Pride and Prejudice in education

Did you know that new research has discovered that despite progress, ongoing discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) staff and students still persists in colleges and universities? How do you know what the experiences of your LGBT staff and students are like?

A report, ‘Pride and Prejudice in education’ has recently been released by the Forum for sexual orientation and gender identity in post-school education, in partnership with the national union of students (NUS). Research found that although progress has been made since the last research was published in 2008, persistent issues of discrimination for LGBT staff and students still persist. For example:

• Existence and visibility of LGBT groups in educational institutions is fairly low; fewer than one in four learners were aware of an officially recognised group in their place of learning
• Negative behaviour towards learners based on their sexual orientation or gender identity appears to be commonplace: 60 per cent of respondents had witnessed a learner acting negatively towards people because of their sexual orientation at least once; one in 10 respondents saw or heard this behavior every day; and more than half of lesbian/gay (51 per cent) and non-binary students (59 per cent) had experienced homophobic or transphobic name-calling.
• Gay/lesbian (13 per cent) and non-binary (16 per cent) learner respondents were more than twice as likely than average (6 per cent) to say that they had considered leaving their education because of the way they were treated, for example because they had been bullied, harassed or discriminated against.

You can download the report here