For anyone who thinks that the bullying of LGBT pupils has been largely eradicated in schools, a 2017 report from Stonewall makes for sobering reading. It states that 45 per cent of LGBT pupils in Britain have been bullied because of their sexuality or gender at school. This figure does represent an improvement - in 2012 it was 55 per cent and in 2007, 65 per cent - but 45 per cent of trans young people surveyed had attempted to take their own lives, along with 22 per cent of gay, lesbian and bisexual students. More than half of bullied LGBT pupils (52 per cent) felt that this bullying had a negative effect on their future plans.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of LGBT students - 86 per cent - said they regularly heard homophobic phrases like “that’s so gay” or “you’re so gay” in school.

So what is going wrong? Why are schools’ anti-bullying programmes not protecting LGBT pupils?

Dorothy Espelage is a good person to ask. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Florida and has been exploring homophobic bullying for 20 years. In 2015, she published a two-year longitudinal study of the links between bullying, homophobic teasing and sexual violence in middle school students. “We were really trying to unpack how prejudice and hegemonic masculinity are contributing to all this homophobic name-calling,” she explains.

“We tracked kids from 5th grade [age 10-11] to 12th grade [age 17-18], and there are very strong associations. What is interesting is that the homophobic name-calling is often happening among friends. This person is your friend but they’re calling you ‘gay’ and ‘fag’ every 10 minutes.”

She says that rather than helping to address the issue, teachers are often contributing to it. Their language is rarely as aggressively homophobic as that of the bullies, Espelage explains, but these adults will “police” masculinity, telling male pupils to “man up”, to “stop throwing like a girl”, and so on.

She cites the example of a trans student who was told: “If you just put some lipstick on, people would know that you’re a girl.”

The impact of this kind of stereotyping, she continues, is the creation of an environment where homophobia and sexual harassment can thrive. “A focus on traditional masculinity and femininity and being in those boxes means that [LGBT pupils] are more likely to be attacked,” she continues.

But there is a positive aspect to the finding, Espelage says, because at least it highlights a pattern that can be changed. She refers to damaging gender stereotypes as “malleable factors”, meaning that they can be addressed with students and, crucially, overcome. The simple acts of discussing gender norms in class and challenging students for using homophobic language can have a major impact. “We know that these behaviours are put in place early, usually in middle school, and virtually nothing is done to address it,” she says. “We can stop homophobic name-calling if teachers start to say, ‘We don’t use that language.’”

Parents can be a problem, too, Espelage continues, with some complaining that even mentioning LGBT issues to students is inappropriate. She remembers the father of a seventh-grader [age 12-13] who said it wasn’t the teacher’s job to introduce his child to the concept of sexual orientation. She agreed, but says that his child, who had access to TV and the internet, would almost certainly have an idea already.

“They seem to think that if we ask kids their sexual orientation, somehow they’re going to think, ‘Wait, maybe I’m gay!’” she says. “And if we ask if they’re suicidal, maybe they will think about it for the first time. That doesn’t happen.

“The research shows that exposing kids to these questions doesn’t change behaviour in any way. We don’t see an increase in the 7 per cent who identify as gender and sexual minorities (GSM).”

As well as openly discussing and challenging gender norms and being willing to discuss LGBT issues, Espelage believes social-emotional learning (SEL) programmes can make a real difference in schools. These focus on training students to manage their emotions, establish positive relationships and nurture empathy for others. She recently completed a clinical trial of SEL programmes in 36 middle schools throughout the US, and concluded that their impact can be profound.

“When it’s implemented correctly, we have a reduction in bullying, homophobic name-calling and sexual harassment,” she says. “SEL promotes school connectedness because the students are working together and getting to know each other and care about each other.”

Parents aren’t always happy about SEL being part of the curriculum either, Espelage explains, with some complaining that such topics aren’t within the remit of the school. She gets around the issue in her conservative home state of Florida by referring to SEL programmes as “executive function” training, preparing the soft skills of the future workforce. But what these programmes are best for, she continues, is creating a sense of school belonging, which is strongly linked to a drop in all kinds of bullying. She references a paper published earlier this year reviewing the research on school belonging and its identification of the impact.

“We know that where school belonging is stronger, kids are less likely to bully,” she says. “Researchers have tracked it along with factors like parental monitoring, social support and empathy, but school belonging shows up as the most potent over time. If they have an adult in the building, if they want to go to school, if they feel supported, they are less likely to be perpetrators.”

Gay-straight alliances (GSAs) can also be powerful in overcoming homophobia, she says. These are extracurricular groups that offer a space for LGBT young people and their peers to socialise, discuss LGBT issues and work to improve conditions for all students. These need to include both gay and straight-identifying young people to avoid the risk of victimisation, she explains, but the benefits can extend even to students who don’t attend: research has shown that students in schools with GSAs report lower mental and physical health concerns, greater overall wellbeing, less drug use, less truancy, and greater perceived school safety than students in schools without GSAs.

Ultimately, Espelage says, changing norms is the key. “In a number of our papers, we found that kids who hang out with kids who are homophobic become more like one another,” she says. “A lot of these kids have high social capital and they’re quite popular. People pay attention to what they’re doing. But if you can get a popular quarterback on the football team saying, ‘Hey, it’s not cool, stop calling him a fag,’ they’ll stop. That’s a way to change their attitudes around sexual norms.”

And it’s something that all schools need to be working on, she says, because the stakes are so high. The Stonewall report shows that one in five LGBT students has considered changing schools because theirs does not offer a supportive environment, and seven in 10 have skipped school as a result of bullying. Some 12 per cent of LGBT pupils who had been bullied ended up being excluded from school, which can have long-lasting effects.

“Many kids end up in alternative settings because of the victimisation,” Espelage says. “They end up going to an alternative school, and the minute you do that, your future trajectory has changed.”

Zofia Niemtus is a freelance writer

Further reading

• A Longitudinal Examination of Homophobic Name-Calling in Middle School: bullying, traditional masculinity, and sexual harassment as predictors, Espelage et al (2018)

• Stonewall School Report 2017. See bit.ly/StonewallBully

• Homophobic bullying: research and theoretical perspectives, Rivers, I (2011)

• Homophobic bullying in secondary schools in England and Wales ‐ teachers’ experiences, Douglas, N, et al (1999)

Meet the academic

Dorothy Espelage didn’t set out to become an authority on the psychology of bullying; after earning a BSc in psychology and a master’s in clinical psychology, she undertook a PhD exploring eating disorders.

But it was on her next research project, a violence prevention programme, that she came across the work of bullying research pioneer Dr Dan Olweus, and her fascination set in. In the following two decades, she has turned out more than 140 peer-reviewed articles and 30 chapters on bullying, homophobic teasing, sexual harassment, dating violence and gang violence - as well as securing more than $6.5 million (£5 million) in funding for research into these topics.

In 2016, she was awarded the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy, receiving praise for her “sophisticated methods in assessing the effects of interventions designed to improve the social and emotional lives of children both within and outside of school”.