Schools ‘let pupils switch gender without informing parents’ - Policy Exchange Report

[rogdmum]

There’s a raft of coverage in the Times and the Mail today:

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2023.03.30-014418/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/schools-let-pupils-switch-gender-without-informing-parents-pppbphkgq?shareToken=a982976ca8c81a3e9ea0e21ee76f3364" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2023.03.30-014418/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/schools-let-pupils-switch-gender-without-informing-parents-pppbphkgq?shareToken=a982976ca8c81a3e9ea0e21ee76f3364

Half of schools turn to outside agencies for sex education:

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2023.03.30-015239/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-schools-turn-to-outside-agencies-for-sex-education-zzqqsmgb0?shareToken=111ada6e40d464c85ba4f6d11703fbd8" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2023.03.30-015239/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/half-of-schools-turn-to-outside-agencies-for-sex-education-zzqqsmgb0?shareToken=111ada6e40d464c85ba4f6d11703fbd8

The magnificent Rosie Duffield:

<a class="break-all" href="https://archive.ph/2023.03.30-015234/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rosie-duffield-schools-are-failing-in-their-duty-to-protect-gender-distressed-children-9zzsk06j9?shareToken=fbad1f25d0a39dad9cb1bc35292664d7" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://archive.ph/2023.03.30-015234/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rosie-duffield-schools-are-failing-in-their-duty-to-protect-gender-distressed-children-9zzsk06j9?shareToken=fbad1f25d0a39dad9cb1bc35292664d7

Rosie nails it:

”Iis universally accepted that safeguarding is fundamental to a responsible society. These principles are well-established, enshrined in law, and applicable to all organisations and functions relating to children. There is never a good reason why safeguarding should be compromised, especially within school, where children spend the majority of their time outside of the home environment.”

”The rising number of children reporting gender distress, and the treatment of those children within clinical settings, is rightly being given the attention it deserves. In an NHS-commissioned independent review, Dr Hilary Cass found the Tavistock clinic to be adopting an “unquestioning, affirmative approach” without exploring other factors causing these children’s distress.
Affirmation as a one-size-fits-all solution has been discredited.

Thankfully, the clinic is being shut down. However, Policy Exchange has revealed something even more concerning: the same approach is being facilitated in schools, which breaks every safeguarding rule in the book.”

I’m feeling both weepy and ill on the back of this. We (Mumsnetters, SSA, TT etc) have been shouting about this for years and have either been brushed off or dismissed as transphobic.

There is an external investigation currently being carried out into my daughter’s former school about my concerns around the breakdown in safeguarding wrt this issue. Being in Scotland I have little hope of our concerns being upheld, but if DfE wakes up and recognises the harm being done, eventually it will trickle down to Scotland as well.

They do this over other issues too, it's not just trans.

I have watched KJK and Helen Joyce describe the same treatment from schools. If they can't get anywhere as the articulate parents that they are, what do you think these psychopaths running schools have been doing for years to others with a variety of issues?

just listened on sounds. Good discussion - I liked the comparison to anorexia - that is a safeguarding issue rightly so and the subsequent point made that gender identity, and only gender identity, is treated separately due to "contested ideology".

 for you @rogdmum I can totally understand how you feel. All the harm that could have been avoided if people had just listened. None of this is new, none of this is surprising.

I see in the Times report that, although GIDS referrals decreased a little in 2021 (perhaps related to the pandemic) they have risen again in 2022 in line with the continuing increase. I find that very depressing as I think, in other countries like Sweden, it appeared to be dropping off. The UK, despite being TERF island, is very heavily captured.

This is true.

The SEND teacher at my DDs high school told me this himself. He says he has an 'epidemic' of children in the school identifying as trans but they don't want to tell their parents so in school they use different names and pronouns and parents are completely unaware.

Policy Exchange tweets on their launch:

"Today we launch 'Asleep at the Wheel: An Examination of Sex and Gender in School' written by @specalot with a foreword from @RosieDuffield1. This report highlights a safeguarding blind spot when it comes to how schools are dealing with gender-distressed children and their peers.

This Government has failed children by allowing partisan beliefs to become entrenched within the education system. Meanwhile, the Opposition has failed to pull them up on it.

✍️ @RosieDuffield1 in the Foreword for this report."

https://twitter.com/policyexchange/status/1641334768200458240?s=46&t=WHoOZZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

https://twitter.com/policyexchange/status/1641336954879893504?s=46&t=WHoOZZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

Horrifying. In my (all girls' school), there have been quite a few wanting to change names and pronouns, but from September a list was compiled of those students whose parents had okayed this. Teachers are not allowed to use name/pronoun changes for anyone not on that list. It had been unclear up to then, because DFES guidance had been unforthcoming. It obviously still is, but the school realised it had to have a clear policy.

I agree. The government has been fannying about around the edges and it needs some for unequivocal. Hopefully this report will get things moving.

Resources used in schools included a diagram of the “Genderbread Person”, which differentiates between anatomical sex, gender identity, gender expression and attraction. The creator’s explanation of gender expression includes a paragraph about prowling around the kitchen like Catwoman when feeling feminine and eating cereal aggressively like a Viking when a person is “bumping up [their] levels of masculinity”.

FFS.

(And I cant believe they're still using that genderbread diagram. It's dangerous, regressive nonsense).

*something more unequivocal 🙄

When I was at school, I wanted to change my name to Marilyn Monroe. And rightly so I was told "No, your name is X,you are X on the register and that is your name". End of! This pandering to children is ridiculous especially behind the backs of their actual parents. Do they not think it's confusing to be called one name at school and then go home and have a completely different identity. I despair. This is horrifying stuff.

You’d think that schools would be champions of common sense and critical thinking, but decades of being browbeaten by Government and parts of the educational establishment into accepting and believing all sorts of faddy and dubious educational theories and models, and being judged on how effectively this nonsense is embedded into practice, has softened them up to the extent that many will accept pretty much anything, however bonkers and unscientific, and they fall over themselves to implement it in the hope that it will give them kudos, either in the eyes of Ofsted or society in general. (This is my view as a retired secondary teacher.)

In a friend of mines sons class, there are 12 transgender kids in a class of 30. Make it make sense.

The combined power of a Labour MP doing the foreword on a Conservative think tank report and the BBC using the word "ideology" on Radio 4 and its newspaper headlines page (see comments in a different thread) could be enough to finally turn this giant tanker in the right direction 🤞🤞

In the interim, thank you to all of those who have been saying this for years. As frustrating as it must have been to be ignored, it seems to be finally paying off. Thanks to all this hard work, in the face of misplaced public shaming, the evidence body of harm is there and it looks like the mainstream press about to peer right in to it...

It’s of course a wonderful opportunity for some children to deflect attention away from getting an education and to frustrate and annoy their teachers. (I might have done that myself, having been a tiresome teenager.) For others it will be an expression of distress, though not necessarily gender distress, meaning the real problems are not evident.
My hope is that as it becomes commonplace, it will lose its appeal and fizzle out. Unhappily, there will be much damage in its wake.

Gillian Keegan is now Education minister.

Where will I find the discussion on Radio 4 please?

easiest way is via BBC sounds - today programme. Starts about 7.10

@TerfTerf

I think the sports thing is just clunky wording, because lots of schools do have a level of reserving eg netball for girls etc. Rugby and Football shouldn't be just for boys, but in practice at my school they were because insufficient girls wanted to play with one another (and past about 13 it really has to be separate) - of course, the magic gender wand can then reverse the whole rationale for segregation - "sure, put a trans boy in there, what can go wrong"?

Miriam Cates discussing the report:

https://twitter.com/safeschoolsuk/status/1641343847971135490?s=46&t=WHoOZZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

That chart is horrifying. 69% require other children to participate in other children's social transition. So when William becomes Willow, all the other kids have to participate in the lie? So sinister gaslighting children.

Interesting term being used by interviewee… “reclassification” sounds even more sinister. But how can this be just accepted. You can’t legally change your “classification “ until you are adult. When are adults going to start saying no, as they do with eg anorexia. Well done to everyone here and in SSA and Rosie and Miriam for getting it out there, finally….

Didn't he interim Cass report say that affirming in schools should stop?

Is anyone actually paying attention to Cass? And I’m including this goverment in that.

Steve Chalke repeating those stats, which went unchallenged on R4:

twitter.com/stevechalke/status/1641329853772226561?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

I am ever ever so marginally hopeful that we are approaching a tipping point here - the shift to safeguarding in schools and acceptance even by BBC that it is a gender ideology are steps forward, together with the comment by the government minister earlier in the week about the anti women's right activists (auckland/posie parker).

We just need a join up all the dots and make a big statement moment. Pity that keegan is so indifferent but at least we have Kemi as Equalities Minister