A group providing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) education in Scottish schools has received almost £400,000 in government funding.
The latest accounts for Glasgow-based Time for Inclusive Education (TIE) show it received the six-figure sum in three grants from 2020 to 2022.
The registered charity—which faced closure in 2019 according to the BBC—provides services and teaching resources to both primary and secondary schools across the country.
The group also runs the government’s main national platform—lgbteducation.scot—which supports teachers tackling “prejudice through education.”
The funding boost saw the group’s total income soar from just £8,000 to £409,000 within two years.
In 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to have LGBT education embedded in the curriculum, with TIE becoming the main educational provider.
But since launching its services, the charity has been accused of a lack of transparency surrounding teaching materials.
According to a number of Scottish-based campaign groups, parents are “struggling” to access material being used to educate their children on LGBT issues.
They also claim that resources already made available “don’t reflect” what children are being taught.
Publicly Available
Marian Calder, a director of the rights group For Women Scotland, said parents have complained of a lack of transparency around the government-funded sex and relationship material.“If you look online at the TIE web page there are materials there, and they have put up a few more than they had before,” she told The Epoch Times.
“But that is not what I’m hearing corresponds to being what is taught in school.
“Parents have raised concerns that what they do when they come into schools is different than what we’re actually seeing on the things that they’re sharing.”
The Scottish Feminist Network has also raised issues of transparency around LGBT teaching materials.
“We have lots of complaints from parents who are slowly becoming aware that something is being taught in schools and they just want to know what it is,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times on Tuesday.
“And they’re struggling to get their hands on it because the teachers feel that they can’t share or they shouldn’t share. Or there’s intellectual property involvement.
“We know that parents are struggling to try and get their hands on it, so it’s frustrating.”
In a statement to The Epoch Times, TIE denied that any of its resources was unaccessible to parents.
“Claims that curriculum resources used by teachers are not accessible by parents or carers are simply untrue,” a spokesperson said.
“All curriculum resources related to LGBT Inclusive Education are publicly available for anyone, including parents and carers, to access and read.
Gender Identity
According to its latest Outcomes Report (pdf) TIE received £380,000 in grants from the Scottish government between 2020 and 2022.In the same period, it spent £383,219 on providing LGBT education material and resources for state schools’ curriculum out of a total income of £409,000.
The group spent £197,827 on staff salaries, £104,265 on educational resources and £26,942 on travel and accommodation costs.
SNP Councillor Christina Cannon will ask that the council supports its “positive working relationship with TIE in order to engage the city’s headteachers, heads of department and officers from Education Services to promote the opportunities that the new national platform can bring.”
It will also highlight Scotland becoming a world first in the implementation of LGBT into the national school curriculum.
In March, a group called “Concerned Adults Talking Openly About Gender Identity Ideology” held an event at an Edinburgh library voicing concerns over gender identity in schools.
The event caused controversy after the City Of Edinburgh Council said the group needed to pay £600 for security after a counter-protest was organised.
The meeting organisers said they wanted to “break the silence” around how children are taught about gender and discuss their concerns about the pressures schools were facing to remove single-sex toilets.
A campaign by Feminist Fundraisers to raise the £600 for security secured £954, according to its GoFundMe page.
“We are a small group of local people who only want to ensure that there is open discussion without intimidation and threat,” they said.
“But we have been faced with a determined campaign to stop discussion and ban the meeting.”
Around 100 counter-protesters stood outside the event with placards.
Rebecca Suton, a protester who attended with a friend, told the PA news agency: “Trans rights are something people have fought for for so many years now and to think that there are still people who hold meetings like this is just making it harder.
“I support trans rights and it’s important that everyone gets behind it. Trans people have it hard enough as it is, without continuing to have to protest to defend themselves and to defend their rights from people who don’t understand.
“We should all be supporting them.”
Gender Reform Bill
Scotland has faced a raft of controversies surrounding gender identity since the beginning of the year.In January, the UK government blocked the Scottish Parliament’s passing of a gender reform bill that would allow anyone over the age of 16 to self-ID via a statutory declaration to obtain a new birth certificate.
Bryson’s case caused major controversy over the issue of housing transgender criminals in female prisons. After being convicted, he was initially sent to a segregation unit at an all-female prison at Cornton Vale Prison in Stirling.
Scotland’s then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon came under pressure from campaigners, MPs, and Downing Street after they expressed concerns that the transgender rapist was set to be sent to a female jail to await sentencing.
Sturgeon—who abruptly resigned earlier this year—eventually backed down and confirmed that Bryson would not be held in a women’s prison.
In April, the Scottish government announced it will challenge Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s decision to block its gender reform bill in court.
Current First Minister Humza Yousaf confirmed his government will go to court to challenge the UK government’s decision.
He said legal action is “now our only means of defending our Parliament’s democracy from the Westminster veto.”
Sunak said his government’s decision to block the bill had been made “after taking very careful and considered advice.”
He added that the government had concerns about “how Scotland’s gender recognition act would interact with reserved powers, about the operation of the Equalities Act, the protection of women elsewhere in the UK as well.”
Critics of the gender legislation say that a self-identification system could be exploited.
Women’s groups as well as the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, have raised grave concerns that it will open up women’s services and private spaces to abuse.
