Transgender student inclusion into school classroom and the role of National Education Policy 2020

Abstract

Over the past couple of years, while there have been concerted efforts to include diverse groups of people at the workplace, the same has not been applied much to classrooms in schools. According to Schofield, diversity at schools benefits society at large by constructively shaping intergroup attitudes and social behaviour among students in the classroom [IJ_ Gautam Rao studied ll J the effect of education policy change in the social attitudes and behaviours of wealthier students in private schools when poor students were integrated into the same learning environment as the wealthy students. Inspired by this study, in our own study, we analyze the role of National Education Policy 2020 in trans gender student inclusion in Indian middle and high schools. We enlist the problems faced by the transgender students when they are included in regular schools, and present evidence that inclusion is currently lacking. We conduct a simple vignette-based survey experiment among school students (classes VI to XII) to test the hypothesis that having transgender students in the classrooms (i) makes non-transgender students more prosocial and sensitive to the transgender community (ii) does not impact their academic outcome and holistic development, i.e., they can be made to be part of the school environment without facing discrimination. We achieve mixed results regarding transgender inclusion. While the results indicate that non-transgender students become more sensitive to the transgender community if they interact with transgender students at school, and that transgender students will be accepted into their peers' social circles, it also indicate that they may not be considered worthy to hold positions of responsibility such as being elected the school prefect.