Saturday 2 July 2022 12:06 AM KATHRYN KNIGHT: Mother's battle to see what was being taught about sexuality ... trends now

Like many parents, the lockdowns of the last two years afforded Clare Page an unexpected insight into her daughter's school lessons.

Her then 13-year-old — who we will call Isla — attended Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham College, a 1,400-pupil state secondary school in South London. And with teaching taking place online, some of the material she saw unfolding on her daughter's laptop at home was little short of horrifying.

Isla's 'lessons' — 46-year-old designer Clare uses the term loosely — included a lecture on white privilege; playing a rap song with the lyrics 'our Prime Minister is a real racist'; and an art lesson where pupils were encouraged to produce their own Black Lives Matter poster after being shown an image of black and white people stabbing each other.

Sex education meanwhile — delivered under the new 'relationship and sex education' policy that has become a compulsory part of the curriculum since 2020 — was no less disturbing. It turned out to be provided by the dubiously named 'School for Sexuality Education', an external organisation with links to a commercial website that promotes pornography and sex toys.

At its workshops, pupils were informed they lived in a 'heteronormative' (straight) world, that this was a bad thing, and they should be 'sex positive' instead.

Appalled at what she saw as little short of highly politicised dogma disguised as 'learning', Clare asked the school if she could see the material used in some lessons.

She was told she couldn't, and her repeated — and ultimately futile — attempts to do so have now led her to make a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office, an independent authority set up, among other things, to promote openness and transparency in public bodies.

She believes that, if asked by a parent, schools should be legally obliged to provide information about the 'lesson plans' they use. At present, it is a matter of dispute as to whether they have any obligation to provide the information.

Clare is not alone in her concern: in recent years, a number of campaigning groups have sprung up to tackle what they see as the overt politicisation of children, while a slew of stories has also highlighted the way in which gender and racial politics have crept into the provision of education.

In the last week alone, a fee-paying Christian school in Oxfordshire has become engulfed in a row following a diversity-driven makeover in which the library was garlanded with rainbow LGBT flags, while Michelle Donelan, the Minister for Higher Education, has written to universities warning them that signing up to equality and diversity schemes could hamper free speech.

On Thursday, Conservative MP Miriam Cates spoke of her concern that recent guidelines are opening doors to 'age inappropriate' and 'extreme' content being taught in schools.

Clare, however, is one of the few parents prepared to talk openly about the problem, although understandably she has asked for anonymity for her family.

'I believe passionately in what I am fighting for, but as a parent I also want to protect my daughters,' she says. 'A lot of people are terrified of discussing this territory, but someone has to question what is going on.'

'Otherwise, it means that there is no transparency for parents regarding the messages being handed to our young people.' Clare and her husband are unlikely lightning rods: impeccably liberal, since marrying in 2001 they have lived in the London borough of Lewisham, a neighbourhood they chose for its diversity.

While privately educated herself, Clare was happy for both her daughters — Isla, now 15 and 12-year-old Natasha — to be schooled in the state system.

Both attended the local primary where, in 2018, Clare had an early insight into the gender politics at play when Natasha, then nine, announced she'd been told to refer to historical figures as 'they' rather than he or she because those who had come before us were unable to choose their preferred pronouns and that there were 'many more than two genders'.

'That was when the warning bell rang,' says Clare. 'I complained to the school and was staggered by the pushback from governors and the head teacher.

'It was basically a case of 'there is no way you can touch this'.'

Clare's concerns mounted when she learned that representatives from an organisation called 'Pop'n'Olly' — a self-styled 'LGBT+ equality educational resource' created by author and illustrator Olly Pike — were visiting the school during anti-bullying week.

'No one is against the idea of an anti-bullying week — but suddenly this message is being conflated with other more complex material,' she explains.

'The first thing I knew about it was when I arrived home to find my daughter watching an Olly Pike cartoon about a girl who has an overnight sex change which solves her bullying problem.

'Even if you take away the issue of whether you should be discussing trans-sexualism to children in primary school, this is highly misleading.'

When Clare complained, she was told that Olly Pike was recommended by the LGBTQ+ lobby group Stonewall which, in turn, was backed by the Department for Education.

Around the same time, Isla had started secondary school at Haberdashers' Hatcham College in Lewisham — one of a guild of schools founded by a legacy from 17th century benefactor Robert Aske. His name was removed from the school last year because of his purported links to slavery and, at Hatcham, his oil portrait has been removed and his statue repurposed.

A state comprehensive, Hatcham's intake is 83 per cent black and ethnic minority and 17 per cent white, but Clare says that children from all backgrounds largely got on well.

'It's an inner-city school so there are fights and there have been knife fears,' she says. 'But, overall, it is a successful, cohesive community and Isla has got very good friends.'

Nonetheless, Clare said she had become concerned about what she saw as overt politicising by teachers, not to mention the peddling of misleading and in some cases downright inaccurate information in lessons.