Parents, keep your eyes on your children’s school’s gender policies.
Many parents, teachers and other people concerned for the welfare of children, may have been somewhat encouraged by the previous Government’s attempt to protect children and teachers from gender ideologues targeting schools. The DfE’s non-statutory draft guidance on “Gender Questioning Children” offers some sensible advice such as:
- Primary school children should not change their pronouns;
- Secondary schools do not have to use a child’s preferred pronoun;
- Teachers should be permitted to refer to ‘boys’ and ‘girls’;
- Children and staff shouldn’t be sanctioned for using the ‘wrong’ pronouns.
Unfortunately for parents and children, however, this is non-statutory guidance; it isn’t legally binding. The UK’s biggest teaching union, the NEU, was quick to advise schools that they could ignore the non-statutory guidance and continue to implement their own policies. This means that, despite the previous Government’s sensible advice to schools, many schools continue to allow children and young people to ‘change their pronouns’ and present themselves as the opposite sex without consulting parents.
GB news reported that ‘One NEU representative wrote on social media that informing parents could put pupils “in danger”. He said: “I respect my students and will use their preferred pronouns always.”’ Parents will be chilled to hear this union rep and teacher portray them as potential persecutors of their children, simply because they may not acquiesce to a child’s identity demands — no matter how unreasonable and problematic they may be. The deep suspicion of the family which this evinces should be deeply troubling to any parent.
A survey by ‘Teacher Tapp’ found that 57% of teachers had not read the new non-statutory guidance and, of those that read it, most considered it to be unhelpful and ‘divisive.’ This raises real and pressing questions about whether or not teachers will be prepared to implement guidance to which they appear to be ideologically opposed. Parents with children returning to school this September will be worried that their children may very well be taught by someone who is either themselves committed to gender ideology, or who is prepared to go along with it in the interests of a quiet life.
Kier Starmer’s Labour Government has neither committed to the new gender guidance, nor indicated that they will scrap it. Minister for Women and Equalities, Bridget Philipson, who is also the Secretary of State for Education, noted that there are good things in the guidance but that it had “drifted far too much into partisan and unnecessary language’. So, we can expect a review and some, perhaps significant, changes to be made. Anyone aware of the Labour leadership’s rather confused position on this issue, may find this a disturbing prospect.
Where does this leave parents? At the moment schools can put in place their own gender guidance and so parents need to be on high alert to keep a close eye on what their children’s schools are teaching about gender. We need to write to our MPs and our children’s schools encouraging them to protect children from harmful ideologies which can have disastrous and life-long consequences for individuals. We also need to make it clear to anyone who will listen that the political Left’s suspicion of the family, and attempted undermining of the rights of parents to make important decisions in the best interests of their children, presents perhaps the most menacing threat to school-age children that this country has ever seen.
ParentPower Team
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