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 across Aotearoa between February 2019-Nov 2021. 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 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.

Our report below discusses some of the workshop evaluation and the key findings from the workshops, including behaviour from school staff, students, community and school systems, environment and curriculum. We look at the impacts of these issues and some of the things schools are doing well.

We are excited to be delivering 40 further individual school workshops across Aotearoa as part of this partnership betweenMay 2022- June 2023.  Contact your local InsideOUT Schools Coordinator if you are interested in one of these at your school.

Read or download our report here:

Creating Rainbow Inclusive Schools Public Report 2020-2021

Read or download our 2019 findings report here:

 Creating Rainbow Inclusive Schools Public Report 2019