Still Asleep at the Wheel: A Further Examination of Gender and Safeguarding in Schools - Policy Exchange

And therein lies the entire problem with schools going along with a child social transitioning at all - because whether or not the parents of the transitioning child were told (we can hope they were, but as we have seen, there are some who would disagree) not a single other parent was. This, despite the fact that the safety, privacy, dignity - and right to speak the truth - of every other child in the school is potentially affected by one single transitioning child.

@GlovedhandsCecilia, how would you deal with safeguarding for all those other children? You seem to believe children should be centred in the discussion - should these children be allowed to say they want truly single sex spaces without the school saying that Johnny-now-Jane is actually a girl and is allowed to use their changing room?

I don’t subscribe to gender stereotypes. But this is me.
https://www.gbnews.com/news/trans-school-court-changing-rooms

the professionals should be very very afraid.

No. I think that because I have had numerous conversations with senior staff including DSL and the Head and they were extremely ill informed. Not that they didn’t take a particular view- they didn’t know anything.

What you see on this thread are a bunch of people who are using safeguarding terminology to support their view of why parents should always be told their kid is speaking about trans stuff

If you think that there are instances regarding the safety of the child where parents should not be told, do you believe that those situations are very rare and that telling parents should be the default?

What you see on this thread are a bunch of people who are using safeguarding terminology to support their view of why parents should always be told their kid is speaking about trans stuff.

Not really, no. I'm seeing people who are highly trained in safeguarding not allowing individuals to affect the principles.

Forgive me for saying this, but your viewpoint comes across as highly personalised, due to your own experience with your parent(s). Not objective.

I have had actual training if that's what you mean, yes. Actually training and real life experiences with the complexity of real world situations. Safeguarding doesnt have a one size fits all approach. What you see on this thread are a bunch of people who are using safeguarding terminology to support their view of why parents should always be told their kid is speaking about trans stuff. Merely because they want to ensure they'd always be told. It doesnt make any of it true.

The voice of the child is very important. When things go wrong, it is often because the child wasn't heard and the adults involved were more interested in appeasing each other. Particularly the professional appeasing the parent to the detriment of the child.

Thank you. But I was more wondering what your training is? What your qualifications are?

Because, as I said, you seems to have had different training to the safeguarding leads on the thread.

That was the most mannish thing ive ever heard anyone say here.

Will you continue to do this even when some women disagree with you about something, or will you threaten to stop the whole thing to show them that they have to listen to you?

Oh I think you’ll find I have suddenly got quite the influence on steering this particular ship.

Yeah they disagree with what you think. Doesn't make them wrong. It means they disagree with you and won't be using the approach you insist on. Thats doesn't mean they arent professional, it means that you arent steering their ship.

You think that because they make a different decision than you would have. That's all.

Situations are nuanced. Then telling my parents at that time woukd mean I trusted nobody in authority and then the people who spoke to me about sexual exploitation would never have had the chance of that conversation. I learned how to better protect myself because I had a trusting relationship with them.

I work for the LA with children and young people who, for a range of reasons, are at risk of imprisonment. That's the official thing. It's meant to be about young offenders. However the role has morphed since Covid and now I'm working with a lot more young people who arent necessarily at risk of offending or imprisonment, but arent on the right track either. Like school refusers, teens who beat up their parents and siblings, teens who have self harmed. We say its the signs of gentrification in our area.

Yes in some cases. As ive said over and over, it depends on the individual circumstances.

Well said. And that is why any advice that tells adults in schools to keep a child's secret is a predator's wet dream.

It can be a hard lesson to learn when a child has confided something in you and you know that passing it on will likely have repercussions.
But that's why we teach teachers not to keep secrets and help them plan for what to say to a child about the need to share.

This thread is about the extent to which transactivism is wedged into certain schools and how children and parents are harmed by these narrow beliefs. It defies belief that a poster is continually arguing with those experienced and qualified in school safeguarding and thinks that they know better.

They don't.

As a school governor I’d love to see some good examples I can use in my school.

happy to receive via dm

And as someone who has been involved in this fight for a while, I urge you all to sign up as a school governor. Even if it’s not your child’s school, take your skills and sign up as a co-opted governor at another local school because they all reference each other.

Our core opportunity to change this is to do two things:

1 - Inform organisations that their policies or practices are illegal/discriminatory/dangerous whatever
2 - Give them an off ramp, provide a click-and-done replacement for their previous policies, that is supportive of reality, supports males and females, and provides space for those who have issues with their sex to exist with dignity, but not at the expense of others, and does not require compelled speech, actions, etc.

This is all most organisations need in order to make permanent changes to the way things work.

We show them they are wrong
we provide a solution

and we do it before the activist organisations, the ones lower than Stonewall, get their acts together to do just the same thing.

The "professionals" are demonstrably the wrong people, who are not objective, and very much steered by dogma, authoritarianism and social pressure.

For example:

Jolyon Maugham - professional Barrister
Dr Sam Hall - professional GP
Zarah Sultana - professional MP

Professional means nothing when the professional class does not hold itself to proper account.

The entire senior leadership team and governing body at my daughters school - professionals one and all - have been told, directly, of the proven dangers and direct risks they are bringing to about 800 female students - and yet they do nothing but encourage males into female spaces, pursue queer theory in the classroom.

They do not know better than us because they call themselves professional. They are demonstrably nothing but.

GlovedhandsCecilia

What is your actual role working with children? Because you don't seem as informed as the safeguarding experts on this thread. More about your personal experience shaping your viewpoint.

You talk about having sex when you were an under age with someone over age and realising you were exploited by it. But presumably you didn't want your parents to know.

That sounds like a safeguarding risk to me. I don't think consensual sex generally is always reported, but where there's an element of exploitation, that changes things.

it would help if you could say where you have learnt your safeguarding from.

This is my prediction over the next few years. Transgender trend, Bayswater and safe schools alliance will still have to provide support and criticise the DfE.

Multiple companies will be working on new training for schools and DSL and governors now, ready to finalise and deliver when KCSiE is finalised.

Where there are the above questions and differences of opinion will show up in different ways.

A rash of policies will be created for schools to use off the shelf OR schools will write their own, matching what they best can from kcsie directly. Or a mix of both. MATs will share obviously.

Where the lines are drawn will be confusing between different schools. Parents will still have to raise issues for some time. Some children will fall through the gaps.

But this is the point - Cpom and pass up.

the DSL has the full picture of part two.

They will be held responsible if they ignore current guidelines.

case in point @SingleSexSpacesInSchools’s school.

guidelines and law exist. Already. School refuses to acknowledge. Biased. Brighton, obvs

Ahh I see you agree with @WiseWomanOfPutney

Perhaps this is semantics. I am using school and teachers synonymously (which I can see is unhelpful).

My position is:
Teachers shouldn’t keep secrets where there’s a safeguarding risk

Disclosure or discovery of gender questioning children / desire for social transition should always be considered a safeguarding risk

Teachers should therefore inform DSL if they learn about this risk

DSL should inform and support parents (or take the decision to involve other agencies)

Can you accept that in some cases not telling parents is the wrong thing?

It seems to me that we have lots of instances of schools doing the wrong things against a hypothetical situation where telling parents (or SS) may be the wrong thing but it’s all very difficult and nuanced. That’s not clear safeguarding procedure for teachers

Yes.