A PRIMARY school has become the first in Darlington to join a nationwide programme of support and advice about gay issues.

St John’s Primary School has announced its participation in the gay rights charity Stonewall’s ‘Primary School Champions’ programme, which educates children about homophobia.

Paula Lambert, the school’s PSHE (personal, social, health and economic education) co-ordinator, has been on specialist training provided by the charity.

She said: “As a school we want to prepare our pupils to be good citizens; PSHE has a high profile in the school, we celebrate diversity week each year, and our curriculum already covers bullying and has an emphasis on inclusion and respect.

“This programme will allow us to educate the children on homophobic language by embedding it into the current curriculum like any other offensive language.”

The programme is not only for the purpose of educating the pupils. Mrs Lambert said: “It is as much about equipping teachers as it is students.

“The training gets teachers talking and feeling confident and comfortable about the issue, before it even comes to taking it into the classroom, and there is a lot of signposting to resources we can use.”

Stonewall says that homophobic language is still commonplace in the classroom at primary school level – with seven out of ten primary school teachers reporting hearing the word ‘gay’ used as an insult or to describe something as rubbish.

Mrs Lambert said: “Our staff had some examples [of witnessing pupils using homophobic language] but they were from around two years ago, rather than recently, so we were pleasantly surprised.

“It is still out there though, so this programme is important.

“We’re proud to be the first in Darlington to provide it.”