Gillian Keegan pronounces

I can't imagine that's going to make her popular with Sunak. Maybe a mini-reshuffle on the way?

Just seen that @RealityFan here’s a link.

https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1698674935424581991

If she’s come out this weekend and said “well we’ve all been sat on our arses up until now, but I am going to sort this mess out” people would have respected her. Instead shes tried to blame everyone else but her own government. She’s also done fuck all about Stonewalled schools. She’s useless.

I see that Keegan at the end of an interview today, railed that she was doing "a fucking great job", and "those sitting on their arses" didn't recognise this.

Yep, the Edu Sec who can't even get off her arse to do anything with the Stonewallification of her department and gender teaching.

Maybe if she did, MN would as one extol the fucking great job she had done.

Until then...

Tory inaction in our schools has proved to be dangerous. They really don't give a shit about our children.

I suspect they wanted the strikes and settlement out of the way before they did this. They've certainly made out they're the hero's here.

The tories seem to have forgotten that labour to set up a rebuilding programme which attempted to address issues such as the life span of concrete too. it wasn't great but it's been known about for bloody ages. Anyone in the building / architecture industry knows it.

I'm fairly sure the timing is deliberate, (though I think also triggered by an actual collapse?)

Well, I do wonder if the schools RAAC announcement would have been made a little sooner if there hadn't been a cabinet reshuffle on the horizon. GK is not exactly out in front with the hard decisions.

Oh, you can be activist and stupid at the same time. Its a gift.

You are wrong @CriticalCondition, Gillian Keegan is full on TWAW.

Very likely. This is the Age Of Stupid after all.
She's babysitting the hot potato, the unstable vial of nitroglycerin, the hot rodded nuclear bomb.

Just hand it to Labour, Angela Rayner, Clive Lewis, Lloyd Russell Moyle all know what to do with it.

Actually I don't think she is a believer in genderwoo. I think she's out of her depth. She doesn't have the intellectual wherewithal to really understand the legal mess or the political backbone to get to grips with a very controversial issue. So it gets put in the 'too difficult' tray. And she has older stepsons and no school age daughters coming home telling her how it is in the changing rooms. I think she's crossing her fingers that one way or another it'll be someone else's problem before she has to deal with it.

Sunak had one chance to make a difference here. Instead of banishing a rival for his job out of the country ie Kemi, he should have made her Edu Sec.

But no, he promoted the biggest genderwoo believer in his cabinet to the post.

Oh FFS.

Article on this by Stephanie Davies Arai in the Critic

https://thecritic.co.uk/its-wrong-to-lie-to-children/

This and if (as I suspect) Keegan is the one who believes in gender woo, Sunak needs to sack her or he risks that he won't have honoured a single one of his recent commitments by the next election. Remember he said he has daughters and so wants to protect girls, boys etc from sexualisation through PSHE in schools.

A lot of guidance in schools is non statutory. If schools choose to ignore it then - when challenged - they need to have a good reason that explains why they ignored it. Non statutory guidance is I think perfectly reasonable at present.
What is unacceptable is the complete lack of any guidance for schools which continues to allow some of the most unsuitable organisations & individuals in the world to influence policy and practice in schools.

I am not a lawyer but my understanding is that the government cannot simply issue guidance and give it the force of statutory guidance. Guidance is only statutory guidance if there is an Act of Parliament which gives the government the power to make it. Sometimes the Act will set out the need for a consultation before the guidance is issued.

As an example, the Admissions Code is Statutory Guidance. There is an Act that sets out the rules on school admissions and the Code provides guidance on it, in easier to understand language.

For any guidance on trans issues to be statutory guidance, there would first need to be an Act of Parliament allowing the Government to issue it.
I assume that the Equality Act does not give the Government the power to issue statutory guidance on trans issues in schools. A new Equality Act could do that though.

The point is, I think, that Acts of Parliament go through proper scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament before coming into force. Guidance doesn't. These arrangements stop the Government of the day from issuing statutory guidance on any subject they like without the necessary go ahead from Parliament.

I'm not defending the delay on the guidance. Just trying to explain why it won't be statutory guidance.

The main parties are so working hard to get my vote.

They will kick the can down the road until the election. They don't want to touch it.

FFS!!!!

Regardless of one's party politics, it's hard to escape the conclusion that this government have simply given up any pretence of governing.

The Mail have picked it up:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12435095/Education-Secretary-Gillian-Keegan-transgender-advice-schools.html

The parents ‘wish fullfillment’? Surely that’s one of those things that never happen 🤔

It’s always stereotypes!

Skip to the end for the retconned anon adult story - pretty sure most readers of this board will recognise the story.

I feel a bit squeamish about the potential ethics violation of an author using their own ‘lived experience’ without being clear as to the source of that story.

Lots of mentions of 'gender role' in that document. Do they define what they mean by this? Presumably stereotypes. So children 'transition' if they don't like the stereotypes for their own sex and prefer those of the opposite sex. So progressive.