Gemma McLaughlin was in her first year of secondary school when Jordan Daly and Liam Stevenson, founders of Time for Inclusive Education, hosted an assembly that changed her life.

The joking chatter, then hesitant murmurs, then awed silence of first year secondary students in a packed assembly hall opened something in me. The words “I am a lesbian” had been lodged in the back of my throat for some months, in no small part due to a fear of how the young people around me would react.

There had been laughter as I turned corners, catching the edges of cruel words I wished we were still a year too young to know. Except it had already happened - boys who’d shared coloured pencils and made up playground games at 10, were huddled in impenetrable circles spitting insults at 12.

As Jordan and Liam of TIE stood before us, I refused to register my classmates' reactions. I was rapt in Jordan’s story of........

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