About Schools’ Pride Week

Celebrating Pride in every school | Whakanuia te uenuku ki ia kura

What is Schools’ Pride Week?

Schools’ Pride Week Aotearoa aims to:

  • Celebrate rainbow staff and students in school communities, increasing a sense of belonging
  • Support schools to facilitate activities and pride celebrations in their school, through the sharing of resources and information
  • Create opportunities for schools to incorporate rainbow issues into school subjects, and normalise rainbow identities across the curriculum
  • Increase positive representation of rainbow identities across the curriculum.

Schools’ Pride Week Aotearoa is:

  • NOT a replacement for schools’ regular academic programming.
  • NOT mandatory. Schools’ Pride Week is optional for students to participate in, with activities usually taking place during break times.

Why do we need pride in schools?

1) To combat rainbow-focused bullying

All young people – regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sex or sexuality – have the right to receive a quality education free from bullying, harassment and discrimination. Unfortunately, we know that this right is not being upheld for many rainbow, transgender and takatāpui students.

Bullying based on harmful assumptions about people’s diverse genders, sex characteristics and sexualities is still all too common in schools and kura across Aotearoa. 

In the Identify survey of over 2000 rainbow secondary school students, over one third (37%) said that they had experienced bullying at school at least once in the past 12 months. Trans students were more likely to have been bullied in the past 12 months than cisgender students (46% vs 27%).

The New Zealand government’s national youth health and wellbeing What About Me 2021 survey report also found rainbow young people were more likely to experience bullying than the majority of other young people, with 48% having experienced bullying in the last 12 months.

Although this bullying epidemic primarily impacts rainbow students, non-rainbow students can also be targeted based on perceived gender or sexual diversity. Students have also reported that even school staff are complacent in bullying or microaggressions.

Learn more about the negative impacts of rainbow-focused bullying here.

Student testimonies from the Identify survey:

“You can’t go a day at my school without someone using the term ‘gay’ incorrectly, or talking about how something LGBTQ related is stupid or weird. People do not understand the importance of having Rainbow spaces and clubs.”

“There is a lot of homophobia and transphobia in my school. I get asked inappropriate questions from peers about my sexuality and gender.”

“There is a lot of homophobia from the students around. Being openly rainbow in the school leads to rumours and bullying, so most students have to be closeted for their own safety”

Homosexual Law Reform Protest 1985

2) To challenge the erasure of rainbow communities and histories in school curriculums

Aotearoa has a rich tapestry of rainbow history, activism, art and literature that deserves to be acknowledged and taught in school.

Unfortunately, people with diverse genders, sexualities and sex characteristics remain largely invisible in our current school curriculums. 

Only about a third (32%) of students from the Identify Survey said they had learnt positive or helpful things about rainbow people, histories or issues at school.

The topics, issues, and people we learn about at school play a big part in shaping our knowledge of the world and how we relate to other people.

Learning about rainbow and intersex people’s societal contributions provides students with positive role models and helps normalise gender, sexual and sex diversity. Students might not have opportunities to learn about the rainbow community in other areas of their lives.

Learn more in InsideOUT’s Making Schools Safer resource.

Georgina Beyer outside NZ Parliament

A slice of Aotearoa’s rainbow history:

  • Pre colonial: Māori of diverse genders, sexualities and sex characteristics were accepted as part of the whānau
  • 1840: Homosexuality was made illegal when British law was enforced in Aotearoa
  • 1986: The Homosexual Law Reform is passed, decriminalising sex between men.
  • 1995 Georgina Beyer takes office in Carterton as the world’s first openly transgender mayor. She later becomes the world’s first openly transgender Member of Parliament in 1999.
  • 1997: The Intersex Society of NZ (Aotearoa) is founded by Mani Mitchell – the first intersex organisation of its kind anywhere  in the world.
  • 2013:  NZ becomes the 13th country in the world to legalise marriage between couples of the same gender.
  • 2022: The Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act is passed, outlawing conversion therapy that seeks to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.

3) To acknowledge rainbow whānau and staff

Students do not come to schools as isolated individuals, but as members of whānau and communities, as do school staff.

Acording to the Stats NZ Household Economic Survey 4.4% of New Zealanders aged 18 and older identify as part of rainbow communities. However, Stats NZ acknowledged that the gender and sexual terms used in the survey may not have resonated with everyone and therefore, the data may not have captured all of those who are part of the LGBT+ community.

Even with these conservative numbers we can tell that rainbow people exist in many different ways in our school communities. As parents, caregivers, whanau, teachers and support staff.

Schools’ Pride Week is also an acknowledgement and celebration of these people, alongside students.

The benefits of taking part

1) Increased wellbeing of rainbow students

Schools’ Pride Week can give agency to rainbow students and staff, challenge rainbow-focused bullying, and foster a wider inclusive school community by increasing awareness and empathy among all students, staff and whānau.

Supportive adults:

  • affirm students
  • intervene, particularly when bullying occurs
  • provide support
  • advocate for school-wide policies and practices

Rainbow students who are well supported:

  • develop greater self-esteem
  • are less likely to miss school
  • achieve greater educational outcomes

Feeling safe, supported, valued, and included has a significant postive impact on students’ wellbeing, increasing their ability to engage, learn and retain information in the classroom.

Valuing and supporting rainbow students at school is crucial for students’ wellbeing, which is foundational to being able to engage and learn at school.

Women’s Rugby Sevens winner, Player of the Year and Olympic Gold Medalist Ruby Tui

2) Increased awareness of rainbow communities, our histories, and our contributions to society

Representation matters.

It has a huge impact on how young rainbow people see themselves and their futures.

Seeing themselves represented in positive ways can:

  • challenge stereotypes
  • combat discrimination
  • improve mental health
  • promote acceptance of self
  • change expectations of societal norms
  • increase hope for happy and successful futures

Learning about the trailblazers in our own rainbow history, the existence and fight of our marginalized communities, and the success of our rainbow rangatira is beneficial for all students, not just rainbow ones.

3) Increased empathy for rainbow students, staff and whānau

Schools’ Pride Week is the perfect oppourtunity for the whole school community to come together and share empathy, knowledge and experience.

Ideas to include rainbow allyship in your Pride Week activities:

  • Sharing pronouns
  • Practising gender-neutral language in day-to-day conversations and challenging stereotypes where you hear or see them being used.
  • Be active in tackling discrimination, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia etc. Speak up and try to challenge it.
  • Don’t be scared to try or practice, its ok not to know everything

Feedback from our 2023 campaign showed many participants saw benefits across their schools in regards to empathy and understanding by the wider community. Including information sharing, student and senior leadership visible solidarity (in regards to wearing rainbow pins and ties etc), schoolwide fundraising and activity participation etc. 

“Receiving positive feedback from some of our rainbow families was wonderful.”

“We had some very positive conversations with students who don’t know much about the rainbow community.”

“I think SPWA definitely opened the teachers and staffs eyes as to the homophobia in the school and what needs to be done.”

“It was huge. Changed hearts and minds.”