School governors told to ‘dismiss’ grooming gangs concerns

[NoNever]

Article in the Telegraph.

Quote “ School governors have been encouraged to dismiss concerns about grooming gangs as “disinformation”, The Telegraph can disclose.
Thousands of governors undergoing safeguarding training this year were presented with a scenario involving rumours of “men belonging to a particular religion” committing “violent crimes against women”.
They were asked to identify the scenario as an “online safety risk” because children were spreading “disinformation”.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/11/04/school-governors-told-to-dismiss-grooming-gangs-concerns/

This is infuriating. For decades girls were told to shut up about grooming gangs and this is the training school governors are being provided in 2025.

The work with grooming gang victims has been outsourced to a charity, and they seem to have decided that some non grooming gang victims of abuse can be included. That is broadening the scope and is likely going to water down the investigation. Jess Philips is customarily evasive, and as you say she has a conflict of interest. I think she should resign from it or be replaced.

Apologies for BBC source which I don’t consider particularly reliable

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c201x4d7z5no

As far as I know there are already non grooming gang victims on the panel. So not just a question, otherwise why are they there?

Yes, I agree. I think this thread is being derailed by agenda pushing from several posters.

Being appalled at school governors being trained to immediately dismiss rumours of grooming gangs as false/disinformation doesn’t make me a racist.

The training manual that says to label claims of their existence as false disinformation.

I've already said that I think the training was inappropriate. The potential for misinterpretation/misrepresentation clearly wasn't thought through, and I understand that it has now been taken down. However, it simply isn't factually correct to say that governors were being trained that they "should take any rumours of groups of men from a specific religion committing acts of violence against girls as false/disinformation". That might be the message that the Telegraph wanted its readers to take away, but it patently isn't the truth.

I'm just getting the impression of a similar kind of malaise nowadays in various different circumstances. A sort of "omnicauseitis", where if you suggest dealing with a specific problem, straight away it's " but what about
this, what about that?" The same way that certain kinds of "feminism" now seems to mean campaigning for every minority group, not just women, so the focus is lost.
It's like somebody who never cleans their house because if they started by cleaning, say, the kitchen, it would be "pretending the rest of the house isn't dirty".

No it doesn't.

Agree.

Well, yes, to some extent, you're right. Perhaps I do want to control the way the issue is talked about, not because I want to divert attention away from the issue or avoid dealing with the facts, but because I'm sick of the racist rhetoric about this.

And yes, of course we need to talk about issues like this, and sweeping them under the carpet in order to avoid talking about it has obviously had horrific consequences. But we don't have to go to the other extreme in which all Muslim men (and other men who look like they might be Muslim) are demonised. And yes, this is what is happening, sadly.

Could you please elaborate why you think the training was “inappropriate” if you don’t think it was pushing the narrative that concerns about grooming gangs are “disinformation”?

A lot of the reason why it’s flourishing is the insistence that people can’t freely discuss it, to a greater or lesser extent. It would be uncharitable to say it was due to people like you, so I’ll refrain from blaming anyone.

I’m interested if you would act the same if the races were reversed?

And you won’t control how the issue is talked about, because people aren’t accountable to you.

Yes, I believe I would act the same if the races were reversed, because I see this first and foremost as a crime against women and girls rather than against white girls in particular. That's not to say that I'm denying the racial aspect at all, as the perpetrators very clearly used race to dehumanise their victims and the race of the perpetrators appears to have somehow made the authorities too frightened to address the issue. However, I believe that those evil men would have abused girls of any ethnicity who they felt that they could target.

Others might find it hard to understand my perspective, but I actually think that the failure of the authorities to take action in these cases is a symptom of institutionalised racism in which Pakistani perpetrators were treated differently from white perpetrators. If you are not racist, then you will not feel any fear or hesitation in holding black or brown people accountable for crimes that they may have committed, because you will perceive those people as criminal individuals (albeit, in this case, part of a gang) and not as representative of a whole ethnic group. We should absolutely be able to discuss these horrific crimes openly and honestly, and without treading on eggshells, but we should be able to do so without generalising about an entire subcontinent of people.

Of course, I'm well aware of that. But that doesn't mean I can't express my thoughts on the matter.

Some people, like you, are able to engage in a civilised conversation about the issues. I appreciate that. Others just try to shut the conversation down by trying to twist what I've said into something completely different. That is when I start to wonder if they have a different agenda.

I think it was clumsily designed in a way that wasn't intended but had the potential for misinterpretation (and also deliberate misrepresentation).

I was not familiar with the Governor Hub training site as the school where I'm a Governor doesn't use it, but I had a look at their website and read the statement that they had put out in response to the telegraph article.

The scenario that was provided in the example was not given in the context of training governors on how to respond to allegations of sexual abuse or grooming or exploitation etc, which was covered in a completely separate section or perhaps in a different training session altogether. The focus of that section certainly didn't have anything to do with how schools or governors should respond to such concerns.

What it was intended to do was to help illustrate the difference between misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories, and participants were supposed to identify which of those three categories applied to a series of different scenarios. With regard to the question that has been scrutinised, the scenario stated that the teacher "knew" the rumours to be false but was aware that the children were circulating them to help keep each other safe. Participants were supposed to select "misinformation" because the information was known to be false but was not being circulated for malicious reasons.

The issue that I have with the choice of scenario is that I can't think of a situation in which a teacher could confidently know that a rumour is without foundation without this being properly investigated, and so I consider the premise of the question to be flawed. However, I don't think it's at all accurate to suggest that governors were being taught to treat alleged abuse by particular groups as disinformation, as that very clearly wasn't the case.

I’ve been called a racist before on here just for wanting to talk about this issue in isolation because it is the specific topic under discussion. I repeat that I don’t think this abuse is the only abuse that matters or that sexual assaults committed by white men are less important. I’ve both been raped by a white man and involved in a scary racist incident because the man I was dating was Asian. Unless you have good reason to think someone is a racist, I would maybe refrain from speculating about it, rather than jumping to that conclusion just because people are frustrated or disagree. It’s not helpful and it is a large part of why right wing parties are gaining ground.

You appear to completely accept their explanation and think they suggested this scenario in good faith. That’s up to you. However, I take particular issue with this part of their statement:

We recognise that this question was not sufficiently clear. It should have made clear that senior leaders at the school knew the video was false because of their work with multi-agency safeguarding partners (including the police).

those “multi-agency safeguarding partners (including the police)” in many cases ignored and silenced victims, and those advocating for them, and in some cases participated in their abuse. So not exactly the arbiters of whether a rumour is “false” or not, and I acknowledge you felt that it was a false premise for the question to say they knew that it wasn’t true without an investigation.

Always the case when one of our resident sealions joins the thread.

I wouldn't call anyone a racist simply because they disagree. But if I think they're pushing a racist agenda, I will say so.

And I'm afraid I don't agree that people calling out racism is what's driving the support for Reform - I think it is being driven by a very real increase in actual racism, which I have never seen to be so bad. And yes, I'm probably more sensitive to it than most because I have had to witness the impact on my DH of being repeatedly being abused and threatened with terms like "p*ki paedo" simply because he happens to have brown skin. It doesn't make the slightest difference that he isn't Pakistani, he isn't Muslim and he most definitely isn't a paedophile, they just don't like his skin colour. These people don't give a shit about the safety of women and girls, they're just using it as a vehicle to express their hate.

I have no reason to believe that the scenario wasn't put forward in good faith, but I obviously can't be sure of that. I do agree with you about that bit of the statement.

It’s not “people calling out racism”. I’m saying that you’re attributing racism where it doesn’t exist. And yes the alienation is driving the success of parties like Reform.

I’m not denying that actual racism is on the increase.

What makes you think I'm attributing it where it doesn't exist?

My own view is that a lot of people deny it where it is very clearly in evidence.

Because as I said, you’re insinuating “motives” on this thread just because you were offended that a poster, closer to the grooming gangs issue than you are, which is worthy of some acknowledgment of this, said you want to protect rapists (I don’t agree with this conclusion) because you’re whatabouting (I agree with this accusation) She’s jumped to conclusions, just like you have.