So the most positive part for us was the twinning
and the friendship that was created with our neighbouring school,
which is Kinsale Community School.
We visit each other, they host us for a party.
We've been back and forth.
And it gives our students an opportunity to meet other students like themselves
in the West Cork area.
And heading off on a bus is like their opportunity to go
to a match and to meet other people in their area,
make friendships, swap Snapchat, whatever.
So the impact is on the whole school community.
It's not just LGBTQ+ students, their friends and allies.
It is the impact it has on all staff, all students and the wider community.
So I think you need to involve parents and local organisations
that have embraced what we're trying to do.
We got involved in the Quality Mark
because we have a good few students in our school
who belong in the LGBTQ+ community.
We've also seen a massive thing with people come into our schools
just because we are part of the Quality Mark schools,
it's just brilliant to see.
I would really recommend the Quality Mark to other schools
because it's just a huge impact on the school.
Even if it just affects one student,
to see that one person being impacted has been
a huge difference to our school.
We got involved with the Quality Mark
because we felt it gave us the opportunity to
more fully embed the work we were doing already
to support the LGBTQ+ young people in our community.
We really liked that the framework was so cohesive
and had the four areas, the culture, curriculum,
policy, and partnership,
so it meant that we could take a broad approach
to embedding real lasting change in our school.
The most positive part of being involved is seeing the whole school community
band together to make our school a more welcoming and inclusive place.
We always really prided ourselves on making the school as warm
and open and friendly as possible.
And this was just another way of adding to that.
It's also been great to see
students see themselves recognised in the school
and the confidence and the enthusiasm that's come from that.
And even the staff have become more open and willing to communicate.
I would recommend the Quality Mark to another school
because I suppose it can be a really daunting process
trying to figure out how
to make meaningful change in your school community.
There have been so many positive parts of being involved in this programme.
It's made us very intentional in what we've wanted to do.
It's made us pause and step back
and consider the school at lots of different levels,
whether that's a policy level,
but most importantly it's at the lived experience
that our students are having
and that's all students in the school,
regardless of their identity.
We've looked at things like staff training.
We've looked at our curriculum and representation
and like I say, we've looked at our policy.
So it's been a bottom-up and top-down approach
and our hope is that the impact of this
for everybody in the school is real, tangible, measurable.
So I would strongly recommend the Quality Mark programme
to other schools because as educators,
the onus is on us to ensure that young people feel safe
and respected and represented in their education.
And you know, this programme has been such an amazing way
for our school to combat, you know, bullying and exclusion
and just to really promote inclusion and diversity in the school community.