Seconday School Parent, Essex

I am a journalist, an author and the single mum of six girls. Four of them are long-term fostered. They’ve been with me for five years and I have been to every meeting about them with the school.

A few years ago I stumbled into this issue when the school called to tell me one of my daughters was to have a days isolation for hate speech. They told me she’d said ‘Good Morning Joanna’ on a day Joanna was identifying as Jo (name changed to avoid id).

I said that wasn’t hate speech and refused the iso. They insisted on the iso and she had to stay home for two days before they called a meeting. I insisted everyone was there and took in copies of the law for all of them with the paragraph about ‘no self-id under 18 in the UK’. Highlighted. No isolation but I think they marked my card then. Recently they sent an email saying the whole school would be having trans lessons and so I replied and asked why. I had a call back and the deputy said it was about being kind and inclusive. I reminded her that threatening my daughter with iso for saying good morning was neither kind nor inclusive.

She sent me the lesson plan and said if I didn’t like it I could take the girls out. I said if I didn’t like it I’d get back to her and had no intention of taking my girls out of anything – and that the issue wasn’t my kids but all kids being taught ideology as fact. The lesson plan was a ridiculous trans indoctrination piece, including two Ted talks explaining how a penchant for bow ties or how you sit defines your identity more than genitalia. I emailed back asking them not to show it or at least to include balance in the form of Robert Winston or similar giving the science.

That’s when they called the meeting with SS. Fortunately, I have a good relationship with social services (who actually laughed to me about the school’s reaction to my emails) but still had to question if I was trying to ‘negatively influence’ the girls thinking with my strongly held faith in science.  (I said what influence them with facts? Quite possibly) and also, social service managers asked if I had withdrawn them from the lessons, which, the school already knew I hadn’t – if that was their concern.

SS have held a subsequent meeting at which they concluded they found no weight to the schools complaint, agreed they have no concerns about my parenting and closed the case. But that’s really not the point.

I can only see two explanations for the schools astonishing behaviour:

1. is that they’re weaponising their authority and safe-guarding powers to silence my unwelcome challenge of their curriculum by threatening my family’s very existence by making unfounded allegations  raised to SS

or

2. they are so captured by this ideology that they believe they have genuine concerns that my belief in science (a legally protected belief in the UK) makes me a risk to my children.

I’m not sure if I’m more angry or insulted but, personal feelings aside, I am extremely concerned about what this shows is clearly happening in schools now and has been, by stealth, for sometime…. It cannot be allowed to continue.