Yesterday, the Church of England’s Education office released their updates to their vision for education. We are told “Our vision for education is deeply Christian” but in reality, it is not. Flourishing for All is a document steeped in the woke ideology of critical social justice, a profoundly harmful and divisive movement that is very anti-Christian. Gender ideology is arguably the most harmful part of this new religion, which absolutely should not be promoted by the Church as a “deeply Christian” belief. 

The new document recognises the release of the Cass Review Final Report yet completely fails to address the issues raised by Dr Cass. As she says, “The importance of what happens in school cannot be under-estimated; this applies to all aspects of children’s health and wellbeing. Schools have been grappling with how they should respond when a pupil says that they want to socially transition in the school setting. For this reason, it is important that school guidance is able to utilise some of the principles and evidence from the Review.” It’s extremely concerning that the new Church guidance utterly fails to do so. Dr Cass says social transition is “an active intervention because it may have significant effects on the child or young person in terms of their psychological functioning and longer-term outcomes.” and Church schools have been complicit in enabling this process because of previous Stonewall-informed guidance. 

Section 3.3 references Keeping Children Safe in Education, yet fails to refer to the 2024 update to this statutory guidance. This important update says “the Cass review identified that caution is necessary for children questioning their gender as there remain many unknowns about the impact of social transition and children may well have wider vulnerabilities, including having complex mental health and psychosocial needs, and in some cases additional diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.” KCSiE uses the terminology “Children who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or gender questioning” and the government guidance also refers to children questioning their gender, but Flourishing for All uses “pupils who are LGBT+” which is explained “In using LGBT+ the document follows the 2023/4 government and Ofsted usage of the acronym LGBT, adding a plus sign to acknowledge there are other people within the LGBT+ community to whom this term would apply.” which is clearly untrue. 

In fact, the entire glossary is extremely alarming. It describes social transition as “A term often used to refer to a process by which people change their name, pronouns, clothing, or use different facilities from those provided for their biological sex.”

Let us clarify, it is not legal for people to use facilities provided for the opposite sex and schools have a duty to provide single sex toilets and changing for over 8s. 

Flourishing for All continues to promote discredited Stonewall lies such as “For children and young people who are LGBT+, the effects of HBT bullying can have a significant effect on their lives for years to come, including tragically leading to self-harm and contemplating suicide in a significant number of cases.” The complex mental health problems experienced by these vulnerable children and young people are not caused by “HBT bullying” but often by the distressing idea that they were born in the wrong body and require surgery and hormones to be happy. It is abusive and wrong to blame others for the suicidal ideation expressed by some, and also directly contributes to the emotional distress felt by this vulnerable cohort. The Church MUST stop promoting this Stonewall lie.

It is also emotionally abusive, as defined by KCSiE, “not giving the child opportunities to express their views, deliberately silencing them or ‘making fun’ of what they say or how they communicate.” However, freedom of speech is absolutely endangered by the Flourishing for All guidance, which states “we recognise that there are children and young people in school who have already socially transitioned and are now presenting as a different gender to their biological sex. Additionally, there are transgender adults amongst the adults (e.g. staff or parents/ carers) within our school communities. It is vital that these members of our school communities are treated with the utmost dignity and respect, and are protected decisively from harm. This protection includes ensuring that they are kept safe from polarised debates about the care or place of gender questioning children and transgender people in society.” It seems the Church’s Education office hasn’t had the memo that the authoritarian Stonewall dogma of “no debate” has long passed and Dr Cass has brought light to a much needed debate on the care of gender questioning children. 

We see this again when it is stated that “schools will need to be particularly mindful of managing the different views people hold in order to safeguard their wellbeing. It is not appropriate in a school setting for views which denigrate or harm LGBT+ people to be shared with children and young people.” This, presumably, includes so-called “gender critical” views, like the fact that sex is binary and immutable.

And again, when we are told “Any discussion on the range of viewpoints people may hold about sexual orientation and gender identity should be thoroughly planned as part of the school’s curriculum and not be entered into in an ad hoc way. This planning should involve members of the LGBT+ community as well as church and faith groups.” and “They will need to ensure a balance between enabling all parties to be heard whilst protecting those in their school community for whom listening to particular viewpoints on gender and sexuality can be painful.” and “it is critical that viewpoints which are homophobic, biphobic or transphobic are not presented since to do so would be harmful to both pupils and adults.” This implies that children will be encouraged to lie and affirm adults in the school community as their preferred gender, and prevented from speaking honestly or discussing the range of viewpoints in an informed way. 

Another cause for alarm is when the new guidance says “Every adult in a Church school community should feel safe to be able to fully participate in the life of the school without needing to hide any part of themselves.” Some things are not appropriate for children, and that includes some parts of adults’ lives, such as their sexual interests. Effective safeguarding requires adults to protect the latency of childhood. Yet another safeguarding red flag is the suggestion that schools “Create safe spaces for young people who are LGBT+ to communicate with peers and safe adults.” This is not compatible with safeguarding. The LGBT+ groups these children might be referred to are hotbeds of grooming and indoctrination, often for age ranges like 12-25. 

This piece of trans propaganda suggests further actions like “Removing any negative presentations of LGBT+ people from the curriculum and replacing these with positive role models and language” and says “it is critical not to ‘out’ a pupil before they are ready.” 

This document is harmful, and should not be approved for use by schools. The previous guidance Valuing All God’s Children should be removed, as we previously requested, and a serious debate must be had on the trans activism coming from a religious institution that should recognise the heresy in gender ideology. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Gen 1:27