Earlier this month I was lucky enough to be part of a
Scottish Delegation at the ‘Breaking the Walls of Silence’ Conference in
Slovenia. The main aim of this event was:
• To
explore current situations and trends regarding homophobia, biphobia and
transphobia in education / schools in the EU countries,
• to
provide a platform for key individuals to meet and facilitate sharing of
experience, knowledge, strategies and materials on how to best support teachers
/ NGOs attempting to open up the topic within a school environment,
• to get
insight of good practice in preventing homophobia and including LGBT issues in
teaching at both classroom and institutional levels and
• to
conclude the Breaking the Walls of Silence project, present and disseminate the
results, challenges, effects and its local and national influence
I attended with colleagues from LGBT Youth Scotland, who was
a partner in the organising of this conference, Education Scotland and Glasgow
City Council.
The conference took place in the beautiful city of Ljubljana,
beautiful and very cold for the most part! Our role was to share how each of
the Scottish delegation had worked in partnership to help improve and ensure
the inclusion of LGBT young people in schools and how we contributed to
challenging homophobia and transphobia.
I enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on how having an equalities
focus in our anti-bullying work supports the work and values of LGBT Youth
Scotland and helps mainstream, in a policy sense to begin with the issues of
homophobia and transphobia. The service ensures that schools in particular do
not just have say, an anti-homophobic bullying policy and an anti-racist
bullying policy but instead having am inclusive and robust anti-bullying policy.
It is not good enough to say, ‘all types of bullying are unacceptable
here’. Our approach to policy and training ensures we are more prescriptive
about what these behaviours are and that they reflect the equality strands and
the realities of the bullying young people face. At times the statement ‘all
bullying is unacceptable’ has allowed stakeholders to ‘body-swerve’ their
responsibility to include homophobic bullying in particular. Research has shown
that having an explicit policy commitment to addressing issues such as
homophobia can lead to a better outcomes and experiences in school.
What was evident too was the marked difference in the last 8
years or so that colleagues in other parts of Europe are and have experienced.
Countries such as Slovenia, Poland and Romania are in relative terms still behind
Scotland in terms of LGBT young people’s inclusion. The fact we have a national approach to
anti-bullying in Scotland that is equalities focussed, Government commitment to
the agenda, a legislative framework, School Inspectors and Local Authorities who
are accountable to this, gives us at the very least a more positive environment
and framework to improve the experiences of LGBT young People.
We were keen not to paint an overly rosy picture of what is
happening in Scotland as many challenges remain and young people still experience
homophobia and transphobia every single day. Our colleagues from across Europe
did recognise that there is a much more joined up approach in Scotland than they
currently experience and this is something they would like to be able to
emulate and is something they can learn from.
What was very evident was the passion and commitment of
delegates from all over Europe who are committed to change and to challenging
the prejudice experienced by LGBT young people on a daily basis.
They will make a difference.
Brian
