Father starts judicial review over 'No Outsiders' programme

Thank you

Daffs this will tell you more than any forum post!

www.transgendertrend.com/no-outsiders-queering-primary-classroom/

What do people think the safeguarding concerns are with No Outsiders? Am interested to hear more on the paedophile point.

This programme is bad because it's agenda is not tolerance but indoctrination. No Outsiders deliberately excludes, the unsubtle message is not affirmation but the threat that you will only be included If you conform. It could equally be called No Dissent.

Moffat actually singled out a non compliant little boy who says something offensive in one of the interviews he did and is quite scathing about him. A lot of people pointed out how inappropriate it was to speak about a child like that while promoting not leaving anyone out.

And yes I think you're spot on with what you say there.

Very good point Endofthedays.

Part of it may be that the parents disliked their kids being used by him as examples of proto terrorists who saw the light after reading some books about gay people in the Guardian.

Because if it were my children, I’d be furious.

What happened to change the parents' view of him and what he was teaching?

That is a good question.

There are muslims with positions, and none of them has any more authority than any other muslim.

Sure, but this is true of all kinds of ideological positions, and we can still talk about them i terms of what they entail. Feminism, for example, or idealism, materialism.

This is where the blanket, unthinking fetishisation of diversity and tolerance become unstuck. Some ideologies are fundamentally incompatible. What will happen is whichever ideology holds its frame with overpower the weaker one.

I stand corrected

There is no "Muslim Position" on anything. There are muslims with positions, and none of them has any more authority than any other muslim.

All I know about the Muslim position is that anal sex is forbidden as is being public about your homosexuality.

But if religious beliefs are a protected characteristic under the Equality Law, they should not be able to ride roughshod over them with these programmes.

I'd like to say two things here.

The first is that I think many people have internalised a particular view of secularism that is dominant in some other places, notably France but many Americans who think of themselves as secular also take this view - this is where the idea has come from in the UK, and Canada, IMO. This view sees secularism as a philosophy or ideology with it's own values, it's simply "not religious." From this viewpoint, a secular state and secular state schools would have values around things like sexual ethics that they would promote.
The more historic understanding of secularism, which has dominated in some other countries, is that the sate does not take a position with regard to ideology beyond very basic positions necessary for the good of the state. You can be a Muslim or a Marxist, and send your child to the state school which will not favour one over the other.

I'd also like to point out that for religions that have views about sexuality, they are rarely as flat as "homosexual sex is wrong." I don't know enough about the details of Muslim sexual ethics to say anything about that, but the Catholic view and until recently the view of all Christians isn't specifically about homosexuality at all - it says that the only time people should have sex is when it is oriented toward procreation, and the people are married. That is for all people, not just a particular class of people who are gay - if that was followed in an ideal way it would mean a lot of people not having sex.
There are a lot of nuances and details to that if you dig into it, but that is the basic position, and it's quite logically laid out and it's fundamentally a ideological, moral or ethical position about the right use of sex. To say it's objectively wrong from a scientific perspective doesn't really make any sense and it the state can't argue it's wrong on the basic of some sexual objective facts.

But some perfectly legal practices are viewed as immoral by some religious groups.

Including any sex outside a heterosexual marriage (including fully consenting sex between a monogamous heterosexual couple in a long term relationship). Who are schools to say that a child’s parents are wrong to instil this view in their child?

Moffat has framed his project as being about the EA and all the protected characteristics.

This is from an article about Moffat from 2017 after he started working at Parkfield school.

schoolsweek.co.uk/andrew-moffat-assistant-head-parkfield-community-school/

He chose a school that was 99 per cent Muslim pupils in an area heavily affected by the so-called Trojan Horse plot to radicalise pupils (though it wasn’t one of the schools in question) and became assistant head there. His first resources went into the bin, along with its focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, and he produced new resources based around both the Equality Act 2010, and the government’s emphasis on “British values” such as democracy and respect for others who are different, which he called ‘No Outsiders’.

“You’re talking about thousands of years of religious belief. You can’t just say ‘tough’.

“Instead you say ‘there are different people everywhere’, and it’s not about ‘we are right’ or ‘you are right’, but that we are helping prepare the children for all the different people they will meet. They can decide themselves.”

It’s working. The mostly Muslim governors at the school support Moffat. The parents know he is gay, and either support him, or “tolerate” it, he says.

What happened to change the parents' view of him and what he was teaching?

The exclusion was based on a history of disruptive behaviour in school, along with publicly posting a secretly filmed video of a member of staff on school premises.

Regardless of reason for exclusion (which I would have thought would be highly confidential, considering this boy was a minor when it happened) - this lad was removed from class for stating his belief that there are only two genders. There was video evidence of this.

Not only that, but the teacher showed signs of intense irritation - anger, even - at a child stating a view that was not in line with the "school's stance" on gender. This is intolerance.

Once the new CPS Guidelines for school are introduced, there is every chance that this would be reported as a "hate incident" to the police.

I personally do not want to see any child's beliefs on gender - whether that belief is that there are infinite genders, or just two genders - criminalised by the CPS and police.

1. For decades, Islamic and other religious fundamentalists have been deliberately working to influence goverment and other bodies.

2. For slightly less time, trans activists have been doing the same, and one of the tools is to add T to LGB.

3. It's interesting that when the government decides it's time to do something about 1) it doesn't choose, say, women's rights, but 'LGBT'.

I was just engaging with a conversation but it seems that I have become the enemy for daring to suggest that schools have a place in shaping society and addressing prejudice

It's a shame you don't want to discuss with people who don't automatically agree with everything you say. This is currently an enormous problem in a wider context, where people see disagreement with their position as a personal attack. I see it as a learning opportunity for both parties.

No moral position is implied or stated in the law around sexual practices. But some perfectly legal practices are viewed as immoral by some religious groups. This isn't an easy problem to solve, but simply labelling the parents as bigots seems intolerant and is unlikely to achieve a solution.

I saw Moffat on the local news when this first kicked off. He, in my opinion, deliberately misrepresented the protected characteristic by stating gender not SEX was protected. Said it all to me.

Moffat has framed his project as being about the EA and all the protected characteristics.

Religion or belief is a protected characteristic. Inevitably there are conflicts of rights within the EA and when they crop up they need dealing with sensitively and with respect for the rights of all affected groups.

In her article on Transgender Trend, Shelley Charlesworth analyses the teaching materials used in No Outsiders and the protected characteristics they deal with. Out of 17 books that can be linked to a protected characteristic, 5 are about sexual orientation, 4 are about gender reassignment. None are about religion or belief. In a school where 98% of children are from muslim families!

Moffat bangs on about the PSED but it's hard to see how what he's doing can possibly foster good relations between people with a protected characteristic and those who don't share it. Evidently it's NOT fostering good relations. Let's see his equality impact assessment.

Since you couldn't be bothered to post a link to back up your assertions Cuckoo, I had a quick look (on the basis that I wouldn't spend too much time looking for something which might not exist).

I found this in a NC document. Is this what you're referring to?

Every state-funded school must offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based* and which:

promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society

Perhaps you would be so kind as to point me to the part of the document where it says whose morality should be imposed on the children when they are being taught about sexual matters.

Children are not free to disagree though are they. Remember the boy expelled for challenging the teacher on ‘sex is a spectrum’?

No, that’s untrue. He was not excluded for challenging a teacher.

The exclusion was based on a history of disruptive behaviour in school, along with publicly posting a secretly filmed video of a member of staff on school premises.

This is on record in statements from the school and the LEA.

Exclusion is a rigorous process with multiple layers of documentation, panels and appeals.

cuckoo we know official/state documents include teaching this non-scientific ideology as fact and that children are being threatened with criminal records if they do not agree with it. No freedom of thought allowed. Thought itself is criminalised. Why do you think we are objecting?

Ok oldcrone if you can’t be bothered to inform yourself that’s fine by me. I don’t really care to convince anyone on here. I was just engaging with a conversation but it seems that I have become the enemy for daring to suggest that schools have a place in shaping society and addressing prejudice. I’m out.

what I am suggesting is nothing like a totalitarian state. If you think it is then you have no idea what it’s like to live under such a regime.

We might all find out soon with the new CPS guidance.