‘Educating Yorkshire’s Mr Burton on his school’s battle against gay bullying

It’s still hard to believe that in these enlightened times, bullying is still an everyday part of young gay lives. Thankfully, kids who are suffering no longer have to feel alone as now schools across the UK are taking steps to ensure victims have someone to talk to.

aTEEN magazine caught up with the wonderful Mr Burton – the inspiring teacher from Educating Yorkshire who pulled at our heart strings when he helped student Musharaf overcome his stammer – to discuss how his school, Thornhill Academy, deals with bullying and includes same-sex relationships as part of the curriculum.

There’s been a lot of talk about bullying in schools – do you have a major problem with it at your school?

Bullying, victimisation, teasing or whatever label is put on it is something that, for us here at Thornhill, is not a major problem. Unfortunately, some forms of bullying are always going to happen before any work can be done to prevent it. We employ a teacher as our anti-bullying co-ordinator to head up initiatives designed to discourage bullying. Peer mentoring – where younger and older students meet to build bridges and often just chat to bring down those barriers sometimes associated with age – is really useful. We’ve worked with the Bullying Intervention Group and have been awarded for the work that goes on here. It is absolutely the responsibility of the staff in the school to deal with that issue.

What kind of bullying do you see taking place most? Is it physical,verbal or online?

We tend to see that most issues start online these days, and any verbal issues generally have their roots in the online stuff. The problem with Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and WhatsApp is that what you say can be so ambiguous and can be easily taken the wrong way.

Do you have much homophobic bullying at your school?

I think schools – in collaboration with charities like Stonewall and Schools Out – have done a huge amount to put an end to the days when homophobic bullying was prevalent. Again, education is such a big part of it. The word ‘gay’ is something that, years ago, was used as an insult, but now it’s not something that happens. It’s 100 per cent not okay to use anything people are – colour, nationality, sexuality, gender, size, shape, hair colour, rich, poor – to make that person feel bad. It’s quite simple: it’s not tolerated. Our PSE curriculum looks at all forms of discrimination: bullying, e-safety, friendships, racism, homophobia, and we work closely with Stonewall – we’re a Stonewall Champion School.

There’s been a push for schools to include gay relationships in sex education – does your school already do this?

Of course, absolutely. Same-sex relationships are taught in PSE, with the most important message being that same-sex relationships are absolutely no different from any other relationship. Those messages are so important, and the students are great about it.

You can read more about Thornhill’s admirable stand against bullying and how Matthew Burton got his job in the latest issue of aTEEN, available to download today from Pocketmags.com/aTEEN.

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