Jigsaw PSHE resources

Yes i"m concerned about year 5 too, i took my child out of the CHANGING ME sex ed section in year 4, but everything else was compulsory.

Hello I have just been reading some comments. Is this thread still active. My LO has just gone into yr 4 and one in yr r I have made contact with the school to ask to look at Thier resources as they use jigsaw. They have printed it off so I'm going to have read and highlight anything I want to look at in more detail. I have been following PCP wales. And a few groups on Facebook that are campaigning to raise awareness to parents . Too much too young is a Facebook group education not sexualisation is another. If anyone is interested. There is alot of info lives and videos on there. Hope it helps

Another one saying well done to every parent who insists on going through these materials to ensure that they're accurate and free from age inappropriate gender ideology.
These organisations and schools only have themselves to blame. Uncritically accepting an adult ideology based on the false premise that people can change sex and that children must be celebrated for stating they've been born in the wrong body has led to this. Hopefully in September more parents will find the confidence to insist that schools share all materials with them - especially those that come fro queer theory captured organisations.

Thanks so much for this update @21stCenturyProblems - really good to hear that Jigsaw lessons have been made properly accessible and I agree with @MrsFButton, I think Celebrating Difference is an important module to look into.

The legal change in 2017 is also important and Mrs F explains it well, I had understood the same. RSE and PSHE are different and you cannot remove your child from mandatory lessons, but if the mandatory lessons contain nonsense (whether designed by Jigsaw, another external provider or the school themselves) and you disagree with the content or simply don't want your child introduced to gender identity ideology, or any ideology for that matter, the argument is this isn't statutory and you can withdraw your child.

So puberty, hygiene, consent etc are all important and normal parts of growing up and are mandatory teaching, introducing children to the concept their bodies are wrong and everyone has a gender identity is not ok, if they go further as say puberty blockers are reversible and breast binders are safe etc, that is dangerous and worthy of a formal complaint. It's just really important to know everything and parents never used to have this as a concern. I would suggest you request all Jigsaw modules, even skin reading the ones that are ok will put your mind at rest.

Parents and teachers desperately need this new statutory guidance. The delay is only making things worse. It's really unhelpful as it creates so much stress and those who are time poor aren't able to go through every resource to check their kids are being brainwashed.

For me the trust has gone, even though Jigsaw was removed. As Mrs F points out, the HT hadn't read the materials. If he had he wouldn't have engaged with them in the first place. Since then this has blown up in the papers so he knows much more about it now!

If your child's school is pushing the idea that it's illegal to withdraw your child from PSHE then I would push back that the law applies to statutory Relationships and Health Education, not to PSHE as a whole. There is nothing in the statutory guidance for schools that says teaching gender identity is statutory in the primary phase. I have been advised that parents can withdraw from anything that isn't statutory. Therefore at least at primary age there should be a parental right of withdrawal from any lessons on gender identity.

Some providers of PSHE resources for schools are quite mixed up in this. Jigsaw, for example, has lessons in the Changing Me unit that cover both statutory and non statutory content, so it's difficult for schools to actually honour the parental right of withdrawal unless they adapt the resources.

The problem is schools buy in these packages assuming that they contain all the statutory requirements and nothing but. You have to care enough to read all the guidance to realise that isn't the case

Changing me is mostly focused on puberty and reproduction. I would ask to see Celebrating Difference as well because that's where the year 6 gender identity lesson is (usually taught in the second half of Autumn term)

Hi all, just plopping in a placemark as dds' school uses jigsaw for pshe. So far it's been fine but she goes into yr5 in sept so I am aware it might change gear somewhat.

@MrsFButton @OhHolyJesus @Quisto @purpleboy and all. A quick update from me. You might recall when we complained, it resulted in an agreement from school that we could view all the Jigsaw Materials on school premises at the end of every school year prior to next years set of PSHE lessons. We did this last week before school broke up. And have made small progress. Apparently the Education Secretary's ears have pricked up with all of us Parents starting to push back. She has issued the attached guidance Nationwide to all schools in March 2023. This has prompted Jigsaw (at least), to offer Parental access through a new portal here: https//jigsawpshe.online/parent

Our headteacher has given us a code (it's not working at the moment 🤦🏻‍♀️) but that's just IT issues to sort out. How it works is that the headteacher selects the materials you have concerns with at your end, the code is generated and then you can log on and see everything Lesson Plans, Teaching Materials, Supporting resources, Presentations slides, curriculum guides outline and schemes of work. We have selected the "Changing Me" Section, because this is where all the sexualisation & gender ideology stuff is. I will report back when I have seen it. And last week in the house of commons Education Secretary suggested that there are some changes to the Equality Act coming that are relevant to support this new guidance. I suspect it's to with a new landmark Employment Tribunal ruling on the Maya Forstater case, where Genderal Critical Beliefs are now recognised as a Philosophical Belief and we are now protected under the EQA10. @OhHolyJesus I promised the detail about the change to the Children & Families Act meaning that it is now illegal for parents to withdraw children from PSHE, but never came through. Here it is:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7303/

A change to the Children and Social Work Act 2017, enacted in September 2020 means that it is now against the law for parents to withdraw their children from PSHE education in schools. This in combination with local councils who are pushing their choice for the PSHE providers into all of their local council run schools by means of funding their provider choice centrally and providing the school with the material. Means that even though schools can technically create their own bespoke PSHE material, they don't because they don't have the money or resources to do it on their own. So, the gender ideology gets pushed 'via the back door'. And to your point OhHolyJesus, this does create a clash of statutory law. So, I think a step in the right direction. But keen to see what I find!

Jigsaw is mentioned Miriam Cates' report:

"“In correspondence seen by The Telegraph, Jigsaw Education, one sex education materials provider, warned a school that it may take legal action if the school discloses any of its materials or otherwise puts them in the public domain “by means of allowing formal inspection”. Jan Lever, the chief executive of Jigsaw Education, said: “Jigsaw is happy for parents to see all the materials the school will use in its lessons but stipulates that this needs to be done in the school so a teacher can explain the rationale and the progression in learning and most importantly how the particular school intends to use and differentiate the generic Jigsaw Programme to suit the needs of their pupils.””

"Jigsaw PSHE repackages a resource by Action Canada for Sexual Health
and Rights, which poses the following question to fourteen-year-old pupils, “Gender and sexual identity – is it a spectrum or a galaxy?” before suggesting “add you own planet (comet or moon)! Make your own solar system or galaxy!”, offering example terms such as “agender”, “neutrois”, “3rd gender”, “gender queer” or a “two spirit galaxy”."

"Meanwhile, Jigsaw PSHE, which also teaches Gender Theory as fact, has huge international reach, with over three million children using their resources."

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwizta6vh-H-AhUuXaQEHavrC00QFnoECBAQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsocialcovenant.co.uk%2FRSE%2520BRIEFING%2520FINAL%25201631%2520(IS)_small.pdf&usg=AOvVaw2thLNNGZCGXxeC9WHnVC0x

Thanks to previous posters on this as it meant that when I read the email from school to say they are going to be using Jigsaw for RSE materials I had already heard of them.

To be fair our school is being very open with us and the learning points from the lessons at each age and so far there is nothing about gender identity I’ve seen. They’ve also talked about which bits of RSE are obligatory and which bits aren’t. They’re a CofE school so although there’s no need to be religious it does mean they are probably more socially traditional than other schools in terms of keeping childhood ‘innocence.’ They've also organised a meeting in a couple of weeks for parents to look at materials and ask questions which I think is positive.

DS is in year 5 and has literally just been diagnosed with autism. He can be very literal and thanks to a news report about the review of the definition of sex in the Equality Act we’ve actually already discussed what being transgender means so I really don’t want him being told any of the stereotypes stuff/changing sex stuff we usually here from these organisations.

I’ll feedback what I can after the meeting.

Thanks for sharing that @ScrollingLeaves, a very useful addition. I've signed and will share further.

I think there is no doubt at this stage that parents are becoming more aware and although I would say there is some way to go, it's not going to go away, and neither are the parents.

I have just come across this very informative thread and hope the posters especially the OP, OhHolyJesus, et Al who were on here won’t mind me reviving it to link the petition below against teaching ‘gender identity’ to children in RSE lessons in schools n case any if you missed seeing it.

As your thread shows, ‘gender identity’ ideology may be taught insidiously even when avoiding the words ‘gender identity’. Many parents seem to think Jigsaw is innocent and it isn’t.

There was little response to the petition until very recently when it suddenly gained 10,000 signatures, then ratcheted up what is on the way to being double that again in the last few days. Unfortunately the deadline is 18th January so it would be a miracle to get the 100,000 which might get a debate in Parliament, but who knows?

To sign the petition against teaching gender identity in PSE lessons in schools,
⬇️
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/618970

This and the letter at the bottom of this link is useful re Jigsaw content.

familyeducationtrust.org.uk/letter-to-primary-school-about-jigsaw-phse-materials/

@21stCenturyProblems

Knocking holes in walls as way of dealing with this tripe, as you quite rightly call it, sounds like the best way to go, to me. I like your style!

I don’t agree that for commercial reasons it’s reasonable to hold back the material from parents. I think that’s an infringement of our rights

Agreed. Clare Page's case is an important one to get behind as this could help all parents.

I hope there is a way out of this without taking the legal action route, with some luck and carefully applied political pressure, additional, tighter, mandatory guidance could be on the way. But for now at least, we have some way to go.

It really shouldn't take this much to know what our children are taught in school.

At least OFSTED are onto the claims from these external providers of being endorsed by them. Educate and Celebrate are a whole other ball game...

https://twitter.com/baronessnichol/status/1597607964558467078?s=46&t=Eoc68ELs8GOO_BdnTBdC32g

@purpleboy i would ask them what they do instead of the gender ID lesson in year 6 if they say they're using Jigsaw

@OhHolyJesus im currently knocking a hole in my living room wall so I can get some respite from thinking about it! Some of the teachings were very benign, some were inappropriate and a lot of what the teachers said were totally incongruent. Example, they said whenever the jigsaw lessons give rise to ‘inappropriate’ questions teachers are taught to field them
with, ‘this is not an appropriate questions for this lesson, you should go home and ask your parents about this one”. I asked her how that approach stacked up with the fact that we can’t have copies of the material. And how we would be able to then answer the difficult questions that were suddenly, “too hard for school and too hard for jigsaw “. But she just looked at me blankly….

Hi All,

I’m planning on putting a summary of the lessons I saw together and posting it on here. I’ll be doing it anyway because we agreed with the school that because we cannot legally withdraw DS, and as a containment to protect him from this material. We will come in and see the material for the next year on screen. We will then teach him at home to supplement this jigsaw nonsense. We will do this whilst we take legal advice surrounding full disclosure of copies of the material and investigate withdrawal possibility. I don’t agree that for commercial reasons it’s reasonable to hold back the material from parents. I think that’s an infringement of our rights.

I hope it can be of use to others.

I'm very much a live and let live type of person but don’t ram your ideas down my throat, don’t expect me to agree with you all the time and definitely don’t tell me how to raise my child or stop me from seeing what you are putting in his head. Especially when some
of it is tripe with deep breathing and bells….

Thanks ohholy I will certainly be going back in for more info. I will update the thread should I have any success.

Good to read your update here @21stCenturyProblems - that set up does sound concerning, like some kind of meditation whilst taking about 'gender'.

I also raised the question of secrets as a safeguarding issue and actually got some good reassurance from the school on this.

I also saw the Bill/Bella/B lesson and felt this was gaslighting, leading and manipulative. I was quite disgusted actually as it relied heavily on stereotypes around toys and broken down at an in-person discussion it veered into talking about same sex attraction, it was very homophobic but thankfully the school saw what was going on and made a change.

You are able to ask to see lesson plans but this would probably have to be done with the teacher in the school as they can't send materials out just in case they are copied and sold on. Unlikely I would say but these external companies have their teaching and training materials as company assets so it's reasonable not to expect a copy sent on email but you are absolutely able and allowed to see the actual lesson plans.

You will find some jigsaw materials have been shared on MN and as others have mentioned, on accessible websites, but I would recommend organising a meeting with the school as you can go through the lesson plans with the teacher and ask which bits they will plan to use and see for yourself what you are comfortable/uncomfortable with.

@21stCenturyProblems I know exactly who Stonewall are and what they do. Which is why any learning resource from them is very concerning.

Thanks 21st. This sounds very concerning. I'd really appreciate and update when you see them again if you don't mind?

I feel like I'm being fobbed off, what they are saying seems ok but it's so vague it's impossible to know how things will get taught, I gather next year is when they might talk about it and so worth me finding out which teacher is taking the lesson and seeing if I can have a meeting with them so see if I can figure out what will be taught, or even their own views as I do feel that will influence the way the conversation goes. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to do that but I will certainly ask.

@Quisto stonewall is an organisation who
lobby the government about LGBTQ issues. Some of their views about transgenderism in society are quite extreme.

@purpleboy in the jigsaw year 2 material they have a lesson that covers “good secrets” and “bad secrets”. We couldn’t get a straight answer when we asked them how they define each.

We’ve just come back from a school meeting where they have allowed us to see the material on the screen. There wasn’t enough time to go through it in the detail we want. But there are LOTS of concerns we have after seeing it. We are going back to view again and take notes. There is one lesson that has the characters Billy, Bella and ‘B’. B doesn’t have a gender and the question: “do we have to have a gender?” is posed to 6 years olds. They do this whilst stood in a circle deep breathing and using chimes to settle their emotions whilst learning. The material is weird and there are lots of teacher only notes, which talks about how to handle questions that arise from the children about transgender. But suggests how to handle this should be a matter of teacher discretion.

Roberta states this in her interview in the Sunday Times on 12th March 1978. You’d really have had to take it up with her….. unfortunately she is now deceased…