“Inclusive education is beautiful and vegan learners should not be excluded from the benefits of such a wonderful concept.”
Laura Chepner, Education Officer and Chair of The Vegan Society’s Education Network
Our vision for vegan-inclusive education
The Vegan Society’s Education Network fulfils two main aims:
- To support educators and those invested in the development and well-being of their vegan learners from the Early Years through to Higher Education. This is achieved by creating, developing and providing age-related teaching and learning resources and information and guidance, all of which inform our continuing professional development (CPD) accredited, vegan-inclusive staff training and consultancy.
- To support vegan learners and their families when asking for vegan inclusion by acting as an intermediary between them and their institution. This is achieved by empowering vegan learners and their families by informing them of their rights and, if necessary and appropriate, lobbying on their behalf.
Our Purpose
Becoming vegan-inclusive in your everyday teaching and learning practice benefits the wider cohort as well as the vegan children. Veganism promotes good health, environmentally friendly initiatives and compassion for all.
Ethical veganism is a ‘protected characteristic’ for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010. It is unlawful to directly or indirectly discriminate against ethical vegans and the Public Sector Equality Duty requires schools to routinely integrate inclusive thinking and equality into everything their institution does. In our experience a lot of educators are unaware of this duty or do not understand its relevance to veganism. We also know that a lot of educators don’t know what it means to be an ethical vegan. As a result, the needs of vegans in education are not met.
We wish to rectify that by providing useful resources that offer hints, tips, tweaks and share alternative teaching methods that educators can adopt to simply and slowly introduce vegan inclusion into their existing inclusive practice framework.
Becoming vegan-inclusive in your everyday practice can also be of benefit to the wider cohort as well as the vegan children. Veganism promotes good health, environmentally friendly initiatives and compassion for all.
Who is involved? The Education Network
This collective of diverse education professionals in the UK have come together to combine our skills, knowledge and passion to make the experiences of vegan learners and their educators as positive as possible whilst they are in mainstream education.
If you have experience working in the education sector or have a vested interest in the development and well-being of vegan learners in education and wish to join the education network, please email education[at]vegansociety[dot]com.
The BIG Veganism in Education Conference
Members of the society’s Educational Network (EN) - a voluntary group of vegan professionals – and members of the International Rights Network will address challenges to vegan-inclusive education, describe their experiences as educators, parents and guardians and pupils, and look at how equality and inclusiveness principles can be applied to vegans whose ethical views are protected by law.
Please visit our speakers page for a full list of speakers from the education sector who will be joining us on the day.
Examples of topics covered include: how traditional resources can be improved to promote compassion for nonhuman animals, vegan inclusivity in extra-curricular activities and school trips, and the provision of vegan food and plant milks, to name a few.
Download The BIG Veganism in Education Conference PDF to find more information.
Resources
Please visit our resources webpage to find our Guide for Educators and downloadable template letters to assist you in asking for vegan-inclusive practice in education.
