Manchester LGBT group draws up plans for Britain’s first gay school

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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A lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth group in Manchester has drawn up controversial plans to set up Britain’s first specialist state school for “socially awkward” students within next three years.

The tax-payer funded group intends to create a school to cater for children aged 13 and older who have been bullied and hopes the idea will become successfully popular to be copied further across the country.

The plans follow a grant of £63,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government to LGBT Youth North West, enabling it to purchase the building where it is based, the Joyce Layland LGBT Centre in central Manchester.

And it used part of the funding to commission a feasibility study into the idea of building the school in Manchester.

Strategic director for the charity group, Amelia Lee has said: “This is about saving lives. Despite the laws that claim to protect gay people from homophobic bullying, the truth is that, in schools especially, bullying is still incredibly common and causes young people to feel isolated and alienated, which often leads to truanting and, in the worst-case scenarios, to suicide.”

 Ms Lee has quoted the case of Elizabeth Lowe, 14, who did suicide in a Manchester park as she feared telling her parents of her being gay.

Ms Lee has told: “This is not about making a little, safe enclave away from the real world: we work with 9,000 mainstream pupils and 1,000 teachers a year to help educate them about homosexuality. In addition, the support this new school will offer to part-time pupils could happen in their mainstream school, if that’s what they want.”

According to the charity Stonewall’s 2012 report, above 50 per cent of lesbian, gay and bisexual pupils suffer homophobic bullying in British schools, with 16 per cent also suffer physical abuse.

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