Most secondary schools are failing to tell parents if their child wants to identify as another gender, according to a major study. Around one in five no longer have single-sex changing rooms, leaving vulnerable adolescent girls forced to share their spaces with boys. Four in ten allow children to choose their own gender, the Policy Exchange research found.
Laws to keep children safe are being “seriously compromised” by the spread of gender ideology in schools, it said.
Labour MP Rosie Duffield, co-patron of Policy Exchange’s Biology Matters Project, said the report “exposes the reality” that this ideology is widespread across secondary schools.
In a foreword to the report, she added: “This Government has failed children by allowing partisan beliefs to become entrenched within the education system. Meanwhile, the Opposition has failed to pull them up on it.”
In a major investigation using freedom of information laws, Policy Exchange found at least 28 percent of secondary schools do not maintain single sex toilets.
Some 60 percent of schools allow children to take part in sports events of the opposite sex.
Most demand that other children affirm the new identity of a child who is gender-distressed, where they believe their gender is different from their biological sex.
A quarter teach that some people “may be born in the wrong body”.
The Asleep at the Wheel report found that laws to keep children safe are being “seriously compromised” over the spread of trans ideology in schools.
More than 300 secondary schools have breached safeguarding principles over the way they deal with pupils who question their gender.
Only 28 percent are reliably telling parents of their children’s gender distress, according to the report.
Conservative MP Miriam Cates MP said the report showed the “shocking extent of safeguarding failures in many British schools”.
“The protection of children from political indoctrination is foundational to democratic society, and yet this report shows that we are currently failing to protect a whole generation of children from the destructive effects of extreme gender ideology,” she added.
“For years, parents who have raised safeguarding concerns to both schools and the Department for Education have been ignored, disbelieved or labelled as ‘bigots’.
“This report is a vindication of their concerns and a resounding call to action for Government and school leaders. Biological sex is immutable and the sex-based protections that are the hallmark of all civilised societies must apply to children in our schools.”
Baroness Morris, former education secretary under Sir Tony Blair, said: “Safeguarding principles are fundamental to a responsible society – and all teachers know that. Yet this report by Policy Exchange demonstrates the incompatibility between current practice for gender distressed children and well-established and universally accepted safeguarding principles.”
