A Glasgow primary has become the first school in Scotland to achieve an award for ensuring LGBT inclusivity throughout its lessons.
Castleton Primary has books in its library showing LGBT characters and children have been challenging the concept of ‘boys toys’ or ‘girls toys.’
The Castlemilk school received TIE’s Certificate of Completion for its inclusive education work - the first in the country to achieve the goal. Tie is an LGBT inclusive education charity.
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Teacher Ainsley Rogers, equalities lead staff member, said: “Our work focused mainly on embedding the inclusive education themes throughout our curriculum ensuring that meaningful links were being made for our learners.”
A child from the school said: "Sometimes LGBT people are bullied, learning about them is important so everyone knows not to bully them or make fun of them."
Pupils learned about World War II code breaker hero Alan Turing who was convicted over being gay and was given a posthumous pardon.
Ms Rogers said: “When learning about World War II the children could explore Alan Turing and his work. When taking part in their 'toys of the past' topic the children could discuss 'letting toys be toys' and investigate the harmful pink, blue and girls, boys divide in some toy stores.”
She said “ensuring that our class libraries were representative and inclusive” has been a “huge focus.”
Ms Rogers added: “We invested in a huge new library of books where the characters, story lines, etc. featured LGBT families and characters. This then inspired us to take this further when later in the year we bought in even more inclusive books; books representing everyone within our school community with refugee characters, disabled characters, etc.”
The school was praised for its inclusive education work at the education, skills and early years city policy committee last week.
A group of eight P7s planned events for Pride Month and were involved in making short films to help TIE with school visits.
They were also involved in supporting the change of school policies to be more inclusive, creating staff resources and carrying out surveys.
Ms Rogers said: “The children are at the heart of everything that we do, and our LGBT inclusion work was no different.
“TIE have been an incredible support for me and the whole school, offering their help and advice as we went through the year. We are continuing to work with them this year and look forward to all of the exciting things we have planned.”
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