🧵“it’s a fast-emerging issue” says @ChildrensComm, who must have been asleep in the meeting I shared with her in Apr22, when mothers briefed her on dodgy RSE + harrowing tales of their kids being transed by schools + soc serv’s against their will. telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/1…
Specifically, in that meeting 18 months ago, @ChildrensComm was briefed on this story…
@ChildrensComm And she was shown this book, which includes arguably unlawful instructions on socially transitioning children without parental consent if necessary, plus inaccurate descriptions of the Equality Act PCs. And she was told it was ratified by Ofsted and funded by the DfE and GEO.
@ChildrensComm Perhaps being an unelected 'tsar' she thought it was above her pay grade to tell the govt they had got this catastrophically wrong? Which is why British govt shouldn't have unelected commissars diverting attention from the mistakes of elected officials.
But now the @ChildrensComm has decided to be heard chivvying the gov along without actually taking a position, despite it becoming clear the school to meds pipeline is one of the worst child safeguarding failures in generations. It's getting harder to stay on that fence isn't it!
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An online conference has been convened by the Westminster Education Forum to discuss “the next steps for RSHE” as part of the RSHE Review, brought forward by @RishiSunak
The Chair is @LordLucasCD and keynote speakers include:
- Paula Penny, Head of RSHE and Citizenship Policy Unit, DfE
- Dr Polly Haste, Subject Lead for PSHE, RSHE and Citizenship, Ofsted
- Jenny Barksfield, Dep Chief Exec Officer and Principal Subject Specialist, PSHE Association
@LordLucasCD So, it seems that in this element of the Review, the same people, roles and organisations who gave us the unfolding disaster of the 2019 RSE Guidance will be marking their own homework.
🧵
The ruling of my First Tier Tribunal appeal against the ICO decision to keep lesson resources and teachers’ names secret under the FOIA, has been delivered.
Judge Sophie Buckley ruled that the commercial interest of the external RSE provider to keep their resources secret, outweighs the public interest to know what was taught to the children.
She also ruled that the privacy interests of the visiting teachers outweighed the public interest to know who was teaching the children.
The update explains that the third party RSE provider that withheld their resources, School of Sexuality Education (SoSE), has joined the Tribunal as a Second Respondent, which gives them the opportunity to provide witness statements.
These statements continue to claim that their commercial interest in keeping their resources secret should be prioritised over parents’ public interest to have access to what is taught to their children. This contradicts the DfE’s latest guidance letter to schools, of 31st March:
I’ve just listened in detail to this, which included discussion of my ICO Tribunal Appeal case. Amazingly, @adamfleming gave Sophie Whitehead of School of Sexuality Education (SSE) (which is an interested party in the Tribunal) the chance to broadcast inaccurate and negative...
...comments about me (an identifiable person), without expressing any caution or giving me a right to reply - even when Sophie Whitehead suggested I was acting in “bad faith”.
Oh what a mess! So this is what happens when the Govt instructs schools to “take positive action to build a culture” where “gender stereotypes” are “not tolerated”. This flawed and dangerous concept is the cause of destructive over-pathologising of boys. thetimes.co.uk/article/worksh…
The utopian idea goes: gender stereotypes are a social construct, therefore they should be destroyed, to permit the full spectrum of gender identity. Hence toxic masculinity is only ever countered with queer intersectional feminism and LGBTQIA+ nonsense…
…which simply attacks its own prejudiced pastiche of manhood, which is far from the truth of our boys and men. They do not ask themselves, what if social constructs are natural manifestations of undying reality of biological sex differences? Because they don’t believe in…
I'd like to address a few points in the Minister's reply. Firstly, there should be no need to remind schools about sharing RSE materials fully - they are clearly instructed in the RSE guidance to do so. We should be seeing vigorous enforcement at this stage.
Likewise, there should be no need to “clarify how materials can be shared". V obviously, schools should present parents with a copy - or direct us to a published copy - of any resource we want to scrutinise. Any other arrangement is unacceptable in a democracy + for safeguarding.