That schools should ‘teach ABC not gender identity’ is not an unreasonable expectation. Yet it seems insisting on this was enough to get one mother banned from her daughter’s primary school.
In recent years, parents across the UK have been shocked to discover what their children are being told in the classroom. They have sounded the alarm on teachers covering highly sexualised and age-inappropriate content with young pupils. In some schools, teachers are even ‘affirming’ children in their new ‘gender identities’, without the consent or knowledge of their parents.
Karina Conway started criticising teachers at Sunnyside Spencer Academy in Beeston, Nottingham when she learned they were promoting the idea that children can change gender. She was concerned that her daughter’s school was affirming children as young as nine in new transgender identities – presumably by calling them different names and using opposite-sex pronouns. She was also worried that children were being wrongly taught that transgender identity is a legally protected characteristic, and that they were being shown sexually graphic resources in relationships and sex-education (RSE) lessons.
In 2023, with her complaints unresolved, Conway staged a protest outside the school, alongside women’s rights activist Kellie-Jay Keen (aka Posie Parker). The police were called, but she left before they arrived. After this, she was ordered to stay away from the school in September 2024. Eight months later, she was told she could return – on the condition that she did not post anything negative about the school online.
The sight of parents protesting against teachers is never to be welcomed. It sends a terrible message to children that the adults with responsibility for them disagree – and, worse, that they must pick a side. However, it seems that many schools have responded to parents’ reasonable concerns about lesson content, external speakers and activist teachers by doubling down. Rather than discussing controversial topics with parents directly, they draw a veil of secrecy over what happens in the school and look to silence criticism.
Conway’s case is only the latest example of schools taking an increasingly authoritarian line against parents they consider to be troublesome. The first time many parents had an insight into the extreme things their children were being taught was during lockdown, when lessons were delivered online. Derbyshire County Council recognised that, when it came to RSE, ‘Some parents and carers may be uncomfortable with some of the subject matter’. But rather than removing content likely to cause concern, or consulting with parents, the authority advised teachers to ‘focus on less sensitive areas of RSE such as mental wellbeing, self-care, e-safety and security… while pupils are not in school’. Its guidance made clear that ‘the teaching of some more explicit RSE could be postponed [until] pupils are back in school’.
Parents argue they have a right to see the resources teachers use in RSE classes. One mother even resorted to bringing a legal case against the Information Commissioner’s Office and the School of Sexuality Education, which had delivered lessons at her daughter’s school. Yet the UK government is reluctant to listen. Earlier this year, Labour MPs voted against a Conservative amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that would have introduced a right for parents to know what is being taught in schools.
Some schools openly say that what children are taught about sex and relationships should be kept within the classroom. One secondary school in Faversham, Kent notes that the classroom should be a ‘safe space’. It spells out: ‘This means that whatever is discussed in the classroom stays in the classroom and should not be brought up at any other time.’ The aim of the ‘safe space’ is to allow children ‘to speak freely about sex and relationships’. Such policies might not be intended to exclude parents from knowing what their children are learning, but safe-space agreements may be interpreted by children as secrecy pacts. They may even conflict with a school’s safeguarding responsibilities.
Mothers like Karina Conway are in a difficult position. They might find it impossible to get an accurate picture of what their children are being taught. They will then discover there are few official avenues available to raise complaints and have their voices heard. Parents are chastised for bringing politics into the playground, but they are also forced to watch on as their own children are inculcated with all manner of beliefs and values with which they strongly disagree.
When parents do complain on social media or seek support in private WhatsApp groups, they may find they are not just banned from schools, but actually arrested, too. This is what happened to Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine last month. The couple raised complaints with their daughter’s school and shared their concerns about its governance with other parents. For this, six police officers turned up at their house and arrested them on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance. They were then held in a police cell for eight hours. More schools are now apparently asking lawyers to draw up codes of conduct for parent WhatsApp groups, to ‘protect their staff from harassment’. All of this is disastrous for parent-school relationships.
It is bad enough that schools have entrenched politics in the classroom, before an audience of children too young and ignorant to challenge what they are being taught. Now, some schools are even turning to the law to crack down on parents who raise concerns.
Playground protests are nothing to celebrate. But it is easy to see why frustrated mums and dads might see them as a last resort.
Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. She is a visiting fellow at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary.
