Lord Lexden – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Lexden on 2015-11-30.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their latest assessment of the extent of homophobic bullying in schools.

Lord Nash

All forms of bullying, including homophobic bullying, are completely unacceptable. In order to tackle homophobic bullying in schools we are providing £2 million this financial year to fund projects designed to build schools’ knowledge and capacity to prevent and tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools.

While evidence points to a high level of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people being subjected to bullying, it also indicates that thanks to the efforts of teachers and charities it is falling. Research undertaken by Stonewall shows that homophobic bullying has reduced in recent years – 55% of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual secondary school pupils reported experiencing homophobic bullying at school in 2012, a drop from 65% in 2007 (Stonewall School Report, 2007 and 2012). The Stonewall Report of 2014 also indicated that homophobic bullying has fallen. The number of secondary school teachers who said their pupils are often or very often the victim of homophobic bullying had almost halved, from 25 per cent in 2009 to 13 per cent in 2014 (Stonewall Teacher Report, 2014 and 2009).