Anyone have a clue what the Jigsaw scheme teaches year 3 about transgender people?

[JandamiHash]

Had an email today from the school, my DS is in Year 3 (part copied below) about PSHE lessons- because the school are shite they’ve given us 1 day to put any objections in writing.

Ive clicked on the links they’ve provided but there’s absolutely nothing on what exactly they teach kids about transgender people.

I basically don’t want my DS being taught men can be women or the concept of gender. Does anyone know if the Jigsaw scheme teaches this?? And is it part of my right to withdraw?

As part of our PSHE lessons over the coming term, we will be covering the RHE element of our curriculum. We follow the Jigsaw scheme in school and will be covering units on ‘Relationships’ and ‘Changing Me’.
ALL LESSONS ARE PLANNED WITH AGE APPROPRIATE CONTENT
Relationships education focuses on teaching the fundamental building blocks and characteristics of positive relationships including: Families and people who care for me; Caring friendships; Respectful relationships; Online relationships; Being safe
Specific details can also be found in the RSE/PSHE Policy and the Jigsaw overviews on the school website. The statutory guidance that we must follow can be found on this link: Relationships and sex education (RSE) and health education - GOV.UK
The School has developed the curriculum in consultation with parents, children and staff, taking into account the age, needs and feelings of children. If children ask questions outside the scope of this policy, teachers will respond in an appropriate manner, so they are fully informed and do not seek answers online.

Please look at the intended coverage for your child’s year group and if you have any questions or reservations please contact the class teacher by Friday 25th April.

Parents’ Right to Withdraw
Parents do not have the right to withdraw their children from relationships or health education. Parents do however have the right to withdraw their children from the non-statutory/non-science components of sex education within RSE. Requests for withdrawal should be put in writing and addressed to the Head teacher. This needs to be done each year as it may be a specific year group’s content that you don’t wish to be shared with your child. Alternative work will be given to children who are withdrawn from sex education.

From a quick google, it appears it doesn’t.

There are previous threads about Jigsaw. You need to search specifically PHSE. As far as I remember, there's a non binary child in yr 3 and a lesson on transgender people in yr 6. Jigsaw are a bit cagey about the details, SSA have looked at them. Not all schools teach the transgender lesson, apparently. It used to be about Roberta Cowell, but I think there's an updated version about Monroe Bergdorf.

I attended my DD’s school in person when she was around this age, and was allowed to see the actual Jigsaw lesson materials. There was one about girls’ toys and boys’ toys, and the suggestion was that if a girl liked boys’ toys, for example, she may be different to being a girl. The word trans wasn’t used but that was the implication. I complained on the basis that the notion of girls and boys’ toys was sexist, and the head agreed to remove the slide.

I looked at the Roberta Cowell one. It was framed as part of ‘equalities and human rights’. I wrote a detailed email about how firstly the Wikipedia page on RC is one click away from some quite graphic surgical descriptions, and secondly I very much objected to children being taught that they should in some circumstances refer to people they knew to be male as female.

My school did not end up teaching that lesson.

Safe Schools Alliance have looked at lots of providers - a few problems with Jigsaw including they've got a man involved who wrote some massively age inappropriate SRE for schools - Warwickshire Council if I recall. It all had to be pulled after some grim porn soaked materials were revealed. Page 28 in this:

safeschoolsallianceuk.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Parents-Guide-to-external-PSHE-RSE-providers.pdf

Talk to the teacher and ask them directly. Especially ask about what they are planning to discuss in terms of ‘gender stereotypes’. A common early years lesson is to list gender stereotypes, eg girls like pink, talking, dressing up, boys like blue, moving about, don’t care about appearance etc etc . This can then be followed up with questions like ‘what if you are a girl who doesn’t like pink?’ And depending on the teacher, ‘could this mean you are actually a boy ?’ I’m not in the uk but I asked my child’s teacher about this and she admitted that they list the stereotypes. I thought this was risky territory for a class of 7/8 year olds in the current climate. Before puberty blockers and surgery for kids became fashionable I wouldn’t have worried. Now I don’t think it’s wise to allow discussion about gender stereotypes with your kids by any adult unless you are there to make sure the message that ‘these are bullshit’ and they do not have anything to do with biology or whether you are actually a girl or a boy is clearly communicated. Leave the stereotype talk for the 16+ year olds and preferably the English literature class.

OP suggest you look through old mumsnet threads, for example here is one
www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4645677-jigsaw-pshe-resources

My kid's school did the Roberta Cowell lesson, I think that's in year 6 though. What was particularly annoying about it was that they decided to deliver it as an assembly, so the children couldn't even ask any questions.

DD’s year 2 teacher enforced “no girls’ or boys’ toys, sports or subjects”. Great stuff.

Her (useless) year 3 teacher, when DD was suddenly rejected from playing football at playtime by the boys, told me it was “normal - football isn’t really a girls’ sport”. It was her daily suggestions that girls should do other things that set the division up. I was fuming.

From memory (so happy to be corrected) it doesn’t really address it other than occasionally using they as a pronoun for some characters in their social stories.

Personally I would err on the side of caution and my child would be sick that day.

I don’t understand why parents don’t have the right to withdraw their kids? Since when did that happen? I would definitely give my child a sick day that day because schools are getting more and more batshit. I recently had to complain when my then 15 year old daughter was given a book to read with a disturbing sexual assault in it.

Parents do have the right to withdraw their child from religious education. Might not be needed in Y3, but higher up the school, if ‘gender identity’ was being covered, I think a case could be made that the lesson would be dealing with a religion and therefore within the realms of what can be legitimately refused.