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https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/17/schools-are-waging-war-on-parents-free-speech/

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.

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’.

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.