Below is the text of a sixth form assembly I delivered back in 2024. --- My name is Mr Cussen  I use the pronouns he/him and I am gay.  If I had said that just over 20 years ago, I would have been fired and not allowed to teach again.  A lot has changed in the last 20 years and I want to share some of that history with you so that you can appreciate just how new—and therefore fragile—many of the freedoms we enjoy today are, in particular those freedoms around the expression and celebration of queer identities in this school.  I’m going to tell you a bit of history that you may have heard before and I’m going to tell you some personal history—some local history—that you probably aren’t aware of. I’m also going to tell you about something that I perceive to be a threat to the, quite frankly, shocking progress that our school has made in the acceptance and celebration of queer identities.  I don’t have a call to action in this assembly. I’m not here to inspire you or persuade you if you disagree with the narrative that I’m sharing. Instead, I have some stories that I want to tell you and that I would like you to listen to because I think it’s important that you know our—our school’s—history and where we are at the moment.  Just over 20 years ago, our country had a law known as Section 28. This law made it illegal for schools to “promote homosexuality”. It was passed by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government and survived in the statute books until 2003, 6 years into Tony Blair’s premiership.  In 2003, I was 7 and politically unaware as most 7 year olds are. I came to St Bart’s in 2008 and I stayed here until leaving the sixth form in 2015.  Despite Section 28 being repealed in 2003, I don’t remember any institutional statements of affirmation of queer identities throughout my time at St Bart’s.  I remember one of my English teacher’s being very open about having a gay son and I remember Mrs L. being incredibly supportive as I came to terms with my own identity. But there were no pride assemblies. There were no pride flags. There was nothing embedded in the curriculum beyond tokenistic, awkwardly forced examples of same-sex relationships in maybe two PDP powerpoints.  I remember at the time being particularly dissatisfied with PDP and how heteronormative it was. Of course, I didn’t have that language at the time. Instead, all I could say was that I didn’t see myself in the material we were learning.  In year 11, I somehow ended up in a couple of meetings with one of the then-deputy heads arguing about the contents of the PDP curriculum and how limited it was. I was listened to, but not heard.  Somewhere around this time, same-sex marriage got legalised but there was no recognition of this milestone in school.  I left St Bart’s in 2015 but I am told by Mrs L. that, in 2016, St Bart’s celebrated pride month for the first time. Unfortunately, they missed the point and instead celebrated “things that we are proud of”. Things like your GCSE grades and getting house colours. I don’t see the connection between those things and queerness, I don’t know about you… but I guess it’s progress?  And then, in 2017, St Bart’s has their first real celebration of pride. 7 years ago. I realise that’s like one third of your lives—you would have all been in around year 6—which probably feels like an age away. But I hope you can appreciate just how recent this is.  20 years ago, what I’m saying to you today was criminal.  10 years ago, unthinkable.  7 years ago, possible.  And today is the first time (that I am aware of) that a member of staff has stood in an assembly and said “you know that pride thing? That’s me”.  That’s such an alarming rate of change. You’re one of the first year groups to go through school in a time where queer identities have been acknowledged—dare I say affirmed?  So that’s the history. And I don’t want to say you’re so lucky because I know that there are still problems and that queerphobia is not a solved issue. But you’re luckier than any generation before you.  I said at the start that I would also tell you about a threat to our school’s progress. In fact, this is a threat to all schools in the UK and it comes from the Department for Education.  Last year, the DfE released some guidance to schools about gender questioning students. This guidance is not binding, it is not law, but it could become so.  According to the DfE’s guidance, if a student asks a teacher to use different pronouns, the teacher is not allowed to in the first instance. Instead, the school needs to contact the student’s parents to get parental consent unless there are safeguarding concerns.  I’m sure you can appreciate how this could pose a threat to gender questioning students. Coming out to your parents is, in my view, a conversation that you need to initiate in your own time. It is not a conversation that should be had by your teachers. If you would like to talk about this more, please see me after the assembly and I would be happy to talk further.  The thing that gives me hope though is that our school is responding to this guidance and saying that we disagree with it. That we think this guidance will cause more harm than good.  It is getting better. It has gotten better a lot over the last 20 years. But these freedoms are so fragile in their infancy especially when we consider the current socio-political climate.  I said that I don’t have a call to action, and I don’t—but I hope that you will carry forward the progress we have made over the last 20 years. And, more importantly, I hope that you will be good citizens and continue the conversations about identity and equality that I hope you have started having here.