LA response to the Government Guidance for Schools

[MsPuppup]

Hi I'm a regular but have name changed.

I know my LA (Birmingham) submitted a response to the government consultation on the schools guidance for gender confused children.

I have asked for a copy of their response.
They have refused to give it to me saying the DfE requested the responses should be kept confidential

I know other organisations have published their responses so this doesn't seem correct?

I wonder if I can challenge this?
Should I do a FOI request?

It doesn't seem right that parents don't know what position a LA is taking?

I also wonder if there are any other parents in Birmingham who would be concerned about this and who would be interested in joining up to put some pressure on the LA?

[BonfireLady]

The DfE can't stop anyone sharing their responses. This sounds like a misrepresentation of the handling of responses at the government/DfE end.

Yes, if they won't give it to you I would put in an FOI to see it. They should be happy to share it with you so it's a shame that their hand has to be forced.

[LoobiJee]

Yes, put in an FOI. And when they reject your request, go through their information request complaints process, and when you’ve exhausted that complain to the ICO.

The public interest would, without a doubt, be in favour of disclosure in this case.

You could also write to DfE asking them to confirm if they instructed local authorities to withhold their consultation responses from the council tax paying families and voters in their areas.

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

It's rather sinister for an LA responsible for schools, social care etc to want to hide their response to a government consultation about mentally vulnerable children in schools. What on earth have they said that they're ashamed of / want to hide?
In addition to an FOI, maybe there's a journalist who'd be interested in finding out why their response is so secret?

[SchoolGuidanceQ]

Following. How do you know your LA submitted a response? Can I find out if my LA did? I’m in a London borough and a co-opted school governor and I hadn’t actually thought about LAs responding…

[PaleBlueMoonlight]

Also interested to know how to find out if my LA submitted a response.

[OldCrone]

Is it this consultation?

https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Guidance_for_schools_and_colleges_gender_questioning_children_consultation_document%20.pdf

This is what they say about confidentiality.

Information provided in response to consultations, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 2018 or the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. If you want all, or any part, of a response to be treated as confidential, please explain why you consider it to be confidential. If a request for disclosure of the information you have provided is received, your explanation about why you consider it confidential will be taken into account, but no assurance can be given that confidentiality can be maintained. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Department.

So you should be able to FOI either your LA or the DfE to get the information.

[ResisterRex]

Call their bluff and FOI it. In fact I might FOI mine as well. Streisand effect...

[KellieJaysLapdog]

Could we FOI all the LAs, the way we FOI’d all those Stonewall Equality Index participants?

How many LAs are there?

[MsPuppup]

@OldCrone

Is it this consultation?

https://consult.education.gov.uk/equalities-political-impartiality-anti-bullying-team/gender-questioning-children-proposed-guidance/supporting_documents/Guidance_for_schools_and_colleges_gender_questioning_children_consultation_document%20.pdf

This is what they say about confidentiality.

Information provided in response to consultations, including personal information, may be subject to publication or disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 2018 or the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. If you want all, or any part, of a response to be treated as confidential, please explain why you consider it to be confidential. If a request for disclosure of the information you have provided is received, your explanation about why you consider it confidential will be taken into account, but no assurance can be given that confidentiality can be maintained. An automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding on the Department.

So you should be able to FOI either your LA or the DfE to get the information.

This is fantastically helpful thank you.

It seems they are not being honest in saying the Dfe has told them to keep responses confidential, and that there is no gurantee the Dfe will keep responses confidential.

I'm definitely ging to do an FOI request.

[MsPuppup]

@SchoolGuidanceQ

Following. How do you know your LA submitted a response? Can I find out if my LA did? I’m in a London borough and a co-opted school governor and I hadn’t actually thought about LAs responding…

I happened to find out from someone who works there who heard.


I think most LAs probably did a resposne as it's so high profile. You could do a FOI like I'm going to.

I'd encourage even to do this. Find out the LAs position.

[MsPuppup]

@KellieJaysLapdog

Could we FOI all the LAs, the way we FOI’d all those Stonewall Equality Index participants?

How many LAs are there?

This would be an excellent idea.

It would reveal the depth of institutional capture, strengthen the need for a public inquiry and the need for gov to make guidance statutory.

Please encourage as many peo0ple as ossible to do this.
I know TrandgenederTrne dhave been collating the resonses made oublic aleady, so we could all send them there. Or to Safe Schools? or one of the other parent groups?

[MsPuppup]

I suspect many groups in LAs submitted responses as pushback against the nasty Gov bigots, thinking it was a secretive way to support the trans agenda.

Let's do FOI and reveal them all.

Reveal now Cass is out that LAs have been taking positions not in line with Cass. They have supported what has gone on.
They were captured.

If anyone else is going to do an FOI I would suggest asking:

Has the LA made a response?
Have any teams within Children's Services made a response?
Was there a resposne from social care teams?
Was there a response from edcuational psychology teams?
Was there a response from any SEND teams? e.g Autism teams.

We want to know, and we want to see them all.

If we could do this, it cuold blow the LAs wide open.

[KellieJaysLapdog]

We need a spreadsheet to tick off LAs.

Legal Feminist organised the Stonewall FOI project, they might not have time to do another one but we could use their old plan as a template?

https://www.legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/02/04/shining-a-light-on-stonewalls-activities/

Perhaps Sex Matters would coordinate it for us? They have some overlap with Legal Feminist, IIRC?

[OldCrone]

It's worth checking on whatdotheyknow.com to see if anyone's already done an FOI. I've just had a look and someone has already made an FOI to Brighton and Hove Council.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/please_send_me_the_councils_writ

They've responded with a link on their website to their consultation response.

https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/news/2024/serious-concerns-raised-governments-draft-school-and-colleges-guidance-gender-questioning-children

[KellieJaysLapdog]

I’m up for it, once we’ve got it organised it’s just gonna be copy pasting really, shouldn’t take long.

[MrsOvertonsWindow]

An excellent thread. It's going to be pressure from parents that will bring the trans capture of institutions to an end. The Cass review has laid the way with the evidence of the extreme dangers to children . Now we have to insist that local and national government start safeguarding children instead of pandering to transactivism. Sunlight is the way to go

[MsPuppup]

I've just done mine. To Birmingham.

I'm happy to be involved and promote it on here and SM.
But I'm no good with a spreadsheet.

@KellieJaysLapdog do you have contacts with SexMatters or LF?

If not I'm happy to email them and ask if they would coordinate/ promote?

I was wondering about Safe Schools? As they are really pushing for the pubic enquiry?
Or there is a new org (I think) Parents for Education who have done some great work exposing school policy. They might be interested?

This information would really expose the need for a public enquiry.

[RedToothBrush]

Just a point about FOIs. They can be refused on the grounds of commercial interest. There's been a whole load of this due to outsourcing of local authority management in the past. It's possible they could hide behind this. If they do, then Streisanding the fuck out of it and involving relevant media would be the appropriate way to go. It's repressible that the use of public money can be unaccountable due to this loophole. No money should be hidden from scrutiny.

[ResisterRex]

How could they cite commercial interest on this one? We'd be asking for their responses to the consultation, which you'd hope they've written themselves! Though if not, there's a story eh...

[KellieJaysLapdog]

@MsPuppup

I've just done mine. To Birmingham.

I'm happy to be involved and promote it on here and SM.
But I'm no good with a spreadsheet.

@KellieJaysLapdog do you have contacts with SexMatters or LF?

If not I'm happy to email them and ask if they would coordinate/ promote?

I was wondering about Safe Schools? As they are really pushing for the pubic enquiry?
Or there is a new org (I think) Parents for Education who have done some great work exposing school policy. They might be interested?

This information would really expose the need for a public enquiry.

Sex Matters probably have the biggest ‘reach’ (ie they probably know someone in every other relevant org and have a good mailing list and press contacts to share the results with) but I really don’t mind - whoever you think is best? Lots of brilliant organisers out there.

[KellieJaysLapdog]

I’ve just spotted @2fallsfromSSA on another thread so this post is an attempt to get her attention and ask her sage advice!

[LoobiJee]

@RedToothBrush

Just a point about FOIs. They can be refused on the grounds of commercial interest. There's been a whole load of this due to outsourcing of local authority management in the past. It's possible they could hide behind this. If they do, then Streisanding the fuck out of it and involving relevant media would be the appropriate way to go. It's repressible that the use of public money can be unaccountable due to this loophole. No money should be hidden from scrutiny.

There’s no way they could cite commercial interest in this case.

[BonfireLady]

What a phenomenal thread!

Yes👏👏👏👏👏👏 💪💪💪💪💪💪

It's a win win. The content would be helpful for parents to see and the Streisand Effect on any who refuse would be tell an interesting story in itself. I suspect that the someone in media would be interested either way. Partly on the basis of the human story of the MN posters pulling together to arrange it, once it's up and running and getting responses/refusals.

Is someone on this thread coordinating it? Although Sex Matters, Transgender Trend or other orgs could, they've got lots going on ATM and the people power of the MN posters combined with the plagiarism/borrowing (😁) of a template spreadsheet sound like the way to go.

[BonfireLady]

Putting this here from X:

https://twitter.com/ClaireMcguiggan/status/1779504589810565131?t=d45YF2ThODEr0l18MviVjg&s=19

[MsGoodenough]

This is such a good idea. Is there anything we need to know about how to phrase a FOI request? Any big dos and don'ts?