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'I felt picked on and the amount of times I went to see the teachers and they said, just ignore them, they'll get bored. They never did get bored.' Sacha

School Champions

Stonewall’s Primary School Champions programme provides you with the support to create a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students. It includes benchmarking, extensive resources and training materials; reduced rate teacher training and a designated member of Stonewall's expert team to give you tailored and responsive assistance, helping you tackle homophobic bullying and celebrate difference. Find out more here.

Different families

Children come from a variety of different backgrounds and may have gay siblings, aunties, uncles, godparents, parents or carers. Acknowledging and celebrating different families is crucial to make all children feel welcome and enable them to learn how to value and respect those who are different or come from different backgrounds and families.

Daisy, nine, says her family is different ‘because you have different faces, different colour hair and different sizes of hair’.

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Stonewall's Different Families report found that when children with lesbian or gay family members realise that their family isn't ever mentioned in class and other children use the word ‘gay’ to mean 'rubbish', that they feel excluded and stop talking about their family. Read more

Homophobic language and bullying

Stonewall's 2009 research The Teachers' Report shows that more than two in five primary school teachers (44 per cent) say children experience homophobic bullying in their schools. However, nine out of ten primary school teachers have never received any specific training on how to prevent and respond to homophobic bullying. Read more

They need to be shown and taught about it, just like we do with other countries, religions etc. Hiding won’t make it go away.
Niamh, teacher, primary school (South West)

Information for Governors

School Governors have an important role in making sure the school complies with legislation and meets its duties under the Single Equality Act 2010 and public sector Equality Duty. With the Ofsted Inspection Framework in place since January 2012, there is even more reason to be proactive when it comes to tackling homophobic bullying and language. Read more

Resources

Stonewall research clearly shows the need for the Education for All campaign to include primary schools. Having successfullly worked with secondary schools since 2005, we have now produced a number of fun and age-appropriate resources and lesson plans around celebrating difference and different families. Read more