There are 50 secondary school students here, and they’re doing an icebreaker game to get to know one other. They turn to the person next to them, say hi, and tell them their favourite animal. And then they say which pronoun they prefer – he, she, they, or something else.

This is entirely matter-of-fact, no big deal, although this is an unusual school excursion. The young people here are gay, lesbian, transgender or sexually “diverse” – perhaps they consider themselves gender fluid or are not quite sure. A few are straight “allies”, determined to make sure their school includes everybody.

In this room in a library in inner-city Melbourne, everyone knows through experience that it’s not always easy to be open as gay or transgender or bisexual. But a generation ago – even a decade ago – nothing like this existed.

What is the Safe Schools program? Safe Schools is an $8m federally-funded national program that began in 2013 with bipartisan support. It grew out of a Victorian scheme to create safe and supportive schools for same-sex attracted, gender diverse and intersex young people. Schools can voluntarily join the Safe Schools coalition in their state, which provides training for teachers. Safe Schools staff do not teach students. After controversy early in 2016, the federal government commissioned the Louden review, which supported the content of Safe Schools but suggested minor changes. The subsequent government changes went beyond these recommendations, including restricting Safe Schools to secondary schools, requiring parental consent for students to participate, and parental bodies to agree to a school’s participation. Federal funding expires in 2017 and the government has said it will not renew it.



For one day, the teenagers will make a zine – a self-published magazine – about what their schools are doing to support and welcome LGBTI students, and what they could do better. In a few minutes, the students and their teachers are cutting pictures out of magazines, designing on computers and recording themselves in a makeshift studio. The atmosphere is joyous, controlled chaos.

The students are from schools that have joined the Safe Schools Coalition to support their LGBTI students and to encourage a culture of acceptance of gender diversity. The schools have taken another step, forming “stand out” groups that meet and talk and come up with ideas for change.

Stand out groups are encouraged by Safe Schools but it’s up to the school whether they form one or not. Roz Ward, who heads Safe Schools Coalition Victoria, says there are about 60 in the state and they are slowly becoming more common. They are popping up in other states too.

Nathan McGlynn is 17, a student at Belmont high school in Geelong, and he tells the group he’s “a dude”. For Nathan, coming out as gay wasn’t a big deal. He and his dad were talking about same-sex marriage, and his dad said it was good that Nathan didn’t have to worry about it. “And I said, ‘Well you know, sort of, I do.’ And he said ‘OK’ then he came out afterwards and said that ‘I realise you are the same person’. I said, ‘Of course I’m the same person, same old me.’”

Nathan McGlynn credits the Safe Schools program with the fact he never felt discriminated against at his school after coming out. Photograph: Paul Jeffers/The Guardian

Research has found that LGBTI students face far more physical and verbal bullying than heterosexual students. They often suffer mental distress and even suicidal thoughts, particularly during the time when they are coming out. About 80% of bullying happens at school and, in those schools with specific policies on LGBTI bullying and acceptance, students do better academically and mentally.

Nathan says his school is awesome. One of the principles of Safe Schools is that it is not just an anti-bullying program – it encourages an acceptance of sexual and gender diversity as a normal part of human experience.

At Belmont High, there are posters all over the school, declaring it a homophobic-free zone. The stand out group began this year and organised a purple day where everyone wore something in the colour to support their LGBTI peers. Nathan hasn’t felt discriminated against in any way.

“Not really at all, isn’t that great?” he says. “And that’s all thanks to Safe Schools, that’s a huge part of it, especially if you look at other generations. It’s so different.”

Grace Jolly, 18, goes to Mentone Girls Grammar school, which joined the Safe Schools Coalition late last year, before the controversy began about whether it was pushing an LGBTI “agenda”. Safe Schools is predominantly a teacher-training resource for teachers to learn about LGBTI issues and to support students, including those who are questioning their gender or transitioning to male or female.

Grace prefers the pronoun “they”. “I identify as gender diverse and kind of with that, bi-gender, so having two genders which are both in the non-gender area.” It’s something Grace has been thinking about from a young age. They came out as bisexual in year 8 but now feels differently.

Grace Jolly: ‘I identify as gender diverse and kind of with that, bi-gender, so having two genders which are both in the non-gender area.’ Photograph: Paul Jeffers/The Guardian

The ideas around gender diversity and fluidity are routine for many young people, even if they remain challenging for their parents’ generation. Young people are more supportive of same-sex marriage than any other age group, are more likely to have had a same-sex experience and to see gender as not as a binary male-female thing but as fluid.

I ask Grace whether for this generation, the idea that gender is not tied to biological sex, and is changeable, is common: “I think it’s always been as fluid as it is, and just maybe people are more willing to express themselves and are able to express themselves.

“Like 50 years ago, I wouldn’t be able to wear pants. I’m sure that people who are fluid with their sexuality have been around, but it’s never been talked about or accepted. That’s where the change is.”

Grace is a member of Mentone Grammar’s stand out group, known as Spectrum to reflect that sexuality and gender exist on a spectrum. The group supports students, has put up posters, and challenges people who use the word “gay” in a derogatory way.

Students and teachers are getting there with the correct use of pronouns – important for trans and gender diverse people – but “some people don’t get it at all”.

“This year there’s been a lot of struggle with more conservative students expressing their opinions about their religion and how that relates to homosexuality and being quite discriminatory regarding that,” Grace says.

It is a common issue in a multicultural country, where some religions and ethnic groups are less tolerant of homosexuality.

This year a petition with 17,000 signatures was tabled in the New South Wales parliament from the Chinese Australian community. It said the Safe Schools discussion of gender fluidity was “contrary to our cultural and belief system”.

Children don’t go to school to be surrounded by concepts of sexuality, marinating in sexual diversity Wendy Francis

The Australian Christian Lobby’s Wendy Francis believes Safe Schools should be scrapped and replaced with a specific anti-bullying program. The focus on sexuality and gender diversity is out of proportion, she says, including the idea of putting up posters around schools about homosexuality.

“Children don’t go to school to be surrounded by concepts of sexuality, marinating in sexual diversity,” she says.

But for the students and teachers here, the Safe Schools experience has been positive. Rebecca Perkins is a 32-year-old teacher at Roxburgh College, a large government school in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

Three-quarters of its students don’t speak English at home and there are many pupils from Iraq and Turkey, including many refugees.

Perkins was the first “out” teacher to the students, and she helped form the stand out group this year. It was done slowly, she says, with everyone from multicultural aides to administrative staff consulted.

Two former school captains, both out as gay since leaving school, came back to speak to staff about what it was like being a gay student. Teachers got on board and began wearing “ally” badges to signal that that the issue was important to them.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations about what the attitudes toward homosexuality are in different countries,” Perkins says. “One of the multicultural aides was like, That’s not allowed in Iraq’ … but then another of our multicultural aides was like, ‘Well, this is Australia.’ The other teacher now wears an ally pin every single day.”

Roxburgh Park had a student who transitioned to male at school, and Safe Schools staff trained teachers in how to support him. “That took a long period of time. He had a lot going on in his life, as many kids do, some of that was family-related stress. Eventually, his parents were on board but initially he was ‘he’ at school and not ‘he’ out of school. So school becomes this crucial place where kids can be safe.”

As welcoming as this excursion is, students’ sexuality and gender remains sensitive for many, and Perkins says some parents refused to give permission for their children to attend.

Teacher Rebecca Perkins from Roxburgh College, who helped form the school’s stand out group. Photograph: Paul Jeffers/The Guardian

The day-long program is only for secondary students, but Safe Schools also works with primary schools.

Meagan Macdonald’s daughter, Evie, is 11, and will start in year 6 next year. Macdonald noticed when Evie, then Ethan, was three, she began displaying strong attachments to stereotypical female things – she wanted to play with dolls, she preferred to dress up in her sister’s clothes and she thought of herself as a girl.

Macdonald didn’t worry about it too much at first, but it began to cause her child distress as she got older. Evie insisted that she was different and that her mother didn’t understand her.

At age nine, Evie saw specialists who suggested she was transgender, although Macdonald prefers the term gender nonconforming. At first, nothing specific was done about it but, after Evie became increasingly distressed and then suicidal, the decision to socially transition was made. Her religious primary school was not supportive, refusing to allow Evie to wear a girl’s uniform or to tie up her long hair. During a painful time, she was Evie at home but still Ethan at school.

Ward came along when Macdonald met the school’s principal to talk about transgender children but little progress was made. Evie enrolled in a local government primary school, which was very supportive. Again, Ward accompanied Macdonald to meet the school principal.

“She’s just a happy little girl now,” Macdonald says of her daughter. “She’s as girly as her sisters, she fights with her siblings, everything about her life is really normal. She does gymnastics, there is no stress anymore. The suicidal thoughts have gone and there’s no self-harm.”

Macdonald says she couldn’t have done it without Safe Schools, because having a transgender child was so unfamiliar. Ward has been called all kinds of things – a radical Marxist trying to push her ideas on to kids for one. But for Macdonald, she is an “amazing person”.

“Roz was beyond helpful,” she says. “She was my rock when I didn’t know what to do. I leaned on her, sought her advice, and she was so delicate in how she handled it. She’s the nicest lady you’ll ever meet.”

• Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636