Mick Hartley

From the Telegraph:

A sex education charity that teaches pupils how to “break” gender binary beliefs has been accused of falsely claiming to be endorsed by Ofsted.

Educate & Celebrate is featured on multiple primary school websites as an Ofsted-recognised “best practice” programme.

The charity runs Pride workshops for primary and secondary school pupils, which include “how to break the binary and be gender inclusive”, according to its website.

Dr Elly Barnes, the charity’s founder, has advised teachers that it is permissible not to tell parents if a pupil declares themselves to be transgender, and also said that terms such as “boys”, “girls”, “son” and “mother” should be replaced with the gender-neutral words “pupils”, “students”, “child” and “parent”.

Educate & Celebrate has recently removed reference to Ofsted from its website after it was asked to do so by the school inspectorate, a spokesman for Ofsted said.

The school inspectorate said it does not endorse any resource providers.

However, the charity, which is understood to have worked with more than 100 schools, still features as an Ofsted-endorsed organisation on primary school websites.

Heather Binning, spokeswoman for the Women’s Rights Network, said: “We are very concerned about Educate & Celebrate.” She said that the charity “promotes highly contentious theories about gender identity to children of primary school age and above, teaching them that human beings can change sex and that sexual orientation is just a matter of choice.”

She added: “None of this is age-appropriate or remotely acceptable, yet Educate & Celebrate has been operating in plain sight since at least 2014.

“Some of its publicity claimed that it was an ‘Ofsted and Department for Education recognised Best Practice Award Programme’ but when this was highlighted to Ofsted, they denied this.”

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, warned last week that children are being given sex education lessons that have “no basis in any reputable scientific biological explanation”.

She told The Telegraph that Ofsted is currently powerless to sanction schools teaching inappropriate materials, and welcomed an urgent government review.

It's a wild west out there.