A mother has been banned from her daughter’s primary school playground after complaining about transgender identity lessons. She raised concerns about the school teaching 11 year-old children that “transgender identity” is a protected characteristic. The Telegraph has the story.
Karina Conway, 42, was ordered to stay away from the playground before being told eight months later she could come back if she agreed not to post anything negative about the school online. …
She criticised teachers at Sunnyside Spencer Academy in Beeston, Nottingham, for affirming the trans identities of children as young as nine.
Ms Conway claims that after staging a protest in 2023 outside the school alongside Kellie-Jay Keen, a prominent women’s rights activist, teachers called the police, but she had left by the time they arrived.
She was banned from the school a few months later, in September 2024, for a period of four months after being accused of using nasty language towards a member of staff, “smirking” at a teacher and for making “vexatious” complaints.
She first raised a complaint after learning that the school was teaching students that a person’s transgender identity was a protected characteristic.
The Equality Act 2010 states that a person must not be discriminated against because of “gender reassignment”, not specifically identity.
In the Act, gender reassignment means “proposing to undergo, undergoing or having undergone a process to reassign your sex”.
The school was also showing students sex education material that Ms Conway felt was too graphic. …
She said: “Schools are meant to teach in a non-partisan way and surely a mum pointing out that two plus two is four not five is a good thing. … This trust is silencing the voices of parents who know sex is real and when it matters, it really matters.”
Ms Conway said she had only wanted the school to do the right thing and “teach the truth”.
She said the school had actually accepted there were some problems with the way they were interpreting trans identity.
She said: “Before my ban the trust wrote to me and admitted ‘there were some factual errors in the interpretation of protected characteristics’, in fact they thank me for bringing it to their attention but then go on to tell me if I continue to talk to them about it, it will be through trust solicitors.
“I cannot understand why they think they can attempt to intimidate parents in this way.”
In July 2023, before she was banned, an Ofsted inspector visited the school and Ms Conway took the opportunity to speak with them and raise her concerns.
The inspector advised her to make a complaint but nothing happened.
Ms Conway then decided to submit a subject access request to Ofsted asking for all correspondence pertaining to her family between itself, the school and Spencer Academies Trust, which runs the school.
The document shows that in a “pre-inspection” call with the head teacher the school said Ms Conway was a “parent expressing [she] does not want her child to be exposed to gender identity and has transphobic views”.
Worth reading in full.
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