The Key for School Leaders and RMW

[Brainworm]

The Key is a membership service for school leaders. It provides guidance, resources and CPD. Over half of all schools in England have membership. Every school I know uses it to check their policies and practices are compliant.

One of their 'top articles' this week is called 'Responding to the DfE's consultation on gender questioning children: guidance and resources. They suggest the article provides 'expert advice and resources to help you respond with confidence' to the consultation.

The article basically says during the consultation phase, don't follow the guidance as 'legal advisors' have suggested it may be illegal. It also says schools must continue to support trans pupils (like the guidance suggests you shouldn't).

It suggests Gendered Intelligence and Stonewall are a good resource to guide schools to completing their response and provides a link to the 'Pride and Progress' website, which name drops RMW and the tab labelled 'Supporting Guide for Consultation' takes you through to Stonewall's guide to responding to the consultation.

The reach of The Key shouldn't be underestimated. I think they are either out of loop on all that has been happening in this arena or have been captured. Either way, it's not good!

There is no such act.
It’s the Equality Act.

Errmm no.
The advice is sage advice. You don't change school policy over a DRAFT piece of NON-STATUTORY guidance that is out for consultation. It's not for implementation, it's a draft and very likely to change.

If you can, please do. They've clearly not read the guidelines properly or the Cass review.

This is extremely concerning. They deliberately everything, training for governors for example.

To shift this culture will take something significant.

Unfortunately I agree and am at the point where it has to be statutory. But the tories need to get it in before the general election.

The other issue is that the curriculum and KCSIE and RSE for example, does not match with the guidelines

" You don't change school policy over a DRAFT piece of NON-STATUTORY guidance that is out for consultation. It's not for implementation, it's a draft and very likely to change."

What 'policy' are you referring to schools not changing? Up until relatively recently very few schools had any exposure to pupils with gender identity issues. There has recently been an explosion of cases and activist groups have swooped in and provided non evidence based advice and misinformation about the law. Some schools have adopted ideologically driven guidance documents produced/recommended by activist groups that do not align with best / evidence based practice for those with gender related distress.

School should at least pause to think that they should be mindful that they don't understand all of what is going on and need to progress with care.

I don't think that is does take a lot to shift school culture. What it takes is putting the right person in front of a senior leadership team asking the right questions. They soon realise the enormous holes and contradictions in their current practice. They can usually find sensible ways forward for themselves once you do this.

The majority if not all of this £30 million will be direct from school budgets, it's outrageous.

From budgets that can't afford proper support for SEND students, where students don't have basic equipment and some in schools that are falling down. And that's before you get to underfunding of camhs so that mental health support at the point at which it would help is non existent.

SLTs and governing boards should not be paying money that could go towards improvements for children to outsource their thinking to who exactly? The key could be captured in many ways, not just this. Is there any real transparency?

The whole POINT of governing boards is that they're meant to think independently and be a 'critical friend' to SLT and always act in the children's best interests.

Wasting precious money on the key to outsource their independence is not doing this imo.

Don't worry I'm sure Gillian Keegan is on top of this... aren't you Gillian?

The issue about "legal advice" is that some advice from unnamed government lawyers was anonymously leaked suggesting potential legal challenges to these guidelines. There are numerous legal departments in government - many? trans captured quite capable of producing biased / legally tenuous advice. Remember the CPS having to to remove their grim safeguarding breaching"trans advice for schools" rather than submit it to legal challenge at a judicial review? The Garden Court Chambers barristers looking so foolish as witnesses in the Allison Bailey case? Just because they're lawyers doesn't make them correct .
Schools and children are inundated with groups identifying as "trans experts" attempting to influence them, yet none of this has ever been tested in court. So transactivists feel confident in making sweeping generalisations about the desirability of children changing sex and insisting that schools will be in legal trouble if they fail to comply with all their demands.
There's a lot of alternative legal advice pointing out that the draft guidance uses current education law that transactivists have repeatedly tried to undermine. Worth remembering that "Stonewall law" has to date got numerous institutions into costly hot water in the courts.

And if the key doesn't point out that social transitioning of children breaches kcsie then they're definitely not worth the money

Other better uses of school money than paying the key: pay rises for TAs who have dreadful wages and are the ones most often supporting the most vulnerable children one on one.

Why do the people actually doing the hard work get paid the least and all this money goes to unaccountable organizations like this with goodness knows who producing guidance. Have they all gone through safer recruitment like all school staff?

World gone mad.

I agree to a point but what's not there to underpin all this is it being embedded in KCSIE. That is statutory. So many policies are based on it.

Currently everything is opinion and what activist lobby groups say.

Nothing is evidence based

And some slt are themselves captured

The key is the result of the devolution of LEAs as instigated by the tories.

All this used to be delivered locally by LEAs. And much was a national model.

Experienced teachers would move into lea positions for a few years and then often move onto slt or stay half school and half lea, move onto ofsted etc .

Companies like the key are full of either non teachers or those who did a couple of years and got out, in my experience. And they do refer to other companies/ charities for "expert input."

There's a culture of de centralisation in education, both policy and curriculum, as encouraged by the tories, but it's now a shit show of inconsistency.

The tories are panic building what they got rid of for curriculum in the Oak National, still a private company but given tonnes of government funding. But the rest, training, safeguarding etc is decentralised.

The only thing I've done that I can think is gov led is prevent training.

I think that a potential key point of unification within schools is that of an aim being to avoid medical intervention where possible.

Most people in schools who have drunk the cool pause for thought when asked if they think that schools should be neutral with regard to facilitating versus preventing the outcome being hormones and surgery.

It is very rare to find adults working with children disagreeing with the idea that the goal should be for young people to grow into adults who feel comfortable with their sexed bodies and with their identity without altering their bodies.

Once everyone is on the same page regarding this outcome, it is easier to review practice, policies and interventions in relationship to available evidence as to whether they are likely to help or hinder. The idea of 'free to be me' is compelling to many leaders and teachers - which is why the TRA narrative that is pitched to them is so compelling. They can see that altering bodies in damaging and limited ways is evidence of people not being 'free to be me', but seeking to create a different me because I don't accept me as I currently am'.

Many are shocked to hear that this approach is considered by the groups they had been seeking advice from as conversion therapy and transphobic.

WarriorN, sadly, many LA directors of children's services are adherents to post modernist interpretation and so maintained schools aren't immune.

I find that many, but not all, staff on the ground, are more in touch with reality over ideology, as they can see what's in front of their eyes. The TRA narrative pitched via teens who have been subject to dodgy algorithms doesn't hold up for those who are struggling, only those who are doing what healthy teens have always done.

They just need grown ups to enter the room to enable them to thoughtfully support those in need of support.

MAT and LA leaders and leaders of local safeguarding boards can derail this, when they are ideologically driven.

The issue is that social transition is the first step to medicalisation.

That point needs to be well known and understood. That's the part some teachers don't understand.

And the bigger issue is the fact that trans ID is in itself a safeguarding concern. As only 2.5 % of children referred to the Tavistock id not have any other co morbidities/ trauma.

And that's the part that's missing from KCSIE.

I agree LAs are equally captured. And what's missing is leadership from gov / guidance/ law / safeguarding.

At the same time the de centralisation created extreme confusion and a culture of private enterprise for the lobby groups and charities to step into. And they've from. Across all areas, including curriculum. And zero consistency.

Both of which means there's a vital need for statutory guidance.

WarriorN I agree it's a mess, but I think given what we know about how captured the Civil Service and local councils are, LEA guidance would be just as bad, if not worse, than the Key.

And they've thrived that should say.

Yes, and there needs to be explicit mention of the fact that it is not the Equality Act that is the primary source of legislation for children in school.

Hats off to the TRAs - who knew that so many adults in position of responsibilities would be willing to run around like headless chickens as soon as someone said 'oh, this might breach the Equality Act' (with no actual evidence) and - despite yearly training on safeguarding - would be willing to completely disregard safeguarding and the laws creating the framework for it on someone else's say so.

I've said many times on here that I think social transition fits the definition of emotional abuse in KCSIE, at the very least for all the other children (the majority) if not the child identifying as trans.

I've never had anyone argue with me cogently why this is not true. With evidence. It seems to me self evident that not allowing children to use the natural sex-based pronouns for others is "not giving the child opportunities to express their views, deliberately silencing them or ‘making fun’ of what they say or how they communicate. It may feature age or developmentally inappropriate expectations being imposed on children."

At primary level, when children are still learning the rules of the English language, it's particularly disruptive to their education and particularly developmentally inappropriate to compel children to use non sex based pronouns. How are they supposed to understand that one bit of language can suddenly be used in a totally different way for some people but not for others (because of course there is never equality in using gender based pronouns for all).

I'd love to see the SATS results for schools steeped in gender woo vs those that aren't.

The question the key should be asking is how do you think your defence of how you've treated all children in the school will stand up in court. Particularly given there are plenty of schools where adults have not just outsourced their thinking to the key and others and are continuing to do their best to safeguard all children.

Also - talking about the Equality Act - sex realist belief is a protected characteristic so if the school is imposing gender based pronouns on children who themselves and whose parents are sex realists, surely that's discrimination under EA 2010 if we're going to pretend that's the most important thing?

Of course, if Labour had remained in power all those years ago, and we still had a more centralised system, the shit show may have been x100 worse...

A lot of this is the ideological capture of so many different institutions at the same time, and the money involved in charities and the actual medicine (more US than here, but private companies are doing well here too.)

I do feel there's more ability to hold public set ups to account than private.

The quicker this is moved from 'culture wars' to defined medical malpractice and safeguarding the better.

Historically (albeit a very short history), the majority of trans identifying kids (80%+) desisted after a few years, even when they had 'socially transitioned'. This data relates to the population of young people with co- morbidities who accessed support from specialist services.

The significant rise in trans identities in adolescents seems to link to the well evidenced adolescent process of exploring identity in order to arrive at a stable sense of self upon entering adulthood. Again, I don't think 'social transitioning' here should be a cause for concern it itself.

The bit that is significantly concerning is the meaning that is given to this by influential groups. Instead of recognising the process of self exploration in one population and symptom / expression of distress (requiring urgent attention) in another, they spin dangerous narratives that can lead to permanent damage.

Being 'a punk' or 'an emo', or whatever interaction is present at a given point in time, is harmless for many teens who end up somewhere on the spectrum of 'conventional to alternative' adults. However, there have also always been teens who have been drawn to these identities to try and escape problems that this won't address. The challenge for adults with caring responsibilities is spotting the difference and safeguarding those who require it.

The trans identity is significantly different to previous identities teens have been drawn to as it can lead to irrevocable harm (through puberty blockers, hormones and surgery- all available before adolescence ends). It isn't a case of just riding it out, and trying to spot the subgroup who need safeguarding.

Sadly, the desire to kick against authority and the belief that adults don't understand, makes the narrative provided by TRA very compelling to adolescents. Added to this, the TRAs post modernist, critical theory is very enticing to educators who tend to have honourable motives to be inclusive.

Your are absolutely right pronounsbundlebundle re emotional abuse.

Unfortunately tra lobbying / mermaids have groomed and DARVO'ed that it is emotional abuse not to transition these children via the suicide myth.

Safeguarding training always has scenarios and case studies, including with online harms as there's so many ways that can be an issue; this context is never featured.