School Curriculum - A personal win

[InterestingUsernameTBC]

18 months ago I first asked for a copy of the resources my child's new secondary school would be using for teaching gender identity in PSHE. I asked one main question - What are you doing to protect the children in your care from becoming part of the growing numbers of detransitioners harmed by gender identity affirmation?

After numerous emails, a couple of phone calls and several in-person meetings I have now had confirmation of the new PSHE curriculum.

Resources are drawn heavily from Transgender Trend. It is made clear that not everyone believes in, or considers they have, a gender identity. Cis and queer will be taught as controversial terms which should not be applied to others. Gender will be taught as social and cultural expectations placed on individuals because of their sex. Gender identity will not be casually slipped into other subjects as impartiality on the subject will be impressed on all subject teachers.

And what I'm most pleased with - No child will be able to self-declare a trans identity. Any child questioning their 'gender' will be referred to safeguarding for appropriate clinical referrals to be made.

A big thank you to the posters on this board for providing information and links and giving me the confidence to challenge this and showing how important it is.

And a reminder that we can all make a difference by speaking out. I have been a lone voice on this matter with the school and it has taken ages but I have had a huge influence that will have impacted not just the 1500 pupils attending the school now but future intakes too, and all the staff who will now feel empowered to speak up, whether they are full-on gender critical or just a little concerned about things.

And I actually did talk about AGP. Education guidelines say school have to teach the facts about gender identity. I asked what were the facts and pointed out that one fact is that AGP is a motivation for some male transitioners. Cue furious scribbles from PSHE lead to Google later. Wonder how he found that....

👏Well done!

Brilliant stuff. Yes. And even more available now, as you say. So good to speak to each lead individually and what relates to their particular area. Also, highlighting childrens' rights to hold GC belief is so important!
Thanks for this Interesting!

Brilliant OP. Well done! You have made a huge difference to how many children? To keeping them safer. That's a huge achievement.

You did it without the Ofsted head's recent comments about safeguarding but anyone doing the same now will be able to use that too. Schools are exceptionally interested in what Ofsted have to say in my experience.

That update is heartening. I had visions of the Headteacher agreeing then the Head of Dept sabotaging it all. They can be in the too open-minded camp.

This is fabulous news. I challenged this ideology recently in a different context (using a lot of what seemed to me concrete and impartial evidence) and it went disastrously badly, but I'm settling in for the long game. :-)

Yes, I think it can make a difference how already ingrained the relevent people are in the ideology. Many people are just unaware/uninformed though and those are the ones to reach where we can. Even if many, or key people, in an organisation are captured, there may be others who are unsure or curious who are listening, so keep going- if you can, I say!

You are amazing!
What a fantastic result.

Brilliant, well done @InterestingUsernameTBC My fear is that Northern Ireland are years behind the rest of GB and this will be a battle for me in the future. Gives me hope.

More congratulations OP. Once teachers are liberated to be able to think about this ideology, to understand the massive safeguarding risks to children & get some facts about the grim nature some of the adults pushing this, they realise what's happening.
Very well done.

Definitely have an eye on the long game. Like I said, it was 18months from my initial request to see the resources to confirmation of the curriculum changes. I got fobbed of a couple of times and I just kept going back. If a new relevant article came out or a relevant event I sent the links. I said, I've heard your response, I'm still not happy, where do I go next? I got referred to DfE at one point and I said there are already groups tackling that I'm talking about what you at your school are doing to protect my child from becoming part of the detransitioner statistics. Having that clear question to anchor it all was good and making it their responsibility so they couldn't shirk it.

Good luck with your attempts. Keep talking. Fingers crossed you connect with someone for whom it all clicks because once you've got that things will change.

Well done OP and thank you for letting us all know. Hopefully valuable to other parents.

Great news and a highly effective and pertinent question. Well done OP.

👏👏👏

Excellent work OP!

Im missing lessons for the pshe strands on lgb and t. Do you have a link to the transgender trend lessons? That would really save me a job! Im carefully peaking some people at school but my god it isnt easy!

That is a real achievement. Well done, it is so difficult to do what you have.

You star. Thank you for doing this and giving us a guide to use with other schools.

I’ve tried with my DC school and was shot down. This was some time ago and I didn’t feel strong enough to go back in there. Now there is so much information though. It is deeply ingrained at the school though.

My heartiest of congratulations to you, @InterestingUsernameTBC !!!

Well done on your tenacity. I think a lot of your success came from providing alternative resources (we all know how busy teachers are), finding the ear of a receptive PSHE lead, and following up, following up and following up.

And to have done it by yourself is indeed impressive.

Would anyone be interested in signing this petition to stop ‘gender identity’ ideology getting more entrenched in schools?

look up
petition.parliament.uk
Remove references to 'gender identity' from relationships education guidance

InterestingUsernameTBC · Yesterday 13:09
Thanks for all the congratulations everyone on this thread.

And thanks for the questions DameMaud.

The thing that made the most difference was finally getting to speak with the head of the PSHE curriculum. Before that it was the deputy head who was a bit a stumped when I challenged his assertion that he was male and identified as a man. I asked if he did indeed identify as a man or if he just understood that a male person is a man. And the other representative was the mental health lead who was very concerned about the 40% suicide stat peddled by Stonewall and was quite happy to talk to young people about transition being an option.

The PSHE lead was very interested in what I had to say, noted down all the resources I referred to and from subsequent conversations actually seems to have followed them up.

Things that I relied on were:

The Forstater judgement to show that non-belief in gender identity is protected. I shared my non-belief and I pointed out that they need to protect pupils who don't believe too. (Alison Bailey judgement wasn't out at this point)

Stephanie Davies-Arai being awarded British Empire Medal for services for children. Made it super easy to recommend Transgender Trend for resources.

Detrans Voices for stories from detransitioners.

+Pointing out the safeguarding issue with children being encouraged to use opposite sex pronouns and the impact that has on parents/carers when risk assessing activities with friends like sleepovers or hanging out at the park. I could see this register with the deputy head, like a light switched on*.

The new NHS guidelines were not available when I spoke with the school but the PSHE lead had looked that up independently. That's where his decision to not transition anyone in school came from.

And I updated him on the Mermaids scandal to warn off signposting there.

There's loads of good stuff to refer to now

Thank you for letting us know the resources you used to influence this school’s change of approach.

This is great.

I’m a Safeguarding Lead on a secondary school. My school has been ahead of the game on this as we have a couple of vocal teachers (and me!) and a Headteacher who listens.

Our PHSCE Lead was initially totally captured and very defensive when the curriculum was challenged, but as a pp says, once alternative resources were signposted he started to come around.

I’d encourage anyone who feels strongly about this to include not only the Headteacher and PHSCE Lead in your communications, but also the DSL. It’s very difficult for a competent DSL to ignore the blatant safeguarding risks involved in self ID, for example.

I’m also part of a network of DSLs in my borough. We share resources, discuss issues etc and this issue is on the agenda currently (London borough). Things ARE changing. It’s slow and painful, but our voices are starting to be heard and have impact.

Excuse typos and poor grammar! Typing on phone.

Skittles4Tea · Today 07:50
This is great.

I’m a Safeguarding Lead on a secondary school. My school has been ahead of the game on this as we have a couple of vocal teachers (and me!) and a Headteacher who listens

Our PHSCE Lead was initially totally captured and very defensive when the curriculum was challenged, but as a pp says, once alternative resources were signposted he started to come around.

I’d encourage anyone who feels strongly about this to include not only the Headteacher and PHSCE Lead in your communications, but also the DSL. It’s very difficult for a competent DSL to ignore the blatant safeguarding risks involved in self ID, for example.

I’m also part of a network of DSLs in my borough. We share resources, discuss issues etc and this issue is on the agenda currently (London borough). Things ARE changing. It’s slow and painful, but our voices are starting to be heard and have impact

Another encouraging example when it seemed hopeless. What a relief that some schools are beginning to understand the problems of adopting ‘gender identity’ ideology.

It would be good if there could be a list of schools like yours and the OP’s.

I saw this threat on twitter. Much soiling of underwear.