LGBT discrimination in Singapore's education system

Singapore's Ministry of Education is notoriously homophobic in its policies regarding the hiring and deployment of openly LGBT teachers.

There is also no express policy of preventing bullying of LGBT students in schools.

With regard to sexuality education, homosexuality is frowned upon with the official line being that male gay sex is illegal in Singapore.

=Policies=

Prior to the mid-2000s, the policy of the Ministry of Education was that openly gay teachers were not to be hired. Homosexual teachers were expected to remain closeted and not come out to the students either directly or indirectly via their blogs.

A landmark case was established by Raffles Institution science teacher, Otto Fong who came out as a gay man in his blog, open to his students and the public alike to read.

Award-winning writer, Alfian Sa'at, who scored the highest A-level results in Singapore during the year in which he sat for them, was denied a relief teaching position on account of the fact that he was openly gay and often wrote about gay issues in his personal blog, his books and theatrical plays.

AWARE was stripped of their right to provide sexuality education in schools because of their non-discriminatory presentation of gay sex in their sexuality education programme.

After the HPB saga in which their was a huge outcry from especially the Christian right wing fundametalists about the organisation's factual information on gay sex published on its website, many former school students stepped forward to describe the homophobic bullying they experienced in school. This led to the formation of websites like Calling it out to collect stories on emotional abuse suffered by students on account of their sexual orientation or non-conformist gender expression.

The LGBT-affirmative counselling agency, Oogachaga, has performed a survey regarding homophobic bullying experienced by LGBT Singaporeans.

Tertiary institutions have led the way towards greater integration and acceptance of their LGBT student population by allowing the formation of gay-straight alliances and other student LGBT organisations on their campuses.

=See also=


 * Discrimination against homosexuals in Singapore

=References=



=Acknowledgements=

This article was written by Roy Tan.