Written by Caroline ffiske. Published 17 November 2021.

This week, as part of 'anti-bullying week', the Department of Education announced that a new round of funding, worth over £1 million, had been handed to five organisations to help schools and colleges tackle bullying. 

Of course the funding is not really to tackle bullying - it's to promote ideology. The funding will be used to 'promote diversity in children and young people'. 'The latest funding boost will go towards projects and programmes that tackle bullying focused on protected characteristics including LGBT+, special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and victims of hate-related bullying'. 

Whose activities and ideologies has the Department of Education chosen to promote via this latest round of taxpayer funding? One organisation caught my eye. Equaliteach...

Thanks to the DofE, Equaliteach's reach has now been extended 'to at least 80 schools per year'.

So who is this outfit? Oh, just a group whose output, Minister for Women and Equalities, Liz Truss, publicly disowned last year. Equaliteach had produced a document 'Free to Be' whose contents I documented here. As soon as she became aware of the material, Liz Truss, disowned it. She said 'This document was not approved by government. It does not reflect government policy. The GEO logo should not be on it and I have asked for it to be removed'.

Via 'Free to Be' Equaliteach promoted gender ideology to school kids and challenged ‘cis-normativity’. It misrepresented the law and smeared reputable organisations. It suggested schools can hide personal information about primary age children from their own parents. But the Department of Education signs them up again?

Equaliteach introduced primary school children to bodily discomfort and disassociation via the concept of 'gender identity': ‘someone’s innate psychological understanding of themselves as either a man, woman or another identity beyond the man-woman binary [which] may or may not align with their biological sex’.

Equaliteach taught primary school children about confusing new pronouns: ‘Some people are more comfortable using gender-neutral pronouns such as they/their or ze/zir.’

Tackling the issue of whether parents might object to this teaching, Equaliteach said ‘It is also worth remembering, however, that the need for this work is written into law and that however much some parents and carers may object, this work is both a moral and legal duty’. Incorrect and disingenuous. Schools do not have a legal duty to teach kids about cisnormativity, ze/zir, and inner gender identity.

Equaliteach blithely told primary schools that confused young boys should be allowed into girls' changing rooms: ‘transgender young people should have access to the changing room that corresponds to their gender identity’. 

According to Equaliteach, teachers should keep secrets from parents. If a child discloses their gender identity, Free to Be said: ‘There is no duty to inform the parents/carers and that the duty of care is to the young person and it is their choice when or whether to come out to their parents/carers’. ‘If the child is not out at home, care must be taken to ensure that interactions with parents/carers and documents sent home do not use the child’s preferred name.’ This alone is a safeguarding red flag. But it gets worse. Free to Be also suggested that if a child discloses information about his or her sexuality or gender identity, the listener does not need to disclose this to other adults within the school. Just a secret... between an adult and child - in a school setting...

But the most disgraceful part of Equaliteach's output was its smearing of groups established to protect the rights of women and children and who have argued for caution in the promotion of gender identity to our children. Within a red box and with a prominent red ‘Beware!’ sign, Equaliteach said ‘sometimes anti-LGBT+ groups create resources with the aim of undermining rights for LGBT+ people. Such a resource has been created by a group known as ‘Transgender Trend' . . . It is advised to ignore any resources or other communications from this group’. Under the same Beware! sign: ‘The organisations Women’s Place UK and Fair Play for Women have also issued guidance which is inaccurate and confusing about toilet provision in schools.’

Disgraceful and slanderous.

Did Equaliteach learn anything? No - it still makes this material available to schools free-to-download - still slurring Transgender Trend, Women's Place UK, and Fair Play for Women. (Now slightly amended as per screenshot above - original here!) 

An organisation's output is disowned by the Minister for Equalities and Women, but it's back! An organisation slurs reputable organisations, but it's back! An organisation produces material containing safeguarding red flags, but it's back! An organisation produces material encouraging bodily disassociation and dysphoria in young people, but it's back! This material could result in the most vulnerable few taking puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and being sterilised, unable to experience sexual pleasure or have children, medicated for life - but it's back! The Department of Education hands it taxpayer funds and invites it into our schools.

Safe Schools Alliance highlights more of Equaliteach's output here.

Another outfit, Diversity Role Models, has also received funding from the DoE in the latest round. It gets boring to repeat. They produce material which breaches the Department of Education's own Relationship and Sex Education teaching guidelines. They suggest that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear. They talk about sex being 'assigned at birth'. They advise school staff that 'trans students' should use the toilets and changing rooms according to their gender identity. But the DoE hand out cash - and access to schools - anyway.

Did the Minister for Education, Nadhim Zahawi sign this off? I have to assume not - it was stitched up deep in the bowels of our bloated bureaucracy, captured by gender ideology, and unaccountable to democratic scrutiny. 

The promotion of gender ideology via the Department of Education is a safeguarding scandal. It's a crony-funding-sleeze scandal too: who are the bureaucrats funnelling cash to discredited organisations? It's a democratic scandal. Ministers of Education and RSE guidelines have made clear that gender ideology should not be promoted within our schools - yet it continues.

Enough is enough. Conservative MPs need to step up. Sign up more junior Ministers? Get them monitoring departments; scrutinising funding; scouring policies. The promotion of gender ideology to our children, the funding of complicit organisations, must stop.