Choosing a secondary school

[musicalfrog]

How do I start looking into this? I really don't want my kids to be thrust into a world ruled by this harmful ideology. How can I find out what I need to know? We're a little way off still, and they've been untouched by it (so far) at primary. Any advice please?

Look at policies on their website and see if they conflate sex & gender or whether it is covered explicitly.

When you go for open days, ask them about policies around transgender pupils, specifically around single sex spaces & social transitioning. Also ask re general teaching on this area.

You can ask a few different people - senior leadership, head of years, pastoral support, MFL department (re room policy for school trips).

Provided your child isn't with you, you can ask in a nice neutral way, so that they aren't lead into answering in a way to please you.

Go for open days in autumn of y5 (or summer of y4 if your local schools do summer open evenings) so you can get a feel. You don't need to take your child with you then. Any that you discount for whatever reason you won't need to visit the next year with child,

When looking round a school you often get the opportunity to talk to current pupils. Use it to ask about reality. Ask about bullying, level of homework, anything you like. maybe stay away from trans for y7 helpers, but you could ask y10s / prefects 'are there any trans pupils in your year .... which changing rooms ....' if you wanted to.

Thanks all. Online research is proving interesting so far. Can't see if any are stonewall affiliated but the signs are there with at least one.

Tbh the most important thing you can do at this stage is prepare your child in advance.
Some schools are undoubtedly better/worse than others, but there is nowhere you can send your child where they wil not be exposed to gender ideology at all.

Agree. The nearest secondary school to me is the one that I would consider to be the most woke and steeped in gender ideology and queerness in my city. However, a change in admissions policy from priority given to feeder primary switching to local area, means that from next September the student demographic is going to change significantly. And the local parents are less likely to go along with gender stuff.

While on the other hand, I know that quite a lot of this ideology is currently being pushed in schools I wouldn't have expected it to happen in. So I feel that it's going to be almost impossible to tell in advance how a school is going to be. But I also feel like the push-back is starting and the school it would formerly have been least likely to happen in, is now just as likely, if not more likely than anywhere else. Because from talking to parents who's children will be going there from September, a lot of them are already on guard against it and ready to fight it if necessary.

I also know one child in the school already and his mum says that in the last year he's become almost homophobic and she doesn't understand where it's coming from. I suspect it could be a form of teenage rebellion against what he's hearing in school, so it's very possible that the swing back is starting and younger teenagers are increasingly less influenced by how this is pushed. DS has two more years of primary and I know he is likely to want to go to the school his friends are going to. And a lot will be going to the nearest both because of practicality and the facilities which are honestly excellent. So my main course of action is just talking to him about what's happening. I hate the idea of influencing him. He's his own person with his own mind. But I provide him with facts and he is definitely concluding that gender ideology is wrong. And he has started recognising that there is political messaging in the movies and cartoons he watches. I didn't draw his attention to it but it's become so unsubtle that at 10, it's started to be obvious to him and he doesn't like it.

Oh and I meant to say. I'm actually very concerned but sadly not surprised that the end result of pushing gender ideology on kids may be kids becoming more homophobic. I really, really hope that we don't see a swing back so far that same sex attraction ends up vilified. But I do think it's likely if this doesn't end soon.

Well our school literally flew the pride flag in the yard 😁. Flags aside, I would ask about whether they have mixed sex toilets. Seems to be shorthand for 'trans inclusive'.

Some good advice on here. Take a look at their anti bullying / equality documents and see whether they're balanced with an awareness of all the challenges children face or if they've been rainbow washed with the majority of children's needs de prioritised.

The presence of LGBT groups would be a major safeguarding red flag - in the same way that a school running groups for heterosexual children to meet and discuss sex and relationships would be 🙄

Go and look around and see if they have single sex toilets. Ask, preferably in writing, if they have single sex, not single gender, toilets. Ask if they share RSE resources with parents.

Look for a HT who isn't captured as this is important. My DD is in a school with single sex toilets and a very large Muslim population of students. From what I can gather the Head is trying do a very delicate tightrope walk on this. There have been a few very very dodgy videos (I suspect inserted into RSE by the large number of young woke teachers and a result of the fact they're all too busy and overstretched) but the toilets remain single sex and there is a lot of work everywhere to stamp out sexual abuse in the school and a recognition this is mainly male on female. The religious students are accommodated well e.g. with Ramadan and having a prayer room and the (much smaller) group of Jewish students are also supported appropriately as far as I can tell. Allowing diversity of thought is important and the extent to which the school obviously does this is, I think, a good indicator.

No school will be perfect but they're not all captured - some are still not operating illegally by abandoning single sex toilets.

I've been musing about this and school appeals. I went through the appeals process for DD and one of the factors was the school she was assigned did not have single sex toilets. This didn't come up in the appeal for various reasons but I really think it could be something that could be brought up if it's going to disadvantage your child. A child being GC and being assigned a rainbow washed school where they enforce all the children to lie and mangle language for the sake of one or two students - putting their wants above everyone else's needs - would be a terrible psychologically damaging environment for a GC (i.e. scientific realist) child.

If I had the economic / social power my daughter would be going to an all girls school. Doesn't fix everything but it helps mitigate against some things.

Would a single sex school be an option?

@ChocHotolate the girls school in our town is the absolute worst! Encouraging them from year 7 to be open about sexuality, talking about eleventy billion genders and what they identify as. A friend’s daughter chose to wear trousers and was asked if she was considering her sexuality. No clues on the website! You’d realise from talking to parents, possibly not from students looking around. They are too aware that they mustn’t step outside the schools ideology. It’s still rated outstanding but hasn’t been bothered by Ofsted in many years.

There are plenty of single sex schools steeped in gender ideology so a girls' school isn't necessarily a better option from that pov.

all fair and reasonable points - I suppose I was thinking from the point of view of the girl who got her forehead cracked open when boys kicked the door in in the unisex loos because the boys were taking photos of girls on the loo. And the data we have on how much girls get pestered for nudes in secondary school.

Almost 1 in 4 girls surveyed say that they don't feel safe at school
https://www.girlguiding.org.uk/globalassets/docs-and-resources/fundraising-and-partnerships/uk-snapshot-gas-2022.pdf

Might be worth visiting the school library & see what's in the LGBTQ+ section.....and casually ask what the + is for?