School Guidance out Tomorrow

Agree that DfE in particular (and Ofsted who I note seem to be doing something of a reverse ferret on this) are complicit and highly responsible.

But nevertheless, teaching gender identity ideology and allowing 'preferred' /compelled pronouns or social transition of children without parental knowledge is pretty clearly breaching several other bits of legislation and statutory guidance in various ways. It's not as if responsible, intelligent adults (SLT in particular) are incapable of saying to DfE and Ofsted 'this is incompatible with safeguarding / the rules around single sex toilets in schools / other massive safeguarding breach'. They do it on other issues.

As I note, my DD's secondary has fairly successfully navigated this while preserving single sex spaces and maintaining very good communication with parents. Having said that, about 3 years ago there were definite TRA teachers trying to push an agenda with some dodgy resources creeping into RSE but parents spoke to the school, the school listened (and I think realised how incompatible GI was with all their RSE slides about mutual respect etc) and they seem to have a really good way of handling it all now. It's quite openly discussed. There's a LGBT club. But the adults are in charge, and safeguarding is front and centre, and parents are involved with safeguarding.

One ideology is not allowed to ride roughshod over all others.

I’d say we have it here at some local schools. Dc are freer to wear whatever and so far adults have not tried to indoctrinate with their TRA agenda, thankfully.

Primary though, secondary the usual stuff which this guidance will get rid of to a large extent.

It is younger but as we’ve seen some TRAs have no reticence over age.

I’m well aware the guidance won’t help up here. However, the guidance also applies to private schools in England and given my direct experience with the current Vice Chair of HMC as well as Simon Hyde, the General Secretary of HMC, I’m aware of just how captured the independent sector is right at the very top. It’s unclear which way they will go - will the sector split or will they (under pressure from Melvyn and Simon) push back against the DfE guidance in their English schools.

As I said before, unfortunately my experience is not unique. Yes, Scotland is completely batshit, but I know so many parents who have had a parallel experience when trying to push back in their child’s English school, both state and independent.

It’s signed off by both on the foreword (KB as Minister for Women and Equalities).

https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Gender%20Questioning%20Children%20%20nonstatutory%20guidance.pdf

Thanks again to everyone who's clarified. Still finding Keegan's reticence about it a bit bizarre but, if it is significant, I'm sure all will become clear.

I’m betting that Keegan would rather this all went away quietly, she is in the TWAW camp.

Word locally (she’s my MP) is that she’s worried about her seat - definitely not a popular local MP and she’s fucked off a lot of people (I sincerely hope that’s not just wishful thinking on the part of the local rumour mill).

Alongside this guidence I think we need to make sure that schools are not reinforcing sex stereotypes. The world outside is highly gendered at the moment, but if schools could be environments where the gender pressure is taken off, where girls and boys both know they are free to explore whatever interests and styles they want without 'this is for girls, that's for boys' there would be less need for the escape hatch from expectations provided by identifying as something else. Some things (like sport) are sex separated for good reason, but we need to work towards a less sexist environment alongside this new approach. Easier said than done.

There is ideological indoctrination of children going on, compelled speech. It's not 'patchy educational provision'.

And the indoctrination in PSHE is largely the government's fault for issuing statutory guidance saying that children have to be taught about gender identity and then signposting Stonewall as a useful source of resources.

If you want e.g. Ofsted to step in on that front, schools can legitimately argue that they are meeting their statutory obligations.

The govt belatedly saying 'oh we didn't mean that kids should be taught 72 genders' is just shit. They didn't specify what they meant, and are now complaining that schools did the wrong thing while trying to meet government requirements.

True but it's a bit different if some children are being compelled into a belief system and others aren't. It goes a bit beyond 'well this school is much better on SEND but terrible at Maths; that one has a great Geography department, oh and that one has awful buildings, but a great Drama teacher...'.

There is ideological indoctrination of children going on, compelled speech. It's not 'patchy educational provision'.

I think it's reasonable for schools to be less than perfect where there aren't sufficient resources / they can't recruit teachers / don't have enough books etc but it's a bit different if it's an ideology which is explicitly being pushed on to children by teachers. That's not an 'we just don't have the resources' thing that's a 'deliberately indoctrinating children' thing

And it's all the more awful BECAUSE resources are stretched so thin elsewhere. Teachers should not be fucking teaching kids about being born in the wrong body and all the Mermaids bollocks taking up school time when they're not even getting a decent education in Maths. Teachers should not be 'correcting' correct English pronouns (students penalised for 'misgendering') when they're not getting kids decent GCSEs in English!

It makes me so angry BECAUSE I know how stretched thin schools are. To allow time to be spent on confusing children and undermining basic scientific education (basic logic and critical thinking skills too) in this way is just so, so very terrible.

Of course, the lack of resources made all the sparkly outside organisations willing to come in for free more seductive. In some cases I think schools have been groomed.

@rogdmum makes excellent points. And the one about HMC is really important regardless of whether your child is in private or state because the children deserve proper safeguarding and for their school to follow the law in both settings.

Ah so this was a private school in Scotland? This guidance won't help then as it only applies to state schools in England. Scotland appears to have gone genuinely batshit.

There are lots of schools who have resisted this nonsense as I pointed out earlier. They all have confident leaders with a good understanding of safeguarding and mental health problems in teenagers. They skilfully centre children's needs and rights and I know have seen off proposed LGBTetc groups, dodgy SRE materials and turned down requests from trans groups wanting to sell their born in the wrong body narrative. They're all Ofsted good or outstanding schools. It can be done.

And also worth noting that the Principal of George Watson’s College was the Chair of HMC, one of the big U.K. wide independent school organisations. He is highly influential. He is currently the Vice Chair of HMC.

He arranged for former Mermaids Trustee, Bobbi Pickard to speak at HMC’s Spring Conference earlier this year:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/04/mermaids-trans-advice-private-school-headteachers-uk/

Gender ideology is deeply embedded

I'm so sorry @rogdmum that is horrendous - a clear safeguarding failure to explicitly go against both parental and medical advice.

There needs to start to be serious legal consequences for teachers pushing this in this way.

There will be plenty of parents who don't have the resilience to fight the school transitioning their child so will be completely steamrollered by captured SLT like this. But the teachers pushing it won't be there for that child in 10 years when the consequences are fully starting to be known.

And this would not - categorically not - have happened in my DDs secondary school.

I don't think anyone is arguing in favour of that here?

I do hope that those arguing in favour of teachers transitioning children in secret from their parents and insisting that it's not possible for schools to retain single sex spaces and sport take note of rogdmum's post above. The lengths that trans captured individuals in schools can go to in their attempts to exclude parents from their children's lives are both extreme and very sinister.

The other thing I'm very interested in with all this from a legal point of view is the difference between schools. My Dd's secondary has single sex toilets and always had; there are third spaces for the tiny group of trans children. They share all PHSE / RSE materials used each week with parents and have at least for the last 2 years. Parents and children in schools that don't have these safeguards are surely being discriminated against compared to me and my daughter? They are experiencing a very different educational system and in some cases being forced to go along with a highly contested and unscientific ideology.

Education provision is very patchy in very many different ways across the country.

And yet the basic assumption has been than trans people get access to services for the opposite sex and that an exemption needs to be asserted. Otherwise we wouldn't have ended up with a fight to get men out of women's prisons or hospital wards or sports competitions or changing rooms.

The entrenchment of the ideology is frightening. Not 'here is an article about children and gender' but 'here is an article about how some stupid parents don't believe in GI, stupid bigots that they are, good job we know better than them'. Fucking hell.

But the basic assumption is that single sex services should be open to trans people with or without a GRC unless an exemption is asserted.

I think that's the wrong way up. Services should be open to anyone, unless there's a good reason for them not to be. Single sex services are allowed where there is a good reason for that. If services are open to people of both sexes, they're not single sex services. The fact that they are provided as single sex services, is the assertion of the exemption.

The whole trans agenda is about bullying. It's all about using unconsenting others to validate an illogical belief system. It's a safeguarding failure that it was ever allowed in schools.

As I noted above, we don't allow religious groups to forcibly convert other students (with teachers going along with it!) and students to claim it's causing them mental distress and damage to their identity if there are children who are not wearing religious dress and observing their religious customs.

Social transition in school is not a neutral act for the child in question, but also it's positively damaging for all the other children - the majority - in that school who are forcibly involved.

The other thing I'm very interested in with all this from a legal point of view is the difference between schools. My Dd's secondary has single sex toilets and always had; there are third spaces for the tiny group of trans children. They share all PHSE / RSE materials used each week with parents and have at least for the last 2 years. Parents and children in schools that don't have these safeguards are surely being discriminated against compared to me and my daughter? They are experiencing a very different educational system and in some cases being forced to go along with a highly contested and unscientific ideology.

Sharing PHSE / RSE with parents (who have primary safeguarding responsibility for their children) should be part of a good safeguarding culture IMO - safeguarding is about good communication. If your child comes home with a confused message about something in RSE you can't possibly properly support them without knowing what they've been told in school.

It is bracingly brilliant to see child safeguarding and adult responsibility spelled out clearly.

I don’t think it’s good enough for schools to blame the lack of Govt guidance for following the directions of lobby groups like Stonewall. Parents of gender distressed children who have been concerned about the immediate unquestioning affirming approach have been pushing back against this for years

I’m pretty typical of the many hundreds of parents I’ve been in contact with over the past 4 years and here’s what happened to us at George Watson’s College:

• I provided a mountain of information (research, detransitioner stories, clinician perspectives etc)

• I offered to pay for the school to have a session with one of the Tavistock whistleblowers so they could hear the concerns which LGBT Youth Scotland (the school is a LGBTYS Gold Award holder) dismiss. This offer was ignored.

• I invited the Head of support services to a private talk one of the Tavistock whistleblowers was giving. This was ignored.

• The Head of Guidance and Year Head (who had told me he would not consider the clinical advice we had to not support our daughter’s social transition) attended a session at the Scottish Parliament where Dr David Bell was speaking after I told them II had been invited to speak from the floor

They took all of this information and then unbeknownst to me, incorporated into their schools guidance as not representing “the views of or approach taken by George Watson’s College.”

(The link in the screenshot goes to this: https://www.transgendertrend.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Current-Evidence-in-the-Treatment-of-Gender-Dysphoric-Children-and-Young-People.pdf )

Dr Bell spoke on Channel 4 News last night. This is what Watson’s explicitly dismissed (and probably still do as): https://www.channel4.com/news/school-transgender-guidance-very-progressive-claims-dr-david-bell

I now know that my daughter’s teachers had no idea of the extent of what was going on behind the scenes. All they were told was that my daughter identified as a boy, it was to be supported but that her parents did not support it.

Now replicate this up and down the country (well, not the Scottish Parliament bit). Many many schools knew what the concerns were. They chose to ignore all of this in favour of listening to lobby groups. In the meantime, we parents were dismissed and undermined. You can’t blame any of that on a lack of Govt guidance.

Well that's the BBC's take perhaps. The EHRC simply seem to be confirming that services can be single sex if there is good reason. The exception is "single sex" in the first place: not "single sex without transpeople".

Exactly. It has nothing to do with whether someone is "trans". It's about single sex. TRAs are claiming the right to use opposite sex facilities.

Kemi is just brilliant:

Teachers cannot fulfil their safeguarding obligations without acknowledging the reality of biological sex and protecting children accordingly.

This is so true, and any teacher who does not accept this does not have a place in schools.

Every adult who has encouraged this outcome is complicit in failing dc

But the basic assumption is that single sex services should be open to trans people with or withouta GRC unless an exemption is asserted.

Well that's the BBC's take perhaps. The EHRC simply seem to be confirming that services can be single sex if there is good reason. The exception is "single sex" in the first place: not "single sex without transpeople".