Department of education is being sued over transing children without parental consent

[Hoardasurass]

From the mail today Parents of trans pupils plan to sue the government https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12029321/Parents-trans-pupils-plan-sue-government.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton

I heard the Radio4 "Bringing up Britain" the majority of teachers want to watch and wait and inform parents if there is harm involved or if child is insisting on moving into the opposite sex areas. It makes sense to me, letting children vocalise their thoughts is fine, but no action until they are adults

@mauveiscurious apologies if I'm misunderstanding but do you mean that the prevailingly view seemed to be "let the child change their name and/or pronouns but only inform parents if they want to start using facilities or doing activities (e.g. sports teams) that are for the opposite sex?"

If that's what the majority of teachers are thinking that sounds like a fail on the DfE to make it clear that making these changes is an intervention that shouldn't be done without parents being involved. As per the guidance from the Cass Review. The interim report from the Cass Review has been available since February 2022 and it explicitly mentioned that its guidance was relevant to education settings as well as health care services.

*prevailing view

Do they also want to inform the parents of children in those opposite sex areas?

In my school, we have a policy of no social transition without parental support. This has been made explicit, but some teachers still use alternative names for some students. They want to be the cool teacher. In reality, kids have enough friends and teachers should not be aiming to fulfill that role. What students actually need from teachers is for them to be responsible and reliable adults.

My friend was out with her group of friends from teacher training a couple of weekends ago and they were all leaving a trail of woman, adult human female stickers wherever they went. 😂

There's a lot of teachers not feeling able to express what they really think of all this.

Trans lobby groups like GIRES had awful safeguarding breaching "guidance " about gender confused children - all immediate affirmation, keep secrets from parents and telling individual teachers not to tell anyone in school if a child (even primary kids) said they were the opposite sex. Their ignorance about basic safeguarding was profound, yet it didn't stop them offering professionally dangerous advice to adults working with children (I've still got the screenshots of their awful materials).

Of course schools should have looked at adults promoting sex change as a great thing to children and exerted due diligence. But with the capture of the unions, civil servants in the DfE and so many politicians, as ever, the needs of children came second to the demands of adults (as is so often the outcome seen in serious case reviews where children are harmed by adults).

Bloody brilliant!

I don't think they'll ignore; I think they'll come out all guns blazing against it. There was a large NEU contingent at the pro DQST protest in SE London yesterday. Our NEU rep was asked to distribute flyers to encourage staff from my school to join them. Luckily he's sane and put them in the bin.

Its about time! Most of us grew up knowing there are physiological differences in the sexes, male bodies/female bodies. Supposedly it is now that the psychological differences are the most important. Piffle. Psychologically, one may feel you are a woman but the physiological differences are not erased.

It's all very interesting. Some schools did take the advice of Stonewall and other lobby groups. However, a large number also adopted something called a "Trans toolkit" that was drawn up by the trans lobby group Allsorts in collaboration with a large number of local authorities. Those local authorities then issued the guidance to schools. The schools didn't have to adopt it (most are no longer under direct local authority control) but of course a lot of them, I imagine, did adopt it, because it was easier than coming up with their own guidance. And they probably assumed that the local authority would know what it was doing - right?

When an Oxfordshire schoolgirl threatened to take Oxfordshire County Council to judicial review because the guidance would have forced her to accept boys in the girls' toilets and changing rooms, Oxfordshire dropped the toolkit, followed by dozens of local authorities round the country who also belatedly realised it was probably illegal.

That left schools in the difficult position of not having any guidance to follow and having to work it out for themselves.

My point is that there are three groups of organisation arguably responsible for this mess - the lobby groups such as Allsorts for drawing up the toolkit; the local authorities for adopting the toolkit; and the schools for implementing it unquestioningly. Who, legally, is answerable? I think, as you say, it's probably the schools - yet it would be a crying shame, in my view, if the local authorities and lobby groups weren't also held to account.

@RoyalCorgi - I'd add the DfE to that list. They've funded numerous inappropriate adult groups wanting to use schools to persuade children that changing sex is great. They've unforgivably used statutory guidance to advertise dubious groups like Gendered Intelligence, Stonewall etc, giving schools the impression that these are appropriate child centred groups when everything the groups promote about this adult ideology demonstrates they're far from that.

I do think the DfE are massively responsible for all this as well as LAs and schools. Ironically the lobby groups are doing what they say they do on the tin - pushing their preferred adult sexual ideology. The fact that it's dangerous for children was up to the DfE, LA's, schools and responsible adults to spot and deny them access to children - to safeguard children and for schools to remain politically neutral. The failure of this has been catastrophic.

Good.

I know that schools seem totally captured but I promise you that some of us are very aware of what is going on, even if we can never speak about it in our professional roles.

I moved my DD out of a large academy that had been stonewalled - about 6 weeks into year 7 she decided she wanted to cut her hair 'boy short' and be known as a boys name, despite never having interest in any of these things at primary school. She is neurodivergent and was being heavily influenced by peers.

We moved her to a much more rural secondary for year 8 (would you believe it she's now dressing in skirts and grown her hair out and wants to use her actual now).

I joined the board of Governors at her new school. Even in a sleepy, rural village there are a handful of TRAs on the board, but they are mixed in with a much older generation of traditional governors.

None of the governors know my personal opinion on any of this. But due to my professional expertise I am not the lead Safeguarding Governor and I gatekeep everything relating to gender identity.

Get inside and get involved, is my view. I work full time but the time sacrifice has been worth it for me, my DD is in year 10 and is growing into the young woman she is supposed to be.

Sorry, that should have read due to my professional experience I am NOW the lead safeguarding governor.

Well done takethebullybythehorns. Children are in great need of responsible adults to uphold their rights to be safeguarded. As everyone becomes more confident in calling out the evident grooming of children in schools, hopefully parental influence will grow.

@takethebullybythehorns This is so inspiring. Well done.

I don't think I have done anything very much but I do think we DO all have power.

What if we focussed our efforts on getting into schools? That's what stonewall et al have been doing?

Anyone can be a governor, you don't even have to be a parent.

We have more power than we think we do, honestly.

I will also say, that the TRA governors are generally very nice, very caring people. They are there in the best interests of the children. They just have a very set idea on what that looks like.

Governing bodies NEED diversity.

Not everyone has the time to do this and get involved, I know, esp when their children are younger.

But really, there is so much scope here for people to shape things in a meaningful way.

Good for them. When I raised the issue of sex and gender at school, the response I received, which was respectful, was that the DfE considers sex and gender the same and the terms can be used interchangeably. All the software packages we use either ask for sex or gender but not both, and children are being recorded under the incorrect sex. I was told that teachers didn't need to know a students sex. This is so wrong. How can we safeguard children if they can choose their own name or sex and alter their data, sometimes without parents permission?

They are behind the curve, and might well push back, but I think it would only strengthen the position at the DfE.

If children are being harmed, then schools are going to be sued. The DfE will not want that.

Agreed. The DfE have been bizarrely contradictory in their attitude towards this. They issued guidelines in 2020 saying schools shouldn't teach children they were born in the wrong body etc, yet at the same time they were recommending groups like Stonewall. They should have got a firm grip on this a long time ago.

I am not so surprised.

It's been the case for quite some time that teachers and education authorities have felt that they can step into the parental role in terms of teaching ethics and values and supporting students.

I know many people here are very supportive of schools doing things like helping teens access birth control, abortion if necessary, teaching values around sexuality, having lgb clubs, and so on. But the thing is, this is keeping stuff from parents, probably in most cases things parents would be better off knowing, which arguably they are best placed to support their kids on, at least where there isn't an abusive situation. Certainly if we are talking about the same kinds of safeguarding principles that say outsiders are more likely to be dangerous to kids than their own parents.

A good friend of mine was shocked to discover that his 11 year old daughter was the founding member of her primary school lgbtq+ club. The school was extremely enthusiastic about it. Kids most certainly did not need parental permission to join, no matter what the family's view or background.

From the POV of a lot of the teachers, this is not different in principle, and the schools already see themselves as rightfully teaching kids values and ethics when their parents are backwards.

I think it is no surprise it's escalated. That's what happens when you elevate the role of the state over parents.

This is such great news and could well be the Silver Bullet imo. All my gardening tools will be prepared for any funding needed.

I have read the article but can anyone give me a better understanding of what the legal basis is to sue the DfE, as opposed to individual schools? I thought their guidance on RSHE was reasonable and the problem is generally schools not abiding by it. Can someone enlighten me?

Oh wow. Good for them! I'll be watching this closely. I personally want to follow up with a psychological service who was treating my son, and who encouraged his change of pronouns and nane before I even knew about it 😡😡😡

Good. Interesting. To see what happens.

I have read the article but can anyone give me a better understanding of what the legal basis is to sue the DfE, as opposed to individual schools?

That's a good question. I am not a lawyer, but my guess is that they'll argue that the DfE should have put in really robust guidance that schools were legally obliged to follow, rather than just let schools do their own thing. In pragmatic terms, they'd have to sue a number of schools individually, which would be complicated and time-consuming, whereas suing a single body is easy. Presumably schools would also lack enough money to make a decent-size payout, though I imagine they have legal insurance of some kind.