Sex not gender, No Outsiders changing the Equality Act, DepHead/DSL captured

One of my old teachers is in prison for sleeping with students. I'm sure he would have been very upset when everyone found out he's a predatory paedophile. Doesn't mean that he should have been left alone. He was head of safeguarding too...

Well it seems to me this means staff being upset only applies when - in addition to this and prior to this - external actors are trying to disrupt school activities, which @Vebrithien and her group are not doing. So it's extreme upset - could have been worded more clearly though.

Of course under that extremely poor wording some staff may interpret being 'upset' at all a reason why scrutiny can be stopped altogether. It clearly doesn't mean that, but maybe Dep Head's thinking is so disordered that's what she thinks. It's the TRA mindwarp of undermining sex-based safeguarding or sterilising children and making them lifelong medical patients with a high risk of incontinence is fine but saying you disagree is terrible and requires punishment. Upside down world.

If it was just any 'upset' - what about if a parent challenges a teacher marking a students work wrongly - misspelling a word or getting maths wrong? Will that 'upset' staff? It certainly upset my DD's teacher in year 6 when I pointed out her Maths marking was wrong.... (to be fair she did accept I was right and re-marked).

I think we're going to need court cases and class action lawsuits sometime soon in schools.

I am sure there are some staff in schools who will be 'upset' by safeguarding questions being asked too. If 'upsetting staff' was something that couldn't happen you couldn't have safeguarding in case it upset staff.

Completely mad how bad some government guidance is. Don't they have lawyers?

But what on earth is the Head doing letting the Dep Head get so out of control with wildly disordered thinking?

Good job you've been so polite and beyond reproach though, Vebrithien. The school is on very, very shaky legal, moral and safeguarding ground here.

They fight dirty. They will put whatever spin on it they can to stop any scrutiny.

The "disruptive group" stuff is obviously to deal with situations like these: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-66120447

But the onus is on the school to discuss the curriculum with parents and take their views into account, while complying with the law. And the law doesn't say that at primary level there has to be any teaching about sex at all.

That's mad. There is a right not to be harassed but there is no right "not to be upset", especially if your bar of what upsets you involves denial of material reality and acceptance of a highly contentious and partisan political position.

Oh, that's more worrisome.

Vebrithien · Today 13:01

We think the school is treating us as a "disruptive group", which starts to explain their heavy handedness.

None of the grounds apply to any of your actions, as far as I can see. You've been polite and concise and conducted things verbally and via email, no disruption has occurred.

What do we mean by disruption?Despite the best efforts of local authorities and schools, in some cases parent concerns will not be entirely allayed, and external actors may press ahead with plans to disrupt the activities of schools to try to influence their teaching. We characterise this next level of concern as:

• activity by an individual or group which is disrupting the activities of school(s):
• upsetting children
• upsetting staff
• making it difficult for children or staff to get into school
• preventing children or staff getting into school
• loud protests during school hours that are disrupting teaching/activities of school
• public victimisation of teachers, parents or children in relation to this topic, such as through social media, WhatsApp groups or in-person harassment
• other activity by parents and/or external actors that prevent school from fulfilling duties and operating as normal

The optics are not good here and indicate bullying, for which there is no upper or lower age limit.
Nitin Sawhney drew an interesting analogy on his Twitter several days ago.

Is there a way to apply school bullying policies to the staff?

She's relying on scared parents shutting up. She's a bully. And she's putting her political activist agenda above the wellbeing of the children in the school.

Sounds entirely par for the course for TRAs.

Yes, exactly. The children's education, safety and wellbeing should come first

Instead the Dep Head is suggesting that if families question when the school isn't following guidance and where parents don't believe the same as her (which she's dressing up as 'the ethos of the school') then their children's education and friendships should be disrupted because they're not welcome in the same school as her. Why should those children have to leave their friendships? Disrupt their education? Starting a new school is hard... not to be undertaken lightly.

She's relying on scared parents shutting up. She's a bully. And she's putting her political activist agenda above the wellbeing of the children in the school.

In my area it is virtually impossible to change school within the area. You would literally have to be kicked out of school.
Obviously none of these people care about the children

Why can't you copy the relevent minister via their mp address into any email to your MP? You're the one sending the email, you're a voter. What's the problem here?

Kemi's MP office won't respond as not their job, but they'll know if it's not passed on when the email states specifically you want it passed on to the relevant ministers. Kemi at least seems very switched on to the way people are doing this, so I suspect the MP - however captured - would be inclined not to file in the bin if they knew that Kemi's office was in CC.

Honestly, that's what I do.

The school is breaking the rules all over the place in a way which can directly harm children's wellbeing and safeguarding, compared to what they're doing cc'ing someone you don't need to isn't a big deal - they're grown up elected officials, they can cope. And it is probably necessary if you don't want your email to languish in a pile for months and then get mysteriously lost.

Edited to say: Now I realise this is what I should have done for the last few occasions where my MP clearly filed my messages into his bin.

Yes, that is depressingly true. But it doesn’t negate the fact that, generally speaking, other MPs won’t respond to non-constituents.

Which leaves OP with the lottery of writing to the departmental correspondence address and hoping it’s not delegated to too low a level. Or writing to her MP and hoping it’s processed by his/her conscience office as standard “seek ministerial response” correspondence without it crossing the MP’s desk.

What a shit show.

I can't help but feel there should be an easier way to raise concerns about serious systemic safeguarding failures in schools (because that's what we're talking about here). But here we are.

All the while our children are being brainwashed with regressive, harmful ideology that doesn't even make the faintest logical sense.

@AlexandraLeaving One of the features of gender ideology is everyone merrily breaking the law / not following procedure so if the MP is captured I don't think there's any guarantee they'd forward the emails on - which is why I wonder if there is a point to cc'ing the minister's mp email as you're writing asking for your email to be passed on?

My MP frequently breaks procedure e.g. does not respond to the emails of constituents. There seems no way to hold them to account given they're in a safe seat.

PS: I agree with PP that writing two emails is better than just one, but if you are writing via your MP you would need to make the emails sufficiently different to justify them writing to two separate Ministers on your behalf, and there might be benefit in staggering them in time so that the letters don’t become merged in the departmental systems (I.e. wait for first response before sending second request). But there is no perfect way of doing this. Just a suggestion.

Long time lurker here - I am sorry you are going through this and am deeply impressed with the way you are handling the increasingly terrible situation.

One thought about how to get your message to the relevant Ministers though (based on years of experience as a former civil servant). If you write to them as MPs, they can only deal with your correspondence if you are a constituent of theirs. Their constituency office may forward the email to their departmental private office to ask for it to be processed there, but that will (a) lose you time and (b) get no advantage over writing to them as a Minister (I.e. it may still be delegated - though of course might not).

The best way to ensure something hits a Minister’s desk is usually to write to your own MP and ask him/her to relay your points to the relevant Ministers and ask for their views. Letters from MPs, including constituency correspondence, would not be delegated (at least not for sign-off, the initial drafting would still usually be delegated but that is unavoidable). I know your MP is captured but they may still do this because it is a process rather than something that involves expressing their own views. They would in this situation write not, as an engaged MP would, with a covering letter saying how much they agree with you, but with with a grudgingly curt “I’ve had this from my constituent, please can you give me a response I can send her” type of cover letter.

sorry, not raising this to put a damper on things, just trying to be helpful in getting your message where it needs to be. I can’t believe the world has gone as batshit crazy as it has. All power to your elbow.

MrsOvertonsWindow · Yesterday 17:40

Schools bar parents for serious acts - usually of aggression / violence. In all my years in LAs and schools I've never come across a parent being barred for questioning the school about the curriculum (and I've been involved in a number of cases).

What an excellent piece of advice (your entire post).

Agree with @Coffeestain 's suggestion of two emails and not just cc'ing.

A possible point to make is that there does need to be central policy to address activist agendas in schools because parents at an individual level - even when it's a group of parents as you are and it's even harder alone - find it incredibly difficult to get schools and school staff to follow clear guidance around political impartiality, age appropriate materials, safeguarding, and transparency with parents. The school complaints process is slow and very frustrating - as you have found. The school is saying they are doing one thing, whilst actually doing another (also known as lying or at best bending the truth). It's been almost a year since this began, right? And the school have basically ignored you and dug their heels in - they're still using materials that teach gender ideology as fact and treating those who don't believe in gender ideology in a discriminatory / bullying way. And there is no clear way to whistleblow / get action to make the school follow guidance.

The school is NOT following guidance but there seems no way to challenge this as a parent. You are a highly organised group that have followed the processes and policies laid out and yet still, the school is ploughing on breaching guidance merrily and simply trying to shut parents down who point this out.

In the most recent example of banning a parent for wrongthink, the Deputy Head has failed to follow government guidance, allow the parent to present their side, or consider the wellbeing of the child of the parent in question. All of which are serious failures to act professionally and may well also be illegal but what can the parent do? Go through a long winded complaints process which the school and governors can drag out endlessly if they want to, which would not be in the best interests of the children affected.

I actually think the school is breaching KCSIE as I do not believe gender ideology is something that primary level children can comprehend - we can't even get a definition that is easily comprehensible as adults - so is not age appropriate, is liable to cause confusion and may undermine sex-based safeguarding and teaching on consent ( either if single sex toilets, overnight accommodation or changing becomes mixed sex by stealth or if pupils feel by the introduction of books including 'preferred pronouns' and 'misgendering' they are compelled to use non-standard speech imposed by others and are unable to accurately speak about or risk assess the sex of adults). Not to mention undermining progress of pupils in learning the English language if they are taught that fundamental building blocks of the language such as pronouns, to which rules normally apply, can be changed on someone's whim.

Mention you approached your MP (name) but they were not prepared to support you.

I would say that the DH appears to be unaware of the other protected characteristics and doesn’t seem to understand (to quote Kemi) that the EA2010 is a shield not a sword. The treatment of the parent of a multi faith pupil shows a complete lack of understanding of and respect for other beliefs and faiths.

Include an action e.g. that the school does not teach gender identity theory as fact. All you are asking for is a balanced age appropriate approach ….