As part of a strengthened rainbow-focus, Pink Shirt Day and the Mental Health Foundation funded InsideOUT to run a series of Creating Rainbow Inclusive Schools workshops in six regions around Aotearoa between February and May 2019, and another nine workshops between July 2019 to May 2020. These workshops provided an opportunity for students and school staff to come together and discuss the issues facing rainbow people in their schools, as well as ways to make their schools more rainbow inclusive.

 

In addition to providing students and staff with knowledge and skills to challenge bullying and make their schools more rainbow inclusive, it allowed the InsideOUT team to gather some preliminary information on the experiences of rainbow students, staff and allies within Aotearoa’s schools. The experiences we heard add a strong voice to the data we have on rainbow young people’s experiences at secondary school in NZ, from studies such as Youth 2000 and Counting Ourselves.

In 2019 we delivered the first 10 workshops to 168 participants, representing 70 different schools. Our report below discusses the key issues including behaviour from school staff, students, community and school systems, environment and curriculum. We look at the impacts of these issues, some of the things schools are doing well and our recommendations moving forward.

We are excited to be delivering 57 further workshops as part of this partnership between January – June 2020! You can register your interest for these workshops here!

Read or download our report here:

Creating Rainbow Inclusive Schools Public Report 2019