A profound exchange of trust takes place between a parent and their child’s school. Parents deserve to know that when they send their child to school, they will be kept safe.
Safeguarding principles are designed to facilitate this trust. Today Policy Exchange demonstrates a fundamental safeguarding blind spot when it comes to the issue of gender-distressed children at school.
Policy Exchange research reveals that only 28 per cent of secondary schools are reliably informing parents of their children’s gender distress.
Those who question whether affirmation is the right course of action for their child are deemed “unsupportive”. Four in ten secondary schools operate policies of gender-self-identification.
Despite their obligations to be politically impartial, 72 per cent of secondary schools are teaching that people have a gender identity that may differ from their biological sex – a contested belief, not a fact.
Dr Hilary Cass and her damning report into failures of the Tavistock against gender-distressed children has demonstrated the dangers of over-enthusiastic affirmative practice. While many have woken up to the dangers of gender ideology on a generation of children, it seems the school system remains “asleep at the wheel” as the title of Policy Exchange’s report reveals.
Policy Exchange has tracked how politically motivated lobbying groups, funded by large amounts of Department for Education money at the expense of the tax payer, have been hugely successful in embedding extreme ideological ideas into the classroom.
The Government has fed the idea that such practice is rare – or only happening in a small number of schools. No longer should they be able to get away with this narrative. While the Government is failing to protect children from extreme partisan beliefs, all opposition parties have let them get away with doing nothing.
The reckless experiment must end now.
Rosie Duffield has been Labour Member of Parliament for Canterbury since 2017.
