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Education and Inspections Bill

moved Amendment No. 237B: "After Clause 87, insert the following new clause—" ““Well-being of homosexual pupils "The governing body and head teacher or principal of a maintained secondary school, academy, sixth form college, further education college, city technology college or city college for the technology of the arts shall have a duty to establish effective policies to prevent the bullying and ensure the safety and well-being of all pupils self-identifying as, or believed by other to be, homosexual, so helping to promote the fulfilment by every pupil of his educational potential.””" The noble Baroness said: Amendment No. 237B concerns the well-being of homosexual pupils. It is a sad fact that homophobic bullying causes permanent damage. It affects children and young people fromall backgrounds, regardless of their actual sexual orientation, and blights the schools and colleges where it takes place. It is not a small problem. One DfES survey in 2002, Bullying—don’t suffer in silence, found that 82 per cent of secondary school teachers said they were aware of verbal homophobic bullying and 26 per cent were aware of physical homophobic bullying. However, only 6 per cent of schools had anti-bullying policies that dealt specifically with homophobic bullying. Having effective policies in place in individual schools to tackle bullying is critical. Ofsted has said that homophobic bullying is one of the most difficult forms to deal with, and yet it is often not properly addressed, if at all. Homophobic bullying in schools is a behaviour issue which has very serious effects on a minority of pupils. It frequently results in those who are bullied failing to achieve their full educational potential, which is one of the main objectives of this Bill, or their playing truant, self-harming or even in some particularly sad cases, committing suicide. Such victims may or may not actually be growing up gay or lesbian—they may merely be thought to be so by their fellow pupils. It is not a matter of ““political correctness””. It is an issue about pupil achievement, pupil behaviour, pupil well-being, and the right of parents to feel confident that their child will be safe in school. A school where such bullying is permitted to continue unchallenged is a school which is not safe for all its pupils, and where boys in particular usually feel the need to appear ““macho”” and are not likely to feel comfortable about being open about their emotions. Displays of threatening or violent behaviour are not uncommon, and this will not infrequently go hand in hand with an attitude that schoolwork is ““uncool””. It will readily be seen that if most of those pupils are under-achieving because of the pressure of homophobic bullying, this will have a serious effect on that school’s academic achievements. It may also affect attendance and truancy rates. Such bullying can take many forms. Most commonly it is verbal abuse in which a string of insulting words, jokes and anecdotes are levelled at the ““target”” pupil. In a recent report one victim said: "““I was never able to set off down a corridor at that school without expecting someone to say something unpleasant to me””." To have this kind of abuse over several years at school can have appalling long-term effects on self-esteem. Even where the target of such abuse appears to have coped with the difficulty and survived, it is not unknown for them to develop severe depression in early adulthood and to take their own lives. Not infrequently, verbal abuse can turn into physical attacks. Schoolwork is defaced, clothing ruined and victims are set upon, sometimes by several pupils, and beaten up. If such behaviour goes unchecked, it eventually leads to one adult murdering another. We hear not infrequently of such homophobic murders. It is also difficult for a victim to lead the life of an ordinary teenager in these circumstances. ““Ordinary”” teenagers go to discos and parties and ““go out with”” people of the opposite sex. Gay and lesbian teenagers either pretend feelings that they do not have, which can lead to all kinds of complications, or hide themselves away and do not have a social life, especially in areas of the country where they do not have a support group where they can feel comfortable. Some even find themselves out on the street and homeless because of these problems. Pupils are not the only people in schools to be both the targets and the perpetrators of homophobic bullying; it happens to and by staff as well. Pupils have reported insulting remarks made by teachers to individual pupils, sometimes in front of the whole class. Of course, pupils take their cue on behaviour from the adults in schools. It should not be assumed that homophobic bullying is purely a secondary school phenomenon. Young children of primary school age readily pick up the verbal insults that they hear, and ““gay”” is a common playground insult in many primary schools. We do not believe that it is appropriate to engage children of primary age in teaching about homophobic sexual acts. However, they can perfectly well be led by teachers to understand that people of the same sex sometimes have loving relationships. These days it is by no means unknown for a child in a school to have ““two mummies”” or for a young child to be aware that an older brother or sister is gay. Certainly, primary school teachers could perfectly reasonably challenge inappropriate language. Homophobic bullying will be most successfully challenged where there is leadership from the very top. This starts with central Government legislation. The repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 has been a highly important step, but to impose, as this proposed new clause does, a specific duty on governors and head teachers to safeguard the well-being of gay and lesbian pupils would send an important and welcome signal to all schools. The DfES has made some welcome forward steps, especially with the publication of the document, Stand Up For Us—challenging homophobia in schools. But no document, however well conceived, is a substitute for face-to-face in-service training and we need a lot more of that. The requirement for Ofsted to report on how a school is promoting the five outcomes, including pupils being physically and mentally healthy, staying safe and being protected from harm and neglect, provides a ready-made opportunity for inspectors, too, to evaluate how schools are confronting homophobic bullying. If schools are aware of Ofsted’s interest in that area, that will be an important lever to improvement. The local education authority can give an important lead. But, at a school level, leadership must come from the top, from the head teacher, who then needs to convince the senior management of the school of the importance of the issue—not from a bleeding-heart liberal or politically correct perspective, but from one of improving pupil achievement and ensuring that all pupils are safe in schools. School behaviour policies are developed by the whole staff working together and with the whole pupil body. The Minister has promised that he will bring forward an amendment to that effect at the next stage of the Bill. Schools are required to have anti-bullying policies, but alarmingly few to date make specific mention of homophobic bullying. It will be a huge step forward when every pupil is aware of where their school stands on the issue of homophobic bullying and that gay and lesbian people will not be disparaged any more than people from ethnic minorities are, rightly, not disparaged. No one would pretend that we have yet won the battle with racism or with the bullying of disabled pupils in schools. But what has been done has been achieved by legislation. It is normal in the vast majority of schools for every pupil to understand that racism is regarded as quite unacceptable and thatthe bullying of children with disabilities is quite unacceptable. It should be clear to all pupils that homophobia and homophobic bullying of all kinds are equally unacceptable. You cannot help your race, your colour, your disability or your sexual orientation. If legislation is required for those other factors that are a part of the person, then, in exactly the same way, we need this new clause in the Bill to ensure that, right from the start, as attitudes develop among young people, homophobia and homophobic bullying are just as unacceptable. I beg to move.