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

So your SLT lied to you essentially - even if by omission. This is taking away parental rights which the school has no right in law to do. This is so anti safeguarding it's unreal (though not your fault - you were lied to).

I hope you told the parents this wasn't a decision you made but something SLT told you to do. I'd be looking for another job, the atmosphere must be toxic. In future if requested to use wrong sex pronouns please ask if the parents agree before doing this.

Also, it's really harmful to non English speaking children and non NT children - and all children actually - to mangle English in this way.

Third person pronouns are not parts of language that apply to an individual - like names. In common English usage throughout all of recent history (and beyond probably) they are determined by the speaker and refer to sex class as observed or determined by other means (e.g. via written material). The neutral 'they' is used if sex class is not known. If you make pronouns a matter of choice by individuals, like names, it renders them essentially the same as names, so you might as well just use names as at least this is more neutral and not a very obvious signing up to a particular political ideology.

It's very confusing if you're using one rule for third person pronouns for some and common usage for others - and it's arguably unfair and discriminatory. If the school is using gender based pronouns now they need to give all children a chance to determine their own pronouns otherwise they are treating some children preferentially.

Also, English lessons need to be changed and a discussion had about how all of the literature of the past (up until recently and even now for most things) uses sex class to determine third person pronouns rather than being individual and gender based and a clear distinction and announcement made where third person pronouns are sex-class based and speaker / writer determined or where they are individual, gender-based and determined by the person being spoken about. Anything else is incredibly confusing for normal children let alone children with SEND. It's not teaching the basics of English properly to just mangle the rules and not explain it.

It's like saying for some children 2+2=5 in Maths lessons and no-one must question why this is so but just blindly accept it and the fact that the rules are shifting and no-one can possibly know when 2+2=5 and when 2+2=4 but must just guess or stay silent out of fear of getting it wrong.

The Psychological impacts of this authoritarian behaviour on the other children is going to be profound.

RSE you cannot withdraw your child from. My 7 year old has a book list in school I argue really encouraging transition. I looked up the provider and the 'who we are' photos were overwhelming trans looking.

All school policies say gender not sex.

I've had to tell my child not to say boys can't be girls at school because reading the school policies that's a 2 day suspension

I agree with everyone else who's said that this is against current DfE guidance, and I believe it's also illegal, since schools have a statutory duty to be politically impartial and it's pretty clear that this is a live and contentious political issue. Admittedly if you don't have the stomach for a fight it may not be much comfort that they are clearly in breach of their duties (not suggesting you should have, it's stressful and time-consuming) but if you do, there's a lot of easily accessible stuff you can point to citing DfE, Ofsted etc. Have you seen vebrithien's thread about getting her school to shift on their policy?

Yes, it is becoming apparent that the civil service has become over-politicised. I've heard Tory MPs say it is the primary reason why government priorities are not being delivered, and even Labour MPs are starting to flag it up as a serious issue.

I've also been in contexts where it has been clear that specific teachers are using their classrooms to advance their own political perspectives. I was in a session in a primary school where a group of 7, 8 and 9 year olds were asking a local MP some questions, and it was clear that the teacher had written them for the students in order to try and skewer the MP. The kids had no real understanding of what the questions were about (it looked like they had never read them before, and they were quite odd questions for primary school children to ask), and I could see the teacher seething at the back with certain responses the MP gave.

It was wildly inappropriate on a whole range of levels, and it left me wondering just why the teacher thought it was remotely acceptable to use the children in that manner.

The fact it was ever considered acceptable for lobby groups like Stonewall to train civil servants is shocking. Let alone having whole government departments signed up to ‘prizes’ for following that lobby groups agenda.

Yes. There will eventually have to be that full governmental inquiry into political capture, how it was allowed to happen, why no policy or safeguarding or duty of impartiality etc was actually enacted as opposed to being nicely written on a policy that is write-only, and why documents such as the Denton document and the paedophile manifesto have openly existed in the public domain and common knowledge without a major common sense siren blaring and reverse gear being slammed on.

Otherwise any other political lobby group can use the same means to control the government and policy to this point before anything happens to begin to stop it, and God only knows what the agenda of the next one will be. Trying to destroy women's equality and child safeguarding is bad enough.

I agree, I'm an MFL teacher and this issue with gender pronouns means teaching a gendered foreign language becomes very difficult, especially if you have very vocal young people in the room who want to have the conversation about gender every time you're talking about le and la.

Tell me about it!

Strictly as a linguist, I find myself getting irritated at the mental gymnastics required of speakers. Personally, I just cannot get past the fact that it feels like forcing people to misspell.

I just don't understand why it's allowed in schools - fine, they don't like pronouns, just use their name and avoid pronouns altogether but changing the rules of English some of the time just for some people is confusing and impacting the education and understanding of every single other child.

If we're doing that, how about exempting dyslexic children from having to spell correctly or use punctuation?

It's a coercive demand, ultimately, that requires the rest of the world's rules to bend around the person demanding. I don't blame the children as this is the TRA agenda and they're just doing what adults have told them to, but you'd think the English teachers would be up in arms and they're not which I find very disturbing.

I'd like to think if the 2+2=5 thing became the new way to show obedience to a political ideology then the Maths teachers would protest but maybe I'm wrong.

Orwellian.