Partnerships are integral to many projects funded by John Lyon’s Charity and Educate & Celebrate is no exception.
Educate & Celebrate equips communities with the knowledge, skills and confidence to embed gender, gender identity and sexual orientation into the fabric of an organisation. It provides intensive support and guidance to schools to ensure they are fully LGBT+ inclusive, teaching children and young people to always be welcoming.
John Lyon’s Charity quickly identified the importance of Educate & Celebrate and shares its mission to eradicate discrimination, especially when it comes to educating children and young people.
Schools have a statutory responsibility to provide teaching on LGBT+ issues but rather than delivering workshops to students which can have limited long-term impact, Educate & Celebrate are taking a systemic, whole-school approach to achieve their aim. By partnering with schools across five core areas – training, curriculum, policy, environment and community – they embed a change, which endures long after schools have finished the programme. The goal is to impact 24,300 young people through the course of the project.
Dr Elly Barnes, MBE, CEO & Founder at Educate & Celebrate said;
“The project is enabling us to positively change the lives of children and young people in Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, Brent and Ealing. We have been able to do this as a direct result of engaging schools and teachers in more inclusive practices in their environments which feeds into our ultimate goal of enabling schools to be inclusive, welcoming, with vibrant spaces that are conducive to learning and maximising the potential of all its children and young people.
The funding from John Lyon’s Charity has enabled us to partner with schools in a variety of settings including single gender, those serving faith communities, pupil referral units and those in areas of high deprivation as we know through research that these environments can be more resistant to change.
Through the training we have enabled senior leaders and staff to engage with the ever-changing landscape of language and law with regards to LGBT+ inclusion, ask questions and explore their own and others’ behaviours – these conversations are ongoing but we are happy to have broken the silence in some of the schools and begun to address the fears and give confidence.
The positive changes that occur are reflected in survey results from primary school pupils with 87.5% (up from 44%) thinking it’s ok to love anybody of any gender. 95.8% of pupils had heard the words lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans with 80% knowing it is legal in the UK. 91% (up from 56%) said they would tell a teacher or tell the person themselves to stop it. This positive trajectory was upheld with 87.5% (up from 26%) feeling confident or somewhat confident to make positive change within the school.
Thanks to John Lyon’s Charity we have been able to expand our reach into areas with little LGBT+ provision and improve the lives of young people, teachers and families. We are delighted to be working with a partner who shares our vision to have pupil voice at the heart of everything we do.”
