by Caroline ffiske, The Daily Sceptic
In 2019 when the Conservative government introduced mandatory ‘Relationship, Sex, and Health Education’ Guidance in schools, it required schools to teach pupils about ‘gender identity’ – an ideological concept with no science behind it.
Even before the guidance went live, parents were raising concerns with MPs and government and forming grassroots groups to combat this promotion of harmful pseudoscience to school children.
Their concerns were justified. In the years to follow, Stonewall produced material for primary schools which taught children that “everyone has a gender identity”. Swindon Council’s school resources contained the ‘Ggenderbread Person’ explaining to children that gender identity is their sense of “women-ness and man-ness”. Collins, an established schools’ publisher, updated textbooks to teach children that “trans women are women and trans men are men”. One-man-bands formed to flog pseudoscience to school children via online worksheets, paid for by the taxpayer.
No wonder so many children became confused. The most vulnerable and impressionable queued to be seen at NHS Gender Clinics in their thousands. Children who accessed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones will have been irreversibly damaged.
Untold hours of campaigning against this reckless harm reached its culmination when in 2024 the Conservative government published, and took to consultation, new draft guidance which was clear that the concept of gender identity should not be taught to school children.
But then we had the July 2024 election. Progress plateaued. New Labour Ministers explained that they were looking at consultation responses and re-engaging stakeholders.
So when the Labour Government finally did publish its own revised RSHE guidance in July of this year it should have been a big moment. The relative lack of public response has therefore seemed mystifying. Parliament was heading into recess. Gender critical campaigners were focused on maintaining the momentum of the For Women Scotland Supreme Court judgment and the need to embed its implications for women’s rights across organisations. The promotion of gender ideology to school children seemed to have moved into ‘nobody’s paying too much attention’ territory.
Which will suit the gender activists. Because when the new guidance goes live in September 2026 for the next school year, children will continue to learn in RSHE lessons that some men claim they are women and should be treated with respect and dignity for doing so.