Scottish Independent School to Support Social Transition for 12 Year Olds without Need for Parental Awareness

[rogdmum]

George Watson’s College are back in the news.

Their Principal, Melvyn Roffe, is also current Chair of HMC and last month platformed former Mermaids trustee, Bobbi Pickard, at the HMC spring conference in London.

Now draft guidance for supporting trans identified pupils has been leaked to the Telegraph with Melvyn stating he has no choice but to support social transition for pupils age 12+ whether or not their parents are aware, because it’s the law.

He claims to be “really conservative” on this:

”The draft policy states that while there was a “basic assumption” that parents “know what’s best” for their child, in “certain circumstances” children aged 12 and above had “legal capacity to make decisions in their own right”.
Mr Roffe said that the school’s position was that while parents were best at knowing what was in the interests of their children, this was “subject to the limitations of the law”.

He said that he would consult with lawyers and that the policy could be revised if it had “misunderstood the legal frameworks in Scotland”.

“I’m being positioned as this somehow woke, liberal, individual,” he said. “But I’m really conservative on this. Until someone changes the law, all I’ve got to do is apply the law.”

If you have a Telegraph subscription the comments are glorious. If not, the article is archived in the usual place.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/27/george-watsons-trans-school-transition-socially-children-uk/

The comments are of the unleashed variety, and for good reason! Does this school now never ask permission from parents for things like taking them on trips, or enquire as to why they didn't come in last week? How does this actually work?

Pupils aged 12 ‘can change gender at school’

digitaleditions.telegraph.co.uk/data/1381/reader/reader.html?social#!preferred/0/package/1381/pub/1381/page/43/article/NaN

A Head openly undermining parents, setting young children on a pathway to future sterility, surgery & drug use. And he reckons he's one of the good guys?
What a dangerous man.

I particularly like JimJam’s comment 😂

Agree totally. This is horrendous.

I was going to post this on the thread about the impending court case re UK Government challenge to Scottish Parliament ammending the GRR.

What seems to have happened is that the school / their legal advisors have acted as though the ammended GRR is in place. But it also illustrateds how if enacted it is inconpatibile with UK wide EA.

The article is reproduced in full by yahoo (as the Telegraph is paywalled) https://uk.style.yahoo.com/private-school-let-children-over-170602428.html

I wonder how much notice the parents have to give to remove their kids without paying fees for nothing? Hope it is only 1 term but perhaps they should claim child safeguarding concerns and withold payment meaning they have no option but to immediately remove their children. Social contagion is real after all.

Not surprised at all. My children were at watsons and it was full on TWAW I contacted him to ask about safety of girls playing sport with trans identified boys, and why the toilets had all been made gender neutral. His response that if I accepted TWAW then he'd speak to me.

He's a total arse and the parents hate him

Fees for Session 2023/24
Preschool £11,328 (includes lunch) (£3,776 per term)
Primary 1 & Primary 2 £10,284 (£3,428 per term)
Primary 3 to Primary 5 £12,396 (£4,132 per term)
Primary 6 & Primary 7 £12,522 (£4,174 per term)
Senior School £15,951 (£5,317 per term)

Fucking H.

How many parents will be happy paying those fees for a school that openly states they will keep secrets from them about their children?

I'd be honestly surprised if their roll doesn't tank.

I don’t know about parents taking children out, in my experience, Edinburgh private schools are all currently stuffed full. As are the desirable state schools.

Really? Okay. It's another world, tbh, I'm still processing people paying all that money for school. 😁

I don't think the roll will tank but definitely some parents will move children. And it may stop people applying for places when there are other options who aren't openly lying to parents

I walked past Watson's this morning - it had a sign saying P1 places available for August 2023. It did strike me as unusual that they aren't full with a waiting list by this time of year!

Surely his open determination to trans 12 year old children in secret must make even the most "woke" of parents have second thoughts about the school? I can understand them not challenging him directly as it's scary to stand up for safeguarding children in the current climate. To ignore Cass, all the recent dreadful revelations about detransitioners, the data about all the co morbidities that these vulnerable children have & to know that a man like this openly boasts about keeping secrets with 12 years olds about them "changing sex" must raise huge questions in their minds about why?

I wonder about it in the broader sense, to be honest. Never mind 'transitioning', how stupid is this man to have come to the conclusion it would be 'illegal' to tell parents key information about their children? To what end? What else is he willing to keep from them?

how stupid is this man to have come to the conclusion it would be 'illegal' to tell parents key information about their children

He claims this is the legal advice he received.

So the question is how stupid are these legal advisors, or how invested are these "legal advisors" in the trans agenda.

It's incredibly dangerous to keep secrets from parents about their children. If parents don't know about a child's distress, confusion, sadness, vulnerability, they are unable to protect their child. This teacher is deliberately depriving parents of the opportunity to safeguard and nurture their child by keeping a critical piece of information secret from them. Only he may know about this.

It's a cynical and cruel action that poses a potential significant risk to children and their safety.

This is a private school? Well I hope he is ready to be hauled over the coals by the shareholders/owner (assuming he isn’t the owner) when enrolment numbers drop off the cliff, and parents withdraw with immediate effect and demand their full deposits back.

what a silly silly man.

I have a copy of the draft guidance should anyone want a copy. A few highlights:

It’s possible this has snowballed slightly off control. For example, say the school had batshit but not so detailed internal guidance already and then a parent made a formal complaint. Maybe the school had to come up with a defence and did so along the lines of the draft guidance. Maybe the parent then appealed so the Governors had to doubledown and add more detail. Maybe the parent eventually went to the Registrar of Independent Schools to file a complaint and as part of the regulatory investigation the school had to doubledown again and add even more detail. Maybe after all that was done, because the school had told the Education Secretary that this was the school’s approach, they then had to update their existing guidance to reflect this approach and reasoning behind it.

Who knows! 🤷‍♀️

Sorry, of course we have Ministers up here, not Secretaries

In my experience, schools reflect the moral and ethical character of the head teacher so, quite apart from his stance of this issue, I doubt that it is very enjoyable experience to a student at that school

That's the Scotgov guidance, yes? Which they were pretty clear was not binding. So I'm not sure where anyone has got the idea it's some kind of legal document.

No, not the ScotGov guidance, Arabella . I have a copy of the internal draft GWC guidance.

https://forwomen.scot/18/06/2023/withdraw-the-supporting-transgender-young-people-in-schools-guidance-from-scottish-schools/

Grrrr.

'due to a rule change our submission may not be seen by Committee members as they now only accept information from groups they have sought out. In this case it means LGBT Youth Scotland and Equality Network, but not any alternative or opposing views.'