Homonormativity and the focus on families in LGBT inclusion in English primary schools

Although the most recent changes to the Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum in England encourage primary schools to include LGBT content, this inclusion is primarily focused on teaching about different types of families. In view of this, and recent research suggesting the dominance of homonormative LGBT inclusion in primary schools, this article uses interview and questionnaire data from 363 primary school teachers and school workers alongside policy analysis of the RSE curriculum to illuminate the type of LGBT content present in English primary schools, and the factors underpinning its inclusion. LGBT inclusion in this data was found to largely exclude non-familial presentations, which were seen at times as relatively less accessible and less appropriate. Using the theoretical work of Michel Foucault and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, this article examines how the dominance of homonormative presentations in the LGBT content demonstrates the complexity of the line between the queer and heteronormative, offering a degree of LGBT inclusion in primary schools that sustains certain normative ideas of what is appropriate in the curriculum.