Safe School Alliance re DoE meeting re draft guidance for schools

[IwantToRetire]

This month SSA were invited to a meeting with the Department for Education in London to discuss their draft guidance for schools on gender questioning children and the LGBT content in the draft RSHE guidance.

The previous government’s consultation on gender questioning children closed in March 2024, and the consultation on revised relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) statutory guidance closed in July 2024. This month’s meeting was set up by the Department for Education as part of the work they are now doing to analyse the consultation responses, consider the evidence and “talk to stakeholders to understand how best to ensure children’s wellbeing so they will thrive at school.”

Our spokeswoman Tracy Shaw attended a 90-minute roundtable with representatives from other organisations. Each contributor was given a limited time to make their points individually. However we have been assured that the key outputs from this meeting will be summarised and shared with ministers.

Text of Tracy Shaw’s submission on behalf of Safe Schools Alliance:
at https://safeschoolsallianceuk.net/2024/12/17/department-for-education-meeting/

Wow. SSA pulling no punches there! 👏

Interestingly I had a similar response from the DfE about recent specifications for enclosing toilet cubicles in secondary schools.

If any child is medically vulnerable (such as those who have seizures, or hypos, or collapse through breathing or heart problems), they will now not be noticed if they have collapsed on the floor inside the cubicle from the outside. In fact the words ‘safety’ and ‘safe’ mentioned throughout DfE documents are not mentioned at all in the toilet design section. The gap between the floor and the toilet door is now set at 0.5cm for all new and refurbished secondary schools. However, the word ‘privacy’ is mentioned a lot. This is their reason for the change.

When I asked the DfE how is this safe the answers are that:
• It’s ultimately the governors’ responsibility
• Schools should know their cohort and provide for them accordingly
• Children should be supervised

To take one disability as an example: There will be roughly 9-12 children with epilepsy in an average sized secondary school (nearly 1% of the population). There will be others that have seizures for the first time at school - maybe one offs. For any first time seizure you should call an ambulance immediately. If you are aware a child has seizures and the seizure lasts over 5 minutes you should call an ambulance. The teenage years are a common time for seizures to start.

The reason so many people collapse in a toilet cubicle is because that’s where people head to when they feel nauseous or ill. But how much longer before pupils are found - because privacy is more important than having a safety gap at the bottom of the door?

There is no school that can say for definite that all pupils and all future pupils will not need medical assistance from collapsing. But safety has literally been replaced with privacy. There surely can not have been any impact assessment on children with invisible disabilities nor for those previously healthy children having a medical emergency.

Enclosing toilet cubicles is doing the opposite of safeguarding. It is making schools more dangerous for any pupil at their most critically vulnerable. And it’s the school’s and governors’ fault when it goes wrong.

When I asked the DfE how is this safe the answers are that:
• It’s ultimately the governors’ responsibility
• Schools should know their cohort and provide for them accordingly
• Children should be supervised

These answers you received are thoroughly unserious and unsatisfactory. Thank you for raising the issue with DfE and for keeping us aware of the safeguarding issues related to toilet design.

That is the DfE’s line on just about bloody everything that matters. They push responsibility for anything difficult or unpleasant down to schools. No wonder nobody wants to be a headteacher.

And yes, brilliant submission from SSA.

That's a damning submission from SSA. I particularly appreciate them addressing this elephant in the room that nobody dares to mention. That

"safer recruitment must be properly understood and embedded, not only amongst those working directly with children in any capacity but also amongst those working on policy, materials, or legislation that affects children. We have seen too many incidents of people working in leadership roles in LGBT+ organisations have been found to be predatory. The application of Safer Recruitment would have ensured these people were not allowed access to children, or to write materials for schools or to influence policy".

Really glad Tracy was there but depressing that all the paid employees of DFe were so clueless about safeguarding law, practice and what's already in kcsie. Really? None of them had done safeguarding training? Why in hell are they qualified to contribute to policy making in this area then? Because safeguarding should be central to children's wellbeing in schools.

As far as I'm aware SSA are all unpaid volunteers with other paid jobs they have to juggle. A huge thank you to them for doing it but DFe need to recruit some actual competent adults ffs. As usual underpaid, overworked women desperately trying to keep children safe against a tide of idiots or bad actors

I'd be interested to hear from Tracy whether she has any confidence that Dfe will a) understand the consultation responses by women who have done safeguarding training and experience of safeguarding practice (I don't have huge confidence tbh) and b) will not be ideologically captured and under pressure to lose or dismiss responses

I spent bloody ages on mine and it referenced kcsie extensively. You'd think they'd have anticipated Tracy's question about safeguarding training but no.

I've pointed out to my school Several times that outside groups coming in have not been through safer recruitment and sometimes don't even have a basic DBS check (it turns out).

They are also strangers to the children. When the NSPCC presenter came in to talk to the primary children about the talk PANTS campaign my DD said 'I don't want to talk to a stranger about my pants' which I thought was a reasonable boundary to be honest but she wasn't given any choice. There's really no reason the trusted, known, class teachers can't discuss this (in fact they already had). Why did they need someone to come in? I never found out if school funds had been used.

The positive take on this is that the DfE are openly listening to groups focussed on safeguarding children rather than just the trans lobby. As with the impact of Cass, it will make it much harder to dismiss safeguarding when it's been recorded that they were explicitly warned about the consequences of unhinged trans ideology on children.

Yes, it is a positive overall. We have receipts. Very glad SSA had a seat at the table. Shame they're not actually in charge

Well done SSA and how revealing that only one person had had the training. Excellent and timely analogy with Justin Welby which hopefully will have made them think.

On the topic of the DfE being clueless.

I ran a major [as in about 30 million £ of funding over 3 years] project that was being overseen by the DfE.

In our first year, at a quarterly meeting, the very very senior person at the DfE asked why the number of people starting and getting trained had gone down in August.

We explained that it was the summer holidays and people don't tend to start courses, or run them, over the summer.

The very very senior person said 'yes, teachers have time off. Everyone else just carries on'.

We all looked at each other and I said 'No, parents take holidays to look after their children, teaching staff take the same time off as the schools because they are all in the industry and many have kids and partners who also teach, and no courses start and very few if any courses run in summer around the school holidays'.

He didn't believe a word of it. He had no concept that anyone other than teachers had the summer off. He didn't want to see it happen again. I had to go through the issues with Christmas and Easter as well with them as to the impact on wider society of school term times and how it affects everyone. Especially the people who might sign up to a new skills course or indeed the people that would run it.

That's a fabulous point.

I am reminded of when Asda had an LGBTQ event and outsourced the whole thing to a third party and didn't vet the content.

Only for the third party to have recommendations
/links to further reading which was highly questionable and embarrassing for Asda.

This incident really helped me demonstrate the problem to DH about not trusting third party stuff because of the lack of proper safeguarding and how it is something massively overlooked by organisations.

There is this automatic assumption that if something is outwardly politically correct it doesn't need to be checked and the commissioning organisation doesn't have responsibility for oversight. Which of course isn't true.

The trouble with outsourcing is it's seen as a cheap and labour free way to cover a subject and people are too damn lazy to put the necessary effort in to double check the contents. And that has come back to haunt organisations and businesses.

It's a hole in safeguarding so by definition you would expect it to attract people looking to bypass and get around safeguarding and that's exactly what has happened.

Just to add, the very very senior man in question was wearing a Rainbow Lanyard.

“A laaanyaard?”*

Well I’ll go to the foot of our stairs, never in a million years would I have expected that! 🙂

*I am offering up my best Dame Edith Evans here.

What a div.

Go SSA!

It is a positive sign of more transparency at the DfE. I recall the early meetings / discussions with GC organisations had to happen in secret so great was the trans capture in the DfE. Who are of course responsible for opening the floodgates and funding Mermaids, Stonewall, Gendered Intelligence and all the other transactivist lobby groups seeking to influence children and promoting them to schools as "the experts" 🙄. I often wonder, given the DfE's role in selling these groups to schools, whether the thousands of detransitioners of the future will be able to make a case against them? Or whether they'll just go for the schools who failed to safeguard children from the activist teachers?

Sorry - that's a bit of a derail from the positive news that SSA are finally being heard - that's if the DfE have their listening ears on .

Thank you for this thread. It is a very positive sign that we were invited and we were pleased to get our position on record. KCSIE is being reviewed next year and same made the point that any guidance has to work with KCSIE. The most alarming thing is that they started off by saying safeguarding wasn't the purpose of the meeting but they were soon put right in that.

We are not pulling our punches, safeguarding is in crisis and gender has been a Trojan horse which has allowed SG frameworks to be undermined.

"safeguarding is in crisis and gender has been a Trojan horse which has allowed SG frameworks to be undermined"

That's such an important point. Telling children that there can be no boundaries from the opposite sex when undressing. Allowing adult men to wedge themselves into changing rooms where girls undress and telling them it's a hate crime if they object.The emotional abuse of so many vulnerable children by telling them their bodies can be wrong but a sex change is the solution. The physical risks of single sex sports wedging men and boys onto teams for girls. Along with a shed load of porn soaked, adult material from drag queens, groups promoting queer theory and "sex positivity' to children instead of responsible, age appropriate SRE materials.
The list is endless and the DfE has abandoned their responsibilities to prioritise safeguarding children in favour of funding a dubious assortment of queer theory, porn soaked organisations, so many with significant safeguarding fails that never get addressed.
Unbelievable.

Echoing others' praise for you SSA, thank you again.

It's positive that you've been heard. I note that Catherine McKinnell, the schools minister follows you. I feel some letters coming on, specifically around the safeguarding training aspect of those at the dfe.

Still a long way to go.

(Ps Anyone on Twitter can help boost the sports casting by tagging McKinnell and Phillipson in.)

This really is good. Don't think I've seen words and work of this quality on this topic in such a long time. This is - has always been - safeguarding issue. It's not some navel gazing, dancing on the head of a pin, is it /isn't it in/direct discrimination nonsense.

It's really shocking that DfE doesn't gives its staff, safeguarding training. Explains a lot.

The submission was very effective, I thought, didn't pull any punches. The remark about "No child should be treated as if they are the opposite sex in schools" rings particularly true to me.
I work (or worked) in Nottingham College of Further Education and many children there are being treated as though they are the opposite sex. When I was informed that a particular 16 year old girl (with ASD) was to be treated as a boy and that not only was this decided without consulting her parents but that this was actually to be kept secret from them, I responded by making a Safeguarding referral. They ignored it. And this led to a series of events which resulted in me being fired.
Colleges are not Schools, the children there are mainly 16-18 and so subject to some different rules, but it's still wrong (and, notably, against Guidance, some of it statutory) to do that. It is not, however, uncommon. The college still does this.

Bloody Hell, have you tried an employment tribunal?