HOMOPHOBIC bullying has become “endemic” in Merseyside’s secondary schools teachers admitted last night.

And the Daily Post can exclusively reveal that almost one in three teaching staff working in Wirral, Liverpool and Warrington schools claim to hear pupils openly using homophobic language on a daily basis and 15% witness a pupil being abused every day just for being gay.

Last night union chiefs called for more training and teaching resources to be devoted to tackling homophobia which they claim is being made worse by some teachers’ watered down use of the word “gay”.

The claims comes as we exclusively reveal the findings of a North West survey of the National Union Of Teachers – around of third of which hailed from high schools in Liverpool, Wirral and Warrington.

The individual results of the three areas will be released in May and last night NUT officials said they will mirror the shocking results of the collective North West survey which found homophobic bullying is rife.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Post, Jeff Evans, the NUT’s North West lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) advisor said the figures made a mockery of findings from Liverpool council’s annual anti-bullying audit of five to 19-year-olds.

The council’s audit showed the number of people citing their sexuality as a reason for being singled out has dropped from 6% to 4% and bullies admitting picking on a pupil because they are gay falling from 7% to 3%.

He applauded council-backed measures to tackle the problem but he said it was clear teachers needed more resources to combat the problem in a region reeling from the murder of gay teenager Michael Causer in Huyton two years ago and the brutal homophobic city-centre attack last October on PC James Parkes.

He said: “The results will show that like the North West, in Liverpool, Wirral and Warrington homophobia is endemic in schools. To suggest the problem is actually falling when every piece of evidence we have suggests the opposite is ill founded.”