“Oh, you are my destiny; you are my one and only,” sings Lionel Richie softly in the background, as the S3 science class works away. Playing music in class, says chemistry teacher Paul Murray, is one of his trademarks. If his pupils come in “hyper”, he uses music to calm them; if they are lacklustre, he uses it to wake them up and motivate them.

But this is not the only reason Murray stands out among the 90-plus teachers found in the corridors and classrooms of Kirkcaldy High School in Fife. He’s sporting Dr Martens boots with rainbow laces. On his desk flies the tricolour bisexual pride flag of pink, lavender and blue, and he has no qualms about discussing his sexuality with me in front of a class full of teenagers.

If this were a different school, he might not have the confidence, he says. But equality and fairness are at the heart of the ethos here. Derek Allan, the headteacher, can say “gay” or “lesbian” and nobody bats an eyelid, says Murray: it is acceptable and, more importantly, unremarkable. And it was as a result of the LGBT+ Group set up here in 2015 - something that happened after a prefect pointed out that the school could be doing more to support LGBTI pupils - that Murray came to terms with his own sexuality some two years ago, at the age of 36.

The first time he came out as bisexual was in school because, during a class, an S1 pupil asked him about his sexuality.

“I’m incapable of lying about anything at all, so I had to answer the question,” says Murray. “There was a pause and then they said ‘what are we doing next?’ and that was that, because kids are like that.”

Murray thinks he was unable to come to terms with his own sexuality because he was badly bullied at school in the 1990s for being a “poof”.

“I was never ashamed or embarrassed to be gay but I didn’t want to prove the bullies right, and that stopped me exploring my own sexuality as a teenager.”

When Murray was at school, Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was still in force. It stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”. The clause was repealed in 2000 by the Scottish Parliament, but Murray believes the legacy of Section 28 “lives on in teachers’ heads” today. “I still hear stories about teachers being told not to wear rainbow lanyards because they are not allowed to promote homosexuality,” he says.

He is optimistic, though, that the new guidance from the government that LGBTI-inclusive education should be embedded across the curriculum will finally put paid to homophobia as “the last bastion of acceptable prejudice”. The move was announced in November 2018 and made headlines internationally, as Scotland boasted that it would be the first country to make it required practice that children are taught about LGBTI equality and inclusion.

The plan is that Scottish pupils will learn about LGBTI terminology and identities; tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia; prejudice in relation to the LGBTI community, and the history of LGBTI movements.

Making change happen

How much it will change schools on the ground will depend on where they are just now, says Jordan Daly, who co-founded the Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) campaign which, for the past three years, has led the campaign for the change. The other founder was Liam Stevenson - who is straight, 17 years older than Daly and describes himself as “your standard working-class guy”.

In the wake of the announcement, John Naples Campbell - a teacher at Dyce Academy in Aberdeen, who has also been recognised for his efforts to raise awareness of LGBTI issues - tweeted: “I actually feel a bit lost now that we’ve succeed in getting LGBT education through...what do I do with my life? [I] feel like someone has cut my arm off”.

But Daly, who is 23 and has been juggling campaigning with university study, says that, if anything, the pressure has now increased.

Delivering workshops in schools and leading assemblies has always been part of the work of the TIE campaign but, in the months since education secretary John Swinney made the announcement, numerous schools have made contact - Daly estimates that 60 requests are sitting in the TIE inbox - leaving precious little time to celebrate.

“It was one of those strange things,” says Daly. “We knew this was going to happen for a wee while; we knew the announcement was coming up. The working group was told well in advance. We had to keep quiet for a couple of months and then it happened, and the whole day flashed by really quickly.

“I don’t think it was until much later, when I was looking back through everything and what other people were saying - speaking to school teachers, seeing young people tweeting - that I realised this has really changed. People are not going to go through [the experience of feeling excluded] anymore at school.”

For some pupils, school has been a gauntlet, and many have been scarred by their experiences. Allan acknowledges this, saying that some people do well and find happiness despite what happens to them in school - but the aim of Kirkcaldy High is that they do well because of what happens there.

In a 2016 article for Tes Scotland, Daly recalled that, at age 12, he had earmarked the tree he was going to hang himself from. He said that at the Catholic school he attended, homophobic slurs were commonplace, pejorative language was a major problem and it would have been inconceivable for anyone to be openly LGBTI and not put themselves at risk.

He didn’t remember a teacher ever stepping in. And when he first started to visit schools for TIE, he was “alarmed” by how little progress seemed to have been made since he was at school.

Daly’s observation is borne out by the statistics. Earlier this year, LGBT Youth Scotland published a survey of more than 650 LGBTI young people aged 13-25: almost half rated their school experience as bad.

It also found that 81 per cent had experienced at least one form of homophobic, biphobic or transphobic bullying during their time in education, and 41 per cent had suffered physical assaults, with this much more likely to take place in school than college or university.

A Stonewall Scotland school report published last year found that LGBTI young people continued to have alarming rates of poor mental health. Nearly all trans young people in Scotland (96 per cent) had self-harmed, as had three in five lesbian, gay and bi young people (58 per cent). More than two in five trans young people in Scotland (43 per cent) had attempted to take their own life, and one in four lesbian, gay and bi students (24 per cent) had done the same.

Highlighting role models

Improving how LGBTI issues were covered in PSE or sex and relationship education was never the sole goal of the TIE campaign.

As a “tubby and fresh-faced” S1 struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, Daly needed to know that he was not alone; that there was a big community out there, full of people like him, making a positive contribution to society. He needed to be made aware that there are countless role models, from mathematician Alan Turing (who played a pivotal role in cracking intercepted coded messages during the Second World War but was prosecuted for homosexual acts) to modern-day LGBTI politicians such as Kezia Dugdale and Patrick Harvie.

“The only thing I knew about being gay or LGBT was this word everyone used to insult each other, or put people down, or describe things we did not like - maths was ‘so gay’ or punishment exercises were ‘so gay’. That was all I knew. I was so uneducated and so ignorant, and just assumed everything LGBT was negative.

“By teaching the history of the equal rights movement, and about various icons and role models - that’s how you empower LGBT young people and raise awareness among all young people of how you can support the LGBT community and tackle prejudice.

“I remember learning about the civil rights movement in history, about Martin Luther King and how black Americans were treated in the South. I remember leaving those classes - you could never have singled out someone of a different skin tone by using racist language because then you would have been on the wrong side, the bad side, the side of people who oppress.”

Daly believes there is a “considerable way to go” before all schools are complying with the new guidance but, like Murray, he is confident that progress will now step up several gears. Scottish schools were already free to teach their pupils about the LGBTI community and their fight for equal rights, but now there is an obligation to do it that will be monitored through inspection. There are also plans to start recording homophobic incidents in schools.

What it means for Catholic schools

That the recommendations should apply to all state schools is made clear in the LGBTI working group report, but how Catholic schools will meet the new obligations remains to be seen. Peter Kearney, director of the Scottish Catholic Media Office, says the Bishops’ Conference is preparing to discuss the implications of the new policy and the “nuts and bolts” of what it will mean in Catholic schools. However, he says there is no reason why Catholic schools should not be able to deliver the recommendations, given that the Church has a zero tolerance approach to bullying, which would always be “called out and stopped”.

Earlier this year, at the Catholic Headteachers’ Association of Scotland annual conference, Father Michael McMahon, who advises schools on religious education, said the church was more concerned with compassion, sensitivity and the elimination of discrimination than “what people do in bed”.

“There is absolutely no dichotomy between being a good Catholic and being part of the LGBTI community,” said McMahon. However, he added: “If the [sexual] act is not ordered towards creation, then it is not procreative and therefore it is not a legitimate expression of sexuality, as far as we are concerned.”

In Kirkcaldy High, Allan is clear that being “LGBTI-inclusive” is a human rights issue. He has been the school’s headteacher for 10 years and there has always been a strong emphasis on values - posters throughout the school remind pupils that they should have respect for self, for others and for learning.

“To me, it’s about the right to be yourself,” says Allan. “You hear horror stories about young people unable to be themselves, taking their own lives and harming themselves; feeling like they are living in the shadows. All that wasted potential and unhappiness - there’s no need for it. It’s unacceptable.”

On Allan’s wall hangs a framed picture of an article from the Mail on Sunday back in 2013. Fife had become “the teenage pregnancy capital of Western Europe” - and the school had decided to make condoms available to pupils via the school nurse. The headline screams: “Outrage as top school hands out hundreds of condoms to pupils”.

Provoking the ire of the Mail is, for Allan, something to be proud of. Locally, he says, there has been no such negative publicity around the school’s LGBTI work, and no complaints from parents.

The sole exception came after a visit from Sir Ian McKellen last year. An anonymous letter arrived at the school describing McKellen as “the biggest gay we have had in the UK for years” and saying that Allan should be ashamed “for foisting the views of a small vocal minority on other kids”. The letter writer also vowed never to “support anything to do with your school ever again”.

Generally, though, Allan thinks that because the area has “challenges” - having never fully recovered from the decline of industries such as coalmining and linoleum production - local people have bigger things to worry about than the LGBT+ Group, which he credits with making the school a happier place and improving parental satisfaction.

Fife Council conducts surveys to find out how pupils and parents feel about their schools. This year, 8,238 pupils took part, including 686 from Kirkcaldy High.

Across the authority, 51 per cent said that they felt happy at school; at Kirkcaldy, it was 61 per cent. Pupils at Kirkcaldy were also more likely to feel safe and cared for (74 per cent, against 63 per cent) and to say that their school was helping them become more confident (64 per cent, compared with 50 per cent).

Parents were more likely to say overall that they were happy with the school (95 per cent, against 79 per cent generally) and that their child had become more resilient and able to cope with challenges (86 per cent compared with 65 per cent).

Politicising a generation

Another benefit of the group, says Allan, is that it is promoting an interest in politics and activism. Allan believes that the 20-plus pupils involved in the LGBT+ Group have become more politicised because they have been part of “probably the most significant social change this generation”.

“We have gone from criminalisation to same-sex marriage in the space of a generation, and from Section 28 to having to cover gay and lesbian issues in schools,” Allan says, as he swigs tea from a mug bearing the message “Some people are gay - get over it”.

It was the 2014 Scottish independence referendum that politicised Daly and TIE’s co-founder, Liam Stevenson. Without it, there would have been no TIE campaign, Daly says. And now the campaign has given birth to another generation of activists.

The teenagers in the Kirkcaldy High LGBT+ Group say it might sound grand, but they are “trying to save lives”, or at least to save young people from having an unhappy life, where they feel unable to be true to themselves without fear of bullying, harassment or discrimination.

However, they are also clear about why they have been able to set up a group in the first place, deliver staff training, work with other local schools to help them set up their own LGBT+ groups: it is down to their own school’s leadership team.

“If it wasn’t for Mr Allan and the teachers high up the school, we wouldn’t be able to do it, full stop,” says S5 pupil and group member John Hamilton. “Because Mr Allan - the boss - is encouraging and allowing us to do it, that’s a big part of why we are able to do it.”

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

Key recommendations

The LGBTI working group, formed last year, published a report with a total of 33 recommendations, all of which were accepted by the Scottish government. 

Education secretary John Swinney said that it was “vital the curriculum is as diverse as the young people who learn in our schools”.

The group’s key recommendations were:

* The Scottish government take steps to develop national guidance which clearly states expectations for schools regarding LGBTI-inclusive education.

* LGBTI-specific experiences and outcomes should be created, along with benchmarks.

* A new, basic LGBTI-inclusion training course should be funded for teachers and made available nationally by 2020.

* All teaching students should have the confidence to address LGBTI-inclusive education.

* New resources should be created for teachers.

* LGBTI inclusion should be monitored via school inspection.

* LGBTI bullying in schools should be recorded.

Ideas for inclusive curriculum

In November, to coincide with the Scottish government making a commitment to LGBTI-inclusive education, the charity LGBT Youth Scotland published a guide to including a broader range of voices and identities across all areas of the curriculum. Here are some highlights:

MODERN LANGUAGES: In many European languages, nouns are masculine or feminine. This can be used as a starting point to discuss gender and how the gender of male/female does not work for everyone. While this wouldn’t make up a lesson in itself, it allows the teacher to positively discuss gender identity and draw attention to the school’s inclusion work and ethos.

MATHS: Teachers can add LGBTI voices and identities to questions, scenarios and problem-solving. For example, two dads working out how much pocket money to give their children or a family with two mums budgeting a trip to the cinema.

SCIENCE: Homophobia often has its roots in gender stereotypes and expectations. Challenging these is the responsibility of all teachers and, in science, this can be completed through discussing the ongoing gender imbalance in Stem subjects and how women are treated in these fields.

HISTORY: An understanding of the rights that LGBTI people have fought for supports societal understanding, including the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Stonewall Riots, the repeal
of Section 28, equal marriage and military service.

Read more at bit.ly/LGBTYS