GSCENE 19
attitudes on a wider basis amongst pupils,
parents and staff and as a result the school
community has become more cohesive.
INCLUSION FOR ALL
Shaun Dellenty founds a charity to reduce homophobic
bullying at his own school. He tells his story to Gscene.
It’s 2010 and I've been Deputy Headteacher of
a large inner-city primary school in London for
several years. There’s a knock on my office
door and two children stand looking
crestfallen, accompanied by a red-faced lunch
time supervisor. “Can you sort this out please
Shaun?” she asks, obviously annoyed. “Jason
called David gay and now David is upset”
“Okay, what have you done so far?” I ask the
red-faced lunch time supervisor.
“I told Billy off and told him it wasn't a very
nice thing to say. I brought them straight to
you as I thought, well, that you could sort
this one out,” comes the reply.
This anecdote conveys the sense of an adult
working in a school who is either unwilling or
unable to tackle homophobic bullying. This
event proved to be a turning point for me, as
that red-faced lunch time supervisor was one
of many adults in my school who presented
me, the single openly gay member of staff in
the school with any and every incident that
involved the use of homophobic bullying or
language, particularly the use of ‘you're gay’
and the use of ‘those (trainers/jeans etc) are
gay’ as a pejorative term.
I started to ask questions. What happens in
schools where there are no gay staff - who
deals with homophobic incidents in these
schools? What happens with homophobic
incidents in a faith school? Could opinions on
homosexuality create barriers to dealing with
homophobic bullying and language and result
in children being damaged? After all, whether
we approve or not, statistically some of those
small children in faith schools will also grow
up to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.
Would adults in schools always send incidents
of racism to a black member or school
leadership or bullying around disability to a
disabled member of staff? How could pupils
with gay family members or friends feel
included if they were told that 'gay' was not a
'nice word to say'? What of those pupils, some
of whom are already aware at primary school
age that they are different, who only hear
negative associations from certain sections of
the media, family members, peers and adults
in school?
I knew first hand how self-awareness at an
early age (I first knew I was attracted to men
around the age of four) can lead to the
feeling that one is growing up in an alien
world. I was also aware of the impact upon
pupil attendance, attainment, mental and
physically health of homophobic bullying. In
recent years at my school we’d experienced
several children openly questioning their
identity and using the words ‘gay’ and
‘transgender’ which seemed to result in staff
backing off or feeling uncomfortable in terms
of how to reassure pupils. Training was sorely
needed, and it was needed by the whole staff,
from school leaders to the premises manager
and dinner supervisors.
I started by auditing pupils in Key Stage 2,
using a questionnaire around the the different
kinds of bullying and language they were
experiencing. I used a similar questionnaire
with all staff to see how confident they felt in
tackling various forms of bullying and
prejudice, dealing with same-sex parents and
whether or not they thought the pejorative
use of ‘you're so gay/those trainers are so gay’
could actually cause emotional damage to a
child with same sex parents, gay siblings or if
they were actually themselves questioning
their identity. The questionnaires proved to be
a very relevant starting point for the work
that has now morphed into my charitable
organisation, Inclusion For All. 75% of pupils
were hearing ‘you're so gay/lesbian’ and ‘those
trainers are so gay’ o