Students in Odense Municipality's 9th grades will answer a questionnaire about their views on homosexuality, DR reported. The Children and Youth Committee in Odense City Council adopted the proposal on Monday, and it was put forward by Venstre's Mark Grossmann.
According to Grossmann, the survey will give politicians a picture of young people's reality so they can make better policy in the area. The adopted proposal includes questions on whether homosexuality is fully accepted in Denmark and whether students have heard words or expressions about homosexuals used as insults at their school.
Thomas Mahler, school principal at Dalum Skole and chair of the School Leaders Association in Odense Municipality, has a hard time seeing what the survey will contribute. "I have a hard time seeing the purpose of precisely this survey. Two years ago a VIVE survey was made that was quite thorough, and I think some of the challenges that survey showed still apply," he said.
Lambda, a Funen association for LGBT+ people, welcomes the new survey but like Mahler refers to the VIVE survey. Niklas Lindsten, a board member at Lambda, said it would be better to solve the problems shown by the two-year-old survey. "We would rather see concrete initiatives launched to remedy the problem than a questionnaire survey where we don't really know what is to come afterwards," he said.
At the Children and Youth Committee meeting, Brian Dybro from SF, the local councilor for the area, put forward an amendment. He did not think answers from individual schools should be visible, only the combined answers for the whole municipality. The amendment was not adopted.
Thomas Mahler fears the survey could change focus. "I can be nervous that this survey will be used to stigmatize some of the schools, because I think there will be large differences," he said.
Niklas Lindsten from Lambda also fears results from individual schools will overshadow the overall problem the association believes exists in Odense. "It is really important for us that it will be about targeting efforts, so we don't just use a survey to show which schools are worst off," he said.
The Children and Youth Administration in Odense Municipality expects the questionnaire survey to be carried out at the end of this year or the start of next year.