Education Secretary: ‘Teachers should not hide kids’ gender-confusion from parents’

Schools should not affirm a child’s ‘gender identity’ behind their parents’ backs, the Education Secretary has said.

In an interview with Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts, Gillian Keegan said the Government’s upcoming transgender guidance for schools will recommend that schools inform parents if their child claims to be the opposite sex.

Keegan was responding to a secondary school teacher’s question about what action would be taken over the “hundreds of schools” which withhold such information from parents.

Common sense

The teacher explained that their own senior leadership told them that “if a girl tells me she thinks she’s a boy, I should affirm immediately and use a new name and pronouns, but keep the whole thing a secret from her parents”.

But Keegan said: “I don’t agree with that. I think transparency is really important. I think the parents’ role is really important. Parents, first and foremost, are the main advocates for their children. They’re the people who are the closest to their children”.

She said “it just seems so obvious” that “parents definitely should be informed” if their child identifies as the opposite sex at school.

The Education Secretary said the transgender guidance for schools is expected to be published for the consultation before the summer term, and encouraged everyone including Mumsnet users to contribute their views to the “sensitive” issue.

Civitas

Last month, a top think-tank revealed that one in ten teenagers aged 16 to 18 want to ‘change their gender’ or have already done so.

A report from Civitas, based on research conducted by Deltapoll, analysed responses from over 1,000 16 to 18-year-olds and parents of 12 to 16-year-olds about the teaching of LGBT ideology in schools across England.

It found that two thirds of the teenagers (67 per cent) had been told that biological sex is “assigned at birth”, while one in three (32 per cent) were informed that a “woman can have a penis”.