School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

"Believe nothing. Suspect everyone." is basically safeguarding 101 and critical thinking 101.

What is being minimised here is the utter incompetence by the government services that facilitated the abuse.

You don't improve on that incompetence by training school governors to file rumours of grooming gangs under one of "misinformation; disinformation; conspiracy theory" without a fourth, correct option of "report to DSL for follow-up".

The point I just made is literally what the problem with that question is and is the reason why the DT reported on it in the first place.

There seem to be two completely different discussions taking place on this thread.

Find me a reliable source for Reform or Yaxley-Lennon claiming that only Pakistani men rape, or that white men don't rape. That's a straw man argument, and you know it.

You are eliding two different things in the hope that we won't notice that you've declared a false equivalence between:

• People across the political spectrum's legitimate concerns about grooming gangs being covered up because of the race or religion of the perps.
• Your straw man fabrication that people are making the racist claim that only the men from certain races or religions rape, or are disproportionately more likely to rape.

We see the straw man and the false equivalence. Give it a rest. It's boring and predictable.

It wasn’t ‘an element of coverup’, it was active collusion and enabling at an institutional level, particularly where those institutions, councils etc are either run or heavily influenced by Muslims or those seeking to virtue signal away their underlying racism (the self proclaimed ‘anti racists’ seem to be pretty consistently racist in my recent observations) .

Rotherham is the tip of the iceberg - nobody is doing any racial or ethnicity ‘scapegoating’, we are asking for the perpetrators of these crimes to be treated like all other perpetrators and actually be prosecuted and not enabled.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn9y0lvpyqvo?app-referrer=deep-link

I don’t disagree but just want to correct the tense.

It still IS happening.

Sadly, “was” can’t be used yet.

Fair point. If the point of the training is (as I was assuming) 'encourage scepticism', then none of the multiple choice options can be right - they're predicated on a foreknowledge of the 'true facts', and the motivations of anyone contradicting them. Hmmmm. 🤔

Right, kids. Believe nothing. Suspect everyone. Especially the creators of this training module.

I hope that the MP would say that.

Ida B Wells wrote, "The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them".

In a world where lies assail us from all around, telling someone "that's disinformation" with no further explanation isn't a credible counter to what they've seen. It's a "he said, she said" situation where two people are making unevidenced claims.

A discussion about vaccine safety could include looking at reliably-sourced death and disability rates from the illnesses that the vaccines prevent, versus death and disability rates from vaccine side-effects. It could look at the history of vaccines, starting with Jenner's smallpox vaccination. It could look at how vaccines are made. It could look at Andrew Wakefield's fall from grace and introduce the term "grifter" into the kids' vocabulary, helping them understand how conspiracy theories start and why people double-down on them when contradicted.

In short, that discussion could reinforce the critical thinking skills that would help that child learn generally and make them more resistant to all forms of misinformation.

In the context of the training question with multiple-choice answers of "misinformation; disinformation; conspiracy theory", there isn't a tick box for "rapists can be any colour"

Rotherham was an example of where there was a sacred caste, and people are rightly furious about it. In the context of a post-Rotherham UK, rumours of a grooming gang from a racial minority, or indeed a grooming gang from a racial majority, was a really poor choice of scenario for that question.

The correct answer to all allegations of CSA, organised or otherwise, "report onwards".

A GovernorHub spokesman said the question was designed to test knowledge of online safety risks to students, but that the use of an example that alluded to grooming gangs was “inappropriate”.

The 5,000 governors who have already completed the training will be contacted to inform them of the change.

First the assumption in the training is that this is a false rumour without any hint of how they evidence that.
Secondly 5000 governers have been trained without any concerns being raised.
I expect professionals to engage their brains and get out silos when doing their jobs.

Isn't this training supposed to be about protecting children from the dangers of believing unsupported allegations spread online? If it had been about an allegation that vaccinations cause autism, would the MP have said "it's concerning that, rather than seeing the scenario as an opportunity to discuss vaccine safety, governors are only given negative options to shut debate down"?

It's not shutting debate down to tell people not to believe everything they read without supporting evidence. But the example was ill-chosen, and I wonder why.

I didn't miss that. You were talking as if it disproved what people were saying. You have to ask yourself why things aren't being recorded or studied. It's like issues with trans people studies often get shut down. It's good when there isn't such a wealth of solid data as then people can claim ignorance. There, however, is some data to work with such as convictions. There's a good substack breaking down the stats that someone posted in another thread.

It's telling that the bbc article mentions a case of white people who abused 30 children over a decade ago that didn't get much coverage but doesn't mention the numbers involved in the scandals. As it's common sense that a scandal that involves thousands of children being covered up is going to get more attention than one with 30. All horrible of course regardless of who does it.

However, critics said the training scenario suggested that the threat from grooming gangs was being downplayed rather than addressed - contradicting IICSA’s aims in the first place.

Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, said it was “concerning” that, rather than seeing the scenario as an opportunity to discuss child protection, governors are only given negative options to shut debate down”.

She said: “My bigger worry is it will lead to governors dismissing real cases of violence against women and girls.

It seems to me we need some sort of accreditation for trainers. How could any competent trainer be so irresponsible.
Please ignore our resident derailer. This is about lessons not being learned. If a trainer had said that at a course I was on I'd expect the school to withdraw their contract.

Terf Island Rules OK 💚🤍💜 🇬🇧

The question should have said 'unsupported' rather than 'false', then. We should be teaching children to be critical thinkers and not to believe allegations without evidence.

Not all grooming gangs are Muslim. That doesn't mean Muslim grooming gangs don't exist!

The training scenario is a mess. It presupposes that the content of the video is already known to be "false". In real world safeguarding scenarios you don't know whether what you hear is false or not, and the whole thing is you're not supposed to just assume an allegation is false based on your own preconceptions!

The problem is that in order to teach about disinformation they must find a false allegation that is not incredible and which an agitator would be motivated to make: a video about a threat from knife-wielding WI members would not fit the bill.

It's mischievous to interpret it as meaning 'allegations against (particular group) must always be ignored'.

When I was a child, rumours about 'coloured' white slave-traders and gypsies kidnapping small children were rife. And yes, it both whipped up race-hatred and created blind spots about the dangers from polite well-dressed white men. (If the example in the article had been about Travellers instead of Muslims, maybe the DT would not have run it, but our local Nextdoor regulars would have been all over it!)

There's a mix of organisations - all of who can be vulnerable to capture by activists of all kinds. Safeguarding training should be as free as is possible from politics but we all know that's impossible to legislate for and having such a wealth of private providers for schools of different types makes it impossible to quality assure.

I hadn't thought about training for school governors before. Do we know anything about the third party provider in this instance?

Yes this, and also what @Thedevilhasfinallycaughtupwithhim and others said.

There is a fixation with what is going on in the UK, accompanied by a very basic understanding of the situations in reality and a very desperate grabbing at sources as "proof". The poster appears to dislike British "terfs" intensely. Which proves we must be doing something right.

Tbh I'm wondering why so many pp are engaging with someone about safeguarding young girls considering they believe men are entitled to be in female spaces at all times.

Sorry OP. Thank you for making the thread.

Yes. Men from the other side of the world with an addiction to parading their misogyny on online forums where women communicate have nothing to offer to the discussions around this complex debate.
The fact that the session was removed from the training shows that the problem was recognised.

Howse doesn’t have a clue about any of this, he’s just googling stuff, so I won’t be engaging directly as it’s just disruptive.

You’re poo pooing the research and experience of people who have lived there and actually gone through this.
I’m curious to know your own link with it as you’re more of an expert on the matter.