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A new paper from Policy Exchange, published today, should be a wake-up call to schools that have until now blithely endorsed an activist-led ideology on sex and gender. The paper exposes not only the extent of the ideological capture, but the deleterious impact on safeguarding and the rights of parents. The headline findings are stark. Only 28% of secondary schools surveyed are “reliably informing” parents as soon as a child discloses feelings of gender distress.

Let’s just stop there for a moment. Most schools I know wouldn’t let a child change a GCSE option without the agreement of parents. But when children set out on the path to possibly changing gender, many schools might not even inform those parents. A key principle underpinning safeguarding — that we don’t keep secrets from those who need to know — is abandoned at a stroke.

Meanwhile we learn that four in ten secondary schools have adopted policies of gender self-identification. Such wanton disregard of biological reality has led to experimental — and possibly illegal — practices developing. For example, despite very clear direction from the School Premises England Regulations (2012) — “Separate toilet facilities for boys and girls aged 8 years or over must be provided” — Policy Exchange found that at least 28% of secondary schools were not maintaining single sex toilets. Astonishingly, 19% did not maintain single-sex changing rooms for their pupils.

The distressing findings continue. Last week, World Athletics defended the integrity of elite women’s sports. Transgender athletes who have been through male puberty are now excluded from female World Rankings competition. Sadly, schoolgirls are not getting the same protections. Policy Exchange discovered that 60% of secondary schools allow children to participate in sports of the opposite sex.

Worrying issues were identified in the curriculum. Most schools now teach that people have a gender identity that may be different from their biological sex, and some tell their pupils that people, including children, can be “born in the wrong body”. Meanwhile, 30% deliver the message that a man who self-identifies as a woman should be treated as a woman in all circumstances.

These pseudoscientific beliefs are not only nonsense, they are unnecessary. I have no need for a gender identity, and I am transsexual. As parents we worry what our children might read on social media, but this is happening in their schools.

Reading the report as a teacher, the findings are shocking but maybe not surprising. Schools have indeed been “asleep at the wheel” — as the title of the paper suggests. They may have felt that they were on the back foot, but many went to the wrong people for advice. Third party organisations such as Stonewall and Gendered Intelligence (notorious for its trans youth guidance that insisted “a woman is still a woman, even if she enjoys getting blow jobs”) were never going to offer impartial information. Instead, they pushed ideology into classrooms.

Even Ofsted has been compromised.  The paper pointed out that the inspectorate joined the Stonewall Diversity Champions programme and entered the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. In 2019, Chief Inspector Amanda Spielman spoke at Stonewall’s first Children and Young People Conference.

Children suffer. Some may now believe that they have been born in the wrong body and yearn for cross-sex hormones and sex-change surgeries. At the same time, other children are expected to play along. More than two thirds of secondary schools require other children to ignore the evidence of their own eyes and affirm a gender-distressed child’s new identity.

The message is simple but, clearly, far too many need to be reminded. Sex matters, and safeguarding must never be compromised.

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