Ministers finally agree guidance on trans pupils

I think this is spot on. The guidelines & the consultation process will empower those the transactivists have been so desperate to silence including parents & responsible professionals centring safeguarding children. But change will be gradual, not instantaneous.
And yes to prioritising safeguarding children rather than trans ideology.

So depressing. Individual schools can be very isolated if things go wrong so to be alienated from an important source of support is a problem for them. Again it all raises the question about why these adults are so determined to influence schools in this way?
I know that the Girls' Day Schools Trust is also fairly captured in terms of signing up to gender nonsense BUT have held the line about being single sex schools for girls, refusing to admit boys claiming to be a girl. To date no legal challenge as far as I can see.

I think it's a mistake to think that schools guidance can be what puts the kybosh on all of this.

It's one piece of the puzzle, but there are limits to what it can do and there always will be. The same principle that says that schools can't change kids names without parental permission, also says that parents are the final arbiters of appropriate medical interventions, along with doctors.

So as long as there are doctors spouting gender ideology, and parents, it's not going to be schools that stop that from happening, It's just not their role. To try and undermine parents would just be another

That's going to limit the degree to which they can say they will never allow kids to transition in school.

What should be happening is that schools stop hiding stuff from parents, promoting GI or queer theory in the school itself, and focus on safeguarding elements that are really part of their remit - rules for sports, rules for toilets, and rules for the degree to which other kids need to "respect" kids who change names etc.

Stopping medical and social transition of kids is going to require changing the medical side of things, and the ideology, directly.

So the very top trains the very bottom (as in new teachers not a judgmental description!) leaving the middle experienced layer, who still remember what safeguarding is and understand child development, squashed.

I have a big concern that in the independent sector (and just speaking about the independent sector here), capture is at the very top with those running sector conferences etc. HMC, one of the big associations for independent schools is completely captured. Concerns have been raised time and time again to Simon Hyde their General Secretary but have been fobbed off with condescending, patronising responses.

When Melvyn Roffe (then Chair and Principal of George Watson’s College) had decided to platform Bobbi Pickard at May’s Spring Conference, Simon sent a snotty email to all members defending their choice of speakers. I don’t have permission to share the email but it made it crystal clear that the organisation is captured and determined to push gender ideology from the top.

Obviously there are Heads at independent schools who are not on board but none are speaking out and this silence lets others like Melvyn hold disproportionate influence.

Helen Semple is another good example. Former DH of St Paul’s (Girls) - a school absolutely notorious for gender ideology (in my view, our former school Watson’s comes second only to St Paul’s) was co-founder of Schools Inclusion Alliance which has rapidly become the “go-to” place for independent schools:

https://www.schoolsinclusionalliance.co.uk/about-us

It greatly worries me that it is embedded so deeply at the top of the sector and parents, IME (not only me but others as well both at Watson’s and other independents) are treated atrociously if they have the temerity to raise concerns with the Head or Board of Governors.

They'd have to define "boy" and "girl", otherwise the guidance to keep toilets separate is pointless

...the older senior staff have outsourced their thinking to these bright young things and are scared of offending them.

That's been exactly my experience too, Valancy, particularly when the bright young things are "LGBTQ" themselves.

This is an interesting thread (from a few years ago) on regulatory/institutional capture.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/3541908-Regulatory-capture?page=1

That's not what I understand by the term "institutional capture". My understanding is that this describes a situation in which an organisation is "captured" by a lobby group outside the organisation, and thus loses its independence and instead becomes an arm of the lobby group. Obviously it's the people running the organisation who are targeted by the lobby group, and those lower down may be unaware of what is going on at the top.

'What cannot really be explained is the continuance of this even after the facts are becoming clear'

Naively, I had thought that once the harms were exposed, things would change.

We now have Stonewall and Mermaids tropes, distorted and mudleading as they are, taken as the norm.

So called 'gc' beliefs are defined a d protected in law, which is great, but absurdly implies that genderist beliefs are the norm that doesn't require explanation.

We need genderist ideas spelled out clearly in law.

“But there's so much noise, the guardian is full on twaw and has interpreted this guidance as pro socially transitioning with parents told. Not given permission, just informed. So it seems the harms are not clear.”

The Guardian’s interpretation is how it actually is, how it will work in practice. This was the government’s intention, to give the Guardian types what they want whilst deceiving the others that they were getting what they want. Has the country become more or less liberally progressive since 2010 under a so called conservative government?

So glad to hear this!

It is true that social change comes from the elites first and comes down the strata. But in this case it is through deliberate manipulation using tactics that have been seen to work before and keeping the unpalatable bits quiet.
What cannot really be explained is the continuance of this even after the facts are becoming clear. But there's so much noise, the guardian is full on twaw and has interpreted this guidance as pro socially transitioning with parents told. Not given permission, just informed. So it seems the harms are not clear.
I don't think banning will work, we need sunlight and over time it will fade away. In 20 or 30 years we might do an inquiry as to how on earth we sterilised a load of teens but not now.
See how vaginal mesh is still used in loads of other ops despite the known risks. See thalidomide. See the blood scandal. Etc.

Yes. Institutional capture.

Institutional capture is a real thing. It’s not a figment of my imagination. It happens when the people high up in society running that institution have a vastly different view to the section of that population they’re meant to serve via the institution itself.

For example does a trade union have a different view on women’s rights than its members and society do? If so that’s the people at the top running the union having a different point of view than the ordinary working people that the union is supposed to represent. That’s the elites having one point of view and general population having another. Is that difficult to understand or do you just disagree that this is a thing?

In my experience it is younger, more junior teachers (plus those who've inexplicably been made slt by the age of 25) who are gung-ho for social transition and self-id, and the older senior staff have outsourced their thinking to these bright young things and are scared of offending them. Curmudgeonly middle leaders like myself are more likely to object. But we object to everything and can be safely ignored (as long as we get the gcse results year on year...)

@Freddder
Sticking to the subject of the thread which is about the forthcoming schools guidance, the capture of all the unions, the DfE & Ofsted in recent years has resulted in so many senior staff keeping silent about what's happening to children.
Until there is clear evidence that governors, local authorities & Ofsted will support senior staff insisting on safe single sex facilities, sport and removing the countless "born in the wrong body' organisations, their challenge is their career or battling for the welfare of children.
Until these guidelines are finally published (and even then with the activist unions in full battle mode) everyone is risking their careers by speaking out. It's shameful but I hope that well written draft guidelines will enable people to openly speak about this.

That the higher you go in society the less gender critical the people occupying these positions are.

Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?

Ok…. Reason evidence?

I’m arguing three things:

1. That the majority of people are gender critical.
2. That the higher you go in society the less gender critical the people occupying these positions are.
3. That points 1 & 2 explain why despite the population being gender critical the institutions are captured, I.e institutional capture happens from the top down and doesn’t require a majority to do it.

Which of these do you dispute and why? Be really interested to hear the arguments, logic and reasoning and what you think is happening and why. 🙂

Thank you @rogdmum . That Spectator article really nails the extreme levels of "abdication of moral responsibility towards children.”.

As these guidelines will be out for consultation there's an important opportunity for us to respond. And this time there are a number of intelligent child focused organisations who will be able to add their weight. And as said upthread, trans activist educators are going to have to explain very clearly about their levels of "expertise " in transitioning other people's children. Explain why they have abandoned safeguarding children from adults seeking to sell the 'born in the wrong body' lie to young children and why the privacy & safety of girls no longer matters in some schools.

Essentially they'll be forced to say all the quiet bits out loud.

First quote:

“Not only have schools failed to communicate vital information but, worse, some teachers have actually colluded with gender-distressed children to keep their parents in the dark. This represents a breakdown in adult solidarity and, ultimately, an abdication of moral responsibility towards children.”

Second quote:

“Groups like Mermaids have had astonishing success in propagating the idea that it is better to have a happy daughter than a dead son. This manipulative line is fundamentally dishonest: given love and support, gender confused children are no more likely to take their own lives than other children. But few parents are brave enough to take the risk.”