LGBTQIA+ ISSUES: TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL Connor Mills

I had always assumed that my secondary school education in an all-boys school in Longford and then a village in Donegal, that I wouldn’t be learning about the inner workings of queer relationships and sex. I feel since both schools social, personal and health education classes were undertaken by the local priest, my learning of this subject was very one sided. There were huge gaps in my education of sexual health, the rights I had as a gay male, and what were safe or unsafe practices, unless I just hadn’t been reading between the lines of the New Testament correctly for the daily “lines recital”. With the only actual community representation being down the hall on the music room’s wall with a poster of Freddie Mercury.

This is why my heart sang when seeing the recent inclusion of LGBTQIA+ issues in the Irish junior syllabus. Yet now living in the North of Ireland I cannot express just enough my complete bewilderment in Northern Irelands response on the same topics. Looking through the Relationships and Sexuality Education guidance on the CCEA website you can plainly see a want to support and protect LGBTQIA+ youth with a section even detailing the negative impact language can have which again is a clear contrast of my experience; in particular a teacher laughing when a student called Shakespeare “wile gay”. Personal opinions of Shakespeare aside, the guidance offered on topics is inclusive and wants to create more positive school environment for all.

Yet, this is not the actual case, The Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) report (based on a survey of more than 14,500 primary and postprimary students from 500 schools) shows that over 80% of schools in Northern Ireland are failing to provide sufficient teaching on LGBTQIA+ topics. Shockingly almost half are even failing to give “adequate” lessons on consent. So even with a strong guidance on how to teach LGBTQIA+ topics it is at the school’s discretion on which parts of the curriculum it wishes to cover usually determined by the school’s individual ethos.

The report also states that out of students who had openly identified as transgender to a member of staff, less than half had then received further support from the school. With our headlines or social media feeds full of transphobic hate or stories of non-consent it begs belief these would be the topics that didn’t match with a “Schools Ethos” in order to educate and help better understand the student populas.

What also makes the whole situation more mind boggling is the fact that most post primary schools were reported saying the main safeguarding concern was for students’ mental health. Missing the irony of that in 2021 the charity Just Like Us have reported that young people in Northern Ireland are three times more likely to contemplate suicide than their non-LGBTQIA+ peers. Belong to Youth’s survey on the subject showing Northern Irish LGBTQIA+ youth were twice more likely to self-harm, three times more likely to experience suicide ideation and were also four times more likely to experience anxiety and depression than their nonLGBTQIA+ friends. Thus, showing that clearly if the biggest safeguarding concern was Mental health than surely topics covering LGBTQIA+ issues should not be the first to be thrown on the pyre in over 80% of schools.

I personally spent 10 years with my local music school teaching private music A-levels and GCSE’s the given curriculum can be daunting and sometimes you feel a need to spend less time on topics than others based on an overall goal. I was able where possible to inject personality into topics by teaching needed skills in a manner that could be topical and educational overall, for example during pride month I was able to teach the ideas of production through queer artists. It was not necessarily relevant in view of it being a music lesson to expand on the fact the artist identified as queer, yet if a student asked who the artist was or wanted to seek out similar artists I was able to supply them with this information. Even during my own leaving cert one of the song case studies was “Bohemian Rhapsody” (explaining the Freddie Mercury poster) and you best believe seeing the live performances I wanted to learn more information, and this was unfortunately the way in which I first leaned about the AIDS crisis of the 80’s. This again in the music room, down the hall, and separate from the place I was supposed to be learning about sexually transmitted infections and diseases.

The reason this is something that I feel as a community we should be aware of is that it shines a bright light on how attitudes towards the LGBTQIA+ community are coloured. The lack of education at an early age is something that bleeds into adulthood and hurtful or criminal behaviours that we see on the news and in our own streets can be avoided with an education and understanding. Even within our own community were not free from the stigma a lack of education can bring towards sexual health, relationships etc. So, perhaps it is about time even half our schools start actually acting upon their safeguarding concerns and protect the mental health of all students, not just those whose topics match their “ethos”.