At Rye Oak, our journey began by examining our role as practitioners in either challenging or reinforcing gender stereotypes.  In the initial stage, we unpicked our training and the ‘assumptions’ that had become 'fact' in our daily practice. We shared stories we had heard over the years, particularly around boys and writing, which reinforced the assumption of innate biological differences between boys and girls.  These stories included hearing that…

We are thrilled to announce the winner of our prize draw for Supporter schools who teach Key Stage 2, thanks to educational publishers, Collins. The winner is….

Queen’s Park Primary School!

The prize was to win a visit from Lisa Rajan, author of the Tara Binns books. This new series, within whole-school reading programme Collins Big Cat, explores STEM careers with a female protagonist.

I can’t believe it has been nearly two months since we launched Gender Action with teachers at City Hall. The event was exciting, not only as we got to hear from Professor Becky Francis, and educators and activists on our panel and leading our workshops, but also because we had such quality conversations with teachers and practitioners, from nurseries up to colleges. This was an enriching experience, and confirmed the need for Gender Action…

We were delighted to run a workshop for primary school teachers at the Gender Action launch event last month, addressing gendered language in schools, why it matters and strategies for dealing with it.  We chose to address language as language runs through the heart of children’s learning about the world and – intended or otherwise – conveys profound and lasting messages to children about how they should look and behave, what they should aspire to, what and who they should play with. 

On 1 March 2019, Gender Action was invited to participate at a training event for teachers from Islington Council at City and Islington College. This was a great opportunity to meet teachers interested in gender equality work, as well as other organisations in Islington working in similar fields.

We are thrilled to announce an exciting prize draw for Supporter schools who teach Key Stage 2, thanks to educational publishers, Collins. If you have registered as a Supporter and submit you Initiator plan by Friday 29 March 2019, your school can be entered into a prize draw to win a visit from Lisa Rajan, author of the Tara Binns books. This new series, within whole-school reading programme Collins Big Cat, explores STEM careers with a female protagonist.

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Esther Mander and I delivered a session as part of the Gender Action launch in London.  It was fantastic to meet teachers who are so passionate and committed to achieving gender equality for young people.

In our session, we focused on how to start approaching gender imbalance in schools through using data.  Although this session was originally designed for secondary school staff, there were some key messages which were useful for early years and primary staff which I thought I would share with you through this blog post.

On Saturday 9 February, Gender Action successfully launched its programme with teachers at City Hall.

The launch event opened with a keynote from the Director of UCL Institute of Education, Professor Becky Francis, who spoke about her extensive research in the field of gender and education. She highlighted the importance of considering intersectionality when trying to tackle gender stereotypes – considering how issues of gender intersect with issues around other forms of identity such as race, class and religion.