Is there an aspect of inclusion your school is missing?

Ruth Jenkins

What if there were thousands of pupils in schools across the UK with a belief protected under the Equality Act 2010 , but who experienced discrimination and exclusion in school every day? What if these pupils were living in a way that tackled climate change, reduced their risk of developing the UK’s leading causes of disease, and they were determined to be kind? Are those reasons why they should be discriminated against? Surely that couldn’t happen in your school? Sadly, our research finds that this is the case across the UK. Since January this year, vegan pupils have registered over 1,000 of their schools to receive Vegan-Inclusive Education packs in a bid to help improve inclusion in this area. 252 pupils have completed a survey to capture their day to day experiences as vegans in school, and the results show a widespread challenge and huge improvement opportunity for schools. Fewer than 40% of respondents feel welcome as a vegan pupil in their school, and less than 40% feel safe. Only 12% feel supported to take pride in their vegan beliefs, and only 13% feel valued. If pupils do not feel welcome, safe, supported and valued, they will not be able to learn at their best.

Why might vegan pupils not feel safe?

Pupils need to feel safe to learn effectively, but they will feel unsafe if they are being teased or bullied because of their beliefs. 73% of respondents have been teased for their vegan beliefs at school. 72% of them were teased by other pupils, but 16% were teased by teachers

and 12% by other school staff.

42% of respondents said that they had been bullied because of their vegan beliefs. 76% of those were bullied by other pupils, but 13% were

bullied by teachers and 12% were bullied by other staff.

Of those who had been teased or bullied, only 25% said their school had been swift and helpful to tackle the issue, which contradicts every antibullying policy written by schools. Without recognising veganism as a belief susceptible to bullying, schools are likely to be slower to respond to bullying that arises, and will likely find it hard to manage successfully without the preparatory work of inclusive policies and training for staff and pupils alike.

It is essential that schools invest in training and include an explanation in their policy documents that ethical veganism is a protected belief. These policies need to be explained to both school staff and pupils so that there is no room for misunderstanding. Teachers and pupils need to be clear that this is not an acceptable area for disrespect – just as schools have had to include those with different ethnicities, different abilities, and different sexualities in their expanding circle of inclusion.

We cannot afford to maintain a situation where vegan pupils have such high incidences of teasing and bullying over a protected characteristic in schools, and it is a matter of urgency to tackle the fact that in 1 in 4 incidences it is school staff

who are the perpetrators. “My son was bullied constantly and beaten up after school for being a vegan. His school did nothing to support vegan awareness and understanding of vegan culture. We had to find him a new school.” “I have had meat thrown at me, animal noises made at me.”

Why might vegan pupils not feel welcomed?

Both food and educational approaches can both be unintentionally excluding. If vegan pupils aren’t offered healthy and varied school meals, they are unlikely to feel welcome. Most vegan pupils (54%) said they had experienced no vegan school meal option. This is unlawful. 60% of vegan pupils have experienced narrow and repetitive options (think jacket potato and beans every day). 48% have experienced no vegan dessert options offered on the menu. Imagine if you had to watch your peers eat a yummy pudding every day, and you weren’t given anything. 36% have experienced menu offerings that are not nutritionally balanced. Free help is available to schools and local authorities to improve this. ProvegUK are offering schools and local authorities free consultancy to support their development of plant-based school meal offerings. They are cheaper, will massively cut your school’s carbon footprint, will improve the health outcomes of your pupils and are the most inclusive option

you can offer your pupils. You can contact them now to join the growing group of schools and local authorities taking this positive step towards inclusion, health and sustainability. Additionally, with regard to food outside of school meals, more than two thirds (68%) of vegan pupils have experienced that there are no vegan alternatives offered when food is used as a treat (for example chocolates offered as a prize). Where should you look first to make sure your curriculum is inclusive? 63% of pupils said cooking was an area where they had felt excluded because of their veganism. 48% had felt excluded in nutrition lessons, 43% on school trips, 33% in science, and 25% on topic work. 58% of vegan pupils had been asked to complete work at school that was incompatible with their vegan beliefs. Reviewing these 5 key areas for inclusiveness would make a massive difference and there is further support available to schools and Early Years settings in the UK. ‘Primary Veducation’ is a consultancy service run by a former teacher and SENCo who specialises in whole staff training sessions, showing how to adapt the statutory curriculum and differentiate for the needs of the vegan children in each setting. Founder Laura Chepner is also author of ‘An Educator’s Guide for Vegan-Inclusive Teaching’, which takes practitioners step by step through how to build a vegan-inclusive curriculum.

In less than 5% of cases had pupil’s teachers taught their class about vegan beliefs. When asked about whether their teachers fully understood their vegan beliefs, and worked to fully integrate them into their teaching, only 2% said they did, and 34% said not at all. Three quarters of respondents scored their teachers in the lower half of this scale, so there is lots of room for improvement in both understanding and application in teaching. Educating about difference is a crucial cornerstone of inclusion. Only once pupils understand a belief can they value it. If veganism is not integrated into the curriculum or discussed as a valued belief then it is automatically placed outside the scope of beliefs that children are taught to respect. Then it’s not surprising that teasing and bullying can flourish. RE and World View lessons include lots of information about different religions, with examples of beliefs to help children understand them, and it will be clear from anti-bullying policies that bullying on the grounds of religion is not tolerated. Ethical veganism as a philosophical belief is protected under the Equality Act 2010, and it is just as important that your pupils understand the core principles that underpin veganism, and how to respect it, as other beliefs. Vegans now make up 1.1% of the population, and are more common in the UK than those identifying as Jewish or Buddhist or Sikh. 85% of respondents had felt discriminated against because of their vegan beliefs at school. Of those, the most common emotions elicited were: • Feeling misunderstood (53%) • Frustration (52%) • Sadness (51%) • Heightened sense of difference (49%) • Anger (40%) • Anxiety (39%) • Feeling belittled (37%) • Embarrassment (36%) • Social isolation (36%) • Undervalued (33%) • Impaired sense of belonging (31%) • Powerless (31%) • Humiliation (24%)

Why might a vegan pupil not feel valued?

Only once pupils understand a belief can they value it. If veganism is not integrated into the curriculum or discussed as a valued belief then it is automatically placed outside the scope of beliefs that children are taught to respect.

All education practitioners seeking inclusion must seek to avoid eliciting these emotions in their pupils. Each of these emotions distances the student from the teacher, closes them down to receiving their educational messages and from participating effectively in their education.

Are you still unconvinced?

Have you read this and felt frustrated about a call for vegan-inclusion? When veganism comes up, there is a common psychological response in non-vegans that psychologists term cognitive dissonance. This arises when an individual holds two incompatible beliefs and acts on one of them. For example ‘I love animals’ and ‘It is ok to eat animals’. As Zaria Gorvett writes for BBC Future:

“The tension that results can make us feel stressed, irritated, and unhappy. Instead of resolving it by changing our beliefs or behaviour, it’s quite normal to blame these feelings on something else entirely – all without realising we’re doing it. Our brains have a number of strategies which allow us to avoid facing up to the meat paradox. These include pretending that meat has no link to animals, imagining that we eat less of it than we really do, wilful ignorance about how it’s produced – helped by the cartoons of happy farm animals that we’re exposed to from childhood – and only eating meat from animals which are “humanely” farmed. Unfortunately, most of these are derailed by the presence of vegans. By their mere existence, vegans force people to confront their cognitive dissonance. And this makes people angry. One popular way to resolve cognitive dissonance is by reasoning our way out of it. Decades of psychological research have shown that, when making a decision, people tend to allow themselves to reach their preferred conclusion, as long as they can invent a rational-sounding justification. In the case of meat, this “motivated reasoning” might lead people to find explanations for why eating animals is the correct decision. And one of these is that vegans are bad. Psychological research shows that people tend to reject members of groups who have made laudable choices on purpose. There’s mounting evidence that we’re particularly threatened by people who have similar morals to us, if they’re prepared to go further than we are in order to stick to them. In the end, our fear of being judged far outstrips any respect we might have for their superior integrity.” So with this psychological awareness we can see that ethical veganism is likely to trigger more teasing and bullying than many other protected characteristics. We must recognise that this increases the need for school policies and practices to protect against this, rather than give in to our own psychological shortcuts and biases. Whatever your beliefs, ethical veganism is protected under the Equality Act 2010, and education professionals need to protect their vegan pupils under the law, as well as for the sake of their successful education.

Do you think this isn’t an issue in your school, maybe because all the vegans are in London? When we started this work, we didn’t know the extent of vegan pupils either. This is the map of over 1,000 schools that vegan pupils have registered to receive a Vegan-Inclusive Education pack so far, and it shows just how UK-wide the issue is:

Over one in a hundred people are now vegan in the UK. How many people are in your school? How many of your pupils and staff are vegan? You may well not know, but it is probably time to ask them. It is good practice to include the question on registration forms, and (since ethical veganism is a belief that can be adopted at any time) to enquire regularly through various forms of communication whether anyone requires vegan school meals.

You can download a copy of the Vegan-Inclusive Education pack from the schools page at vieducation.co.uk, where you can also find dozens of resources from educational worksheets for all ages and aspects of the curriculum to fully costed school meal recipes. The pack includes a checklist of 11 steps for vegan-inclusive education, the most important of which have been discussed here: • Adopt policies and procedures that are veganinclusive, especially your anti-bullying policy, and follow through by educating your staff and pupils about veganism as a protect belief. • Check your current curriculum for veganinclusion, especially in cooking, nutrition, science, topic work and school trips, and avoiding the use of animals in school: hatching programmes, pets etc. • Improve your plant-based school meal offering: for the sake of including your vegan pupils, improving the health of all your pupils, and saving the planet. By committing to make your school a veganinclusive environment you are safeguarding a space where vegan pupils can feel safe and comfortable to learn, both now and in the future. We truly appreciate your work.

Ruth Jenkins is the Programme Co-ordinator of Vegan-Inclusive Education https:// vieducation.co.uk/

References

Equality Act 2010: Guidance. (2013). GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/ guidance/equality-act-2010-guidance. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200203-the-hidden-biasesthat-drive-anti-vegan-hatred#:~:text=Unfortunately%2C%20 most%20of%20these%20are,meat%20eating%20as%20an%20 ideology.&text=By%20their%20mere%20existence%2C%20 vegans,And%20this%20makes%20people%20angry.