender conformity within discussions of family, friendship, self or growing up, exploring a range of identities and relationships through literacy, art, history or drama, or including a specific focus on homophobia and transphobia within a class- or school-based initiative to tackle bullying.

This project is supported by the General Teaching Council for England, the National Union of Teachers and Schools Out. It supports the work of Education for All, Stonewall’s initiative to promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered equality in schools, which is supported by a broad coalition of educational bodies, including the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), the Teacher Development Agency (TDA) and the General Teaching Council for England (GTC).

The project has been widely recognised in both national and international contexts. It has been included in The Global Human Rights Education Network (HREA) Compendium of good practices in human rights education, to be released Spring 2009, and teacher-researchers were awarded the British Educational Research Association/Sage Publishers Research into Practice Award for schools and early years setting in September 2008.

This information is copied from No Outsiders