Women’s rights campaigners are pushing for a “Tavistock-style” review of gender identity policies in schools.
Several groups have written to the new education secretary, Gillian Keegan, to ask for a “Cass review for schools”, claiming that some promote the idea that children are born in the wrong body. The Cass review identified failings at Tavistock’s gender identity development service in London, which is now going to close.
Campaign groups, including Sex Matters and Transgender Trend, wrote to Keegan at the end of last week expressing concern at transgender self-identification in schools.
They said: “Please commission an independent expert review of the promotion of gender ideology in schools, and its impact on gender distress and on child safeguarding.
“Parents contact us every week, distraught that a school is socially transitioning their child without adequate consideration for the child’s mental and physical health, and sometimes without even consulting them. Parents are told that if they raise concerns, they may be treated as a danger to their child and referred to social services.”
Not before time: this should go hand-in-hand with the Cass Report. Too many schools have been gulled into acceptance of gender ideology by the likes of Stonewall.
A comment from a Times reader:
Cass made clear the teachers should not affirm the transition of a child without clear instruction and advice from an appropriate and qualified medical professional. Not a lobby group or an unqualified counsellor. She identified the harm of a teacher dolling out what is a treatment while not being qualified to make a medical diagnosis.
This in a week when a teacher was struck off for refusing to affirm a child gender because she didn’t feel qualified to make that assessment and a court refused her request for a judicial review means the DFE stance is not what is happening on the ground.
I have seen a school bring in outside groups. I saw a peer group of my daughter’s friends transitioning en masse 4 friends, autistic girls, girls who had suffered trauma, vulnerable, follow up with binders, puberty blockers, hormone drugs, full surgery, but it started in the school. With name changes. And affirmation. There definitely needs to be an independent inquiry. And a stonewall trained civil servant is not the person to delegate this particular decision to.
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