Role play that includes asking young children to pick their gender and “marry” each other in front of classmates is being used in sex education, it’s been claimed.
According to a statement by the Christian Legal Centre (CLC), the material—approved by Norfolk County Council—is being taught in at least one primary school in the area.
The content, rolled out under relationship, health, and sex education (RHSE), included images of sexual intercourse and “foreplay,” the centre said on Friday.
Parents claim children are also being told they can be “pangender,” “cisgender” and are taught about terms such as “heteronormativity”—the concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal mode of sexual orientation.
Furious parents have now raised concerns about the “extreme and graphic” material to school and local authority figures.
Swanton Morley VC Primary School in Dereham refused parent requests for the teaching content to be amended, according to the CLC statement.
Responding to a complaint, the head teacher said the material and lessons are “in line with government policy,” according to the statement.
One parent, whose two children attend the school, escalated a complaint about the RHSE provision to an independent review hearing. However, no action was taken.
Age Inappropriate
A CLC spokesperson said the RSHE content included teaching that “some people are born like a boy (with a penis), but feel like a girl inside or born like a girl (with a vulva) but feel like a boy inside.”They would be asked “to think about what gender they are,” with options being boy, girl, or “not sure.”
Children in year 4 are asked to “volunteer to come to the front of the class and pretend to get married,” and told that “they can be the same or different gender to each other.”
Believing these themes to be too complex, and in some cases sexualised, CLC said the parent could not in “good conscience allow his children to attend the lessons.”
After getting legal advice and doing his own research, the parent discovered that the teaching content and the approach of the school appeared to breach government guidance, the Education Act 2002, and the Human Rights Act 1998, and raised potential safeguarding issues.
In a statement made via the CLC, the father—who wished to remain anonymous, said he was “deeply shocked” at the teaching content.
“It is age inappropriate, partisan, unscientific, and dangerous,” he said.
“I love my children, and I will not allow them to be exposed to radical ideologies at an inappropriate age and in an imbalanced way.
“However, the government guidance and teaching is allowing parents to be kept in the dark and powerless to challenge and question the deeply inappropriate teaching.”
The man said the governing body of the school “simply dismissed” his concerns.
“It was like it was not possible to question what they were doing—it was frankly bizarre and Orwellian.
“You feel like you have to self-censor and can’t have any influence.
“This means that parents are fearful about speaking up and being labelled.”
Marginalised
He said the teachings are based on “highly contentious and contested views” that put a greater emphasis on emotion and belief “rather than biological reality.”“Telling 7-year-old girls that they can be born like a girl, but feel like a boy inside, and that there are more than two genders, is simply wrong,” he said.
“Irrespective of the side of that debate that you can relate to, presenting gender ideology as fact, and without opposing views, to 7-year-old children, whilst marginalising the traditional nuclear family dynamic, is wrong.
“It is also not compliant with the impartiality stipulations detailed with the statutory DfE [Department for Education] policy guidance.”
The father says he feels like his beliefs and viewpoint are being marginalised and excluded “presumably in the name of inclusivity.”
“I took it as read that in a Church of England school my children would not be exposed to extreme materials, but I was wrong.
“I wanted to work with the school and thought I was being reasonable. They have, however, thrown all my olive branches back at me.”
He has called for “urgent intervention” from the government, Ofsted, and the Church of England over the matter.
Neither Swanton Morley VC Primary School and Norfolk County Council responded to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.
Government Review
Andrea Williams chief executive of the CLC, said: “The Policy Exchange report exposes how schools are failing in their safeguarding duty to children and this story reveals why they are failing.“For years, parents and teachers who have raised safeguarding concerns over the promotion of gender identity to primary school children have been ignored, disbelieved, and marginalised. No questioning is allowed.”
Williams said thousands of children are being “indoctrinated” with “extreme gender ideology” without the knowledge of their parents.
“The government needs to allow parents to withdraw children from relationships and sex education until the gender and political ideology has been rooted out of these lessons,” she said.
“By encouraging our children to make up their own personal truth we lose all sense of reality and leave them confused and hurting. Dignity comes from our God-given humanity, not gender identities.”
The issue of sex education has previously been raised in Parliament by Conservative MP Miriam Cates.
Speaking in March, she urged Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to commission an independent inquiry to “end inappropriate sex education.”
She told the Commons: “Graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely and 72 genders. This is what passes for relationships and sex education in British schools.
“Across the country, children are being subjected to lessons that are age inappropriate, extreme, sexualising, and inaccurate, often using resources from unregulated organisations that are actively campaigning to undermine parents.
“This is not a victory for equality, it is a catastrophe for childhood.”
Sunak has since accelerated a government review into how the subject is taught in schools.
It stated, “Safeguarding principles are being routinely disregarded in many secondary schools, which are neglecting their safeguarding responsibilities in favour of a set of contested beliefs in a way that risk jeopardising child wellbeing and safety.”
