Report: Violence in schools based on sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or sex characteristics in Europe

The Council of Europe in partnership with UNESCO has recently published the report: Safe at School - Education sector responses to violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or sex characteristics in Europe.

Violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or sex characteristics occurs in all member States, regardless of the socio-economic, cultural or political context. Although these statistics aren’t directly comparable, 47% of LGBTI students report experiencing this violence in Belgium, 23–26% in the Netherlands, 43% in Slovenia, and 67% in Turkey. LGBTI students consistently report higher rates of victimisation than their non-LGBTI peers. In Norway for example, 7% of heterosexual 10th-grade students reported being bullied two to three times monthly. This was the case twice as much (15%) for bisexual students, and five times as much (35%) for gay and lesbian students.

In the last decade, national education sectors in most Council of Europe member States started or continued responding to violence based on sexual orientation, gender identity/expression or sex characteristics. This report provides an overview of this violence in European schools, explores how member States seek to prevent or address it, and makes recommendations to national education sectors to better do so.

Download the report