Early Years Overview

Early Years Overview

LGBT Inclusive Education refers to including themes related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people across the curriculum. It applies across ages and stages, from early level to senior phase. Learning will be differentiated and suitable for the age and stage of learners.

It is a national expectation that early years practitioners in Scotland will engage with the National Approach to LGBT Inclusive Education through their curriculum delivery. This means completing the national CPD and including relevant LGBT Learning Themes in ordinary teaching and learning.

In early years settings, LGBT Inclusive Education will primarily focus on ensuring that all children and families are included in the learning environment. This would typically include examples of diverse families, such as storybooks that feature same-sex parents. Gender stereotypes can be addressed through play, ensuring that there is not a separation of ‘boys’ toys’ and ‘girls’ toys’ and that all children are able to participate in play-based learning without unnecessary gender stereotyping.

Early years practitioners are supported to include the Learning Themes in whichever way best benefits their learners and families.

Our resources

We produce materials for early years practitioners delivering LGBT Inclusive Education that are ready to use and can also be easily adapted for the needs of learners. These resources also serve as examples of how LGBT Inclusive Education can look for practitioners that want to produce their own materials.

Visit our Early Years Resources page to view and download all of our available resources.

Early years practitioners

The national CPD for early years settings has been created in collaboration with early years practitioners. This free CPD provides practitioners with the knowledge required to meet the national expectations for delivering LGBT Inclusive Education.

The CPD will focus on creating an LGBT inclusive learning environment for learners and families. It also addresses other common questions practitioners may have about this area of work.

‘Delivering LGBT Inclusive Education: Early Years Practice’ will be available on the lgbteducation.scot platform soon. It will consist of an E-Learning module which can be completed by centre staff in approximately 60 minutes.

lgbteducation.scot

We manage lgbteducation.scot, the national platform for LGBT Inclusive Education on behalf of the Scottish Government. It hosts all quality approved resources, the national ‘Delivering LGBT Inclusive Education’ CPD, the LGBT Inclusive Education Implementation and Evaluation Toolkit and all current national guidance for this policy area.