All I wanted to know was what my daughters were learning in sex education. Two years and one court case later, I’ve been branded a bigot… and parents still aren’t being told
- Clare, from London, lost income from the hours spent dedicated to her cause
- READ MORE: Fury over ‘radical’ sex ed lesson plans for pre-teen kids
Clare Page was both incredulous and wearily resigned when the email finally dropped into her inbox.
From her solicitor, it contained what Clare hoped would be a vital legal milestone giving her — and, by extension, other parents — the right to receive copies of exactly what their children are being taught at school.
Their ‘lesson plans’, she hoped, would be as readily available as, say, attendance records or textbooks.
You might think this would already be the case — government guidance certainly suggests it should be — but as Clare had discovered, it isn’t.
Concerned by her 15-year-old daughter’s reports that contentious theories were being taught as fact in sex education lessons — among them the suggestion that we are living in an unacceptable ‘heteronormative society’ (a world where heterosexual relationships are promoted as the norm) — Clare had asked the school for copies of the slides on which the lessons were based.
Clare Page, from London, was accused not only of harassment, but of being ‘anti-homosexuality, anti-trans and anti-equality’ all because she asked for transparency
As the Mail reported last year, she was refused time and again, leading to a near two-year long fight which ultimately took Clare to court.
But in a decision that has consequences for all parents, the email Clare received that morning set out the judge’s ruling that the school was entitled both to refuse to publish the lesson slides in order to ‘protect commercial interests’ and to refuse to give the identity of the teacher, due to data protection concerns.
‘In essence, she was prioritising the commercial interest of a third-party education provider over the public interest of parents to know what their children are being taught — and the privacy of a teacher over safeguarding concerns,’ as Clare puts it.
So yes, incredulity was the 47-year-old mother of two’s instinctive response. But so, too, was a sense of weary resignation after a battle in which she was accused not only of harassment, but of being ‘anti-homosexuality, anti-trans and anti-equality’.
All because she asked for transparency.
Little wonder she remains anxious about what she sees as a creeping authoritarian attitude in teaching and a corresponding erosion of parental rights.
‘I think the majority of parents are in the dark about how radical the culture has become in some schools,’ she says.
It is the reason she is speaking out today, determined to continue her battle — one that’s arguably becoming ever more crucial with emerging stories about the way in which gender politics are creeping into education.
It is also a fight that has come at no little personal cost.
She was invited to an ‘uncomfortable’ meeting where she says the CEO suddenly pushed a laptop towards her and invited her to look at the lesson slides
A self-employed product designer from South London, Clare has lost income from the hours spent dedicated to her cause.
Clare’s husband is a university lecturer and their daughters — whom we will call Isla and Natasha, to preserve their anonymity — are now 16 and 13.
The last two years have not been easy for anyone — especially for Isla, their eldest, who moved to a new school after her GSCEs. Natasha was already enrolled at a separate school.
‘It was hugely disruptive and very upsetting for Isla. But once your school has passed on an accusation of harassment without an attempt to hear your side of the story, the relationship is over; there is a fundamental lack of trust,’ Clare says, adding: ‘She had a strong sense she couldn’t speak her mind in class.’
As the Mail revealed last summer, Clare — who describes herself as ‘something of an accidental activist’ — found herself on the frontline of this battle in the autumn of 2021.
At the time Isla attended Haberdashers’ Hatcham College, a state secondary in South-East London.
After a lesson given by an outside provider called the School of Sexuality Education (SSE), the then 15-year-old told her parents that she had been told to be ‘sex positive’ (a phrase embodying the attitude that all consensual sexual activities are fundamentally healthy and pleasurable, but which at its extreme end questions the age of consent) and that ‘heteronormativity was a bad thing’.
‘This seemed to be outside what I would consider appropriate in a school setting,’ says Clare.
Alarmed, she contacted the school, but was repeatedly told she could not see the lesson plans because of ‘copyright’ issues.
‘After about the third request, the school issued me with a four-point bullet summary of what had been taught. But that isn’t what I had asked for,’ she says.
By now, Clare had deeper concerns. After accessing the SSE’s website, she was horrified to discover they had links to material about fetishes and sex toys, and introductory guides to ‘rough anonymous sex’.
At the time Clare’s daughter Isla attended Haberdashers’ Hatcham College, a state secondary in South-East London (pictured)
‘Any child curious enough to log onto their website following a lesson would have been able to access this material,’ she says.
Clare called the charity — a conversation she remembers as polite — though her request was again refused. She then received a lengthy email from the head of Hatcham telling her the SSE alleged she had harassed them.
Months later, having requested to view the email exchanges between the school and the SSE, she discovered that her request to see the lesson plan had been labelled ‘strange’ by the school, while the director of the SSE had suggested Clare was effectively prejudiced against LGBT teaching.
‘From what has been communicated to me, I’m unsure that any amount of information will pacify this parent who ultimately seems to be upset that our work is LGBTQIA+,’ the director wrote in one message.
Clare says: ‘I was shocked to see that the whole tone of the emails from the school were apologetic — “so sorry about this” — as if I was asking for something outrageous.’
Horrified, she contacted the CEO of the school’s ruling multi-academy trust to express alarm that she was being accused of harassment.
She was invited to an ‘uncomfortable’ meeting where she says the CEO suddenly pushed a laptop towards her and invited her to look at the lesson slides.
‘It took me aback, as the meeting was meant to be about me being accused of harassment,’ she says.
‘They meant well, but it was an ineffective gesture because the material was protected by commercial secrecy, which meant I could not share my concerns with others.’
She saw enough to spot the phrase ‘sex positivity’, which had not featured in the four-point bullet plan she had previously been given.
‘That’s the phrase my daughter had used and was enough to show me they were promoting partisan ideas,’ she recalls.
Backed by her husband, she then launched a formal complaint about the lesson, followed, in December 2021, by a Freedom of Information request and a Subject Access Request.
The former was another attempt to see the entire lesson plan, the latter to get communications pertaining to her, whether internally among school staff or with the SSE.
She only received the results of her Subject Access Request on April 29 last year, one working day before her complaint hearing was due to be heard.
‘In messages I could see that the headmistress and the multi-academy trust CEO were discussing whether my complaint constituted harassment,’ she says.
A self-employed product designer from South London, Clare has lost income from the hours spent dedicated to her cause
‘So instead of me getting to have my complaint tested, it felt like I was going to some sort of kangaroo court. And if the governors found in favour of that, then they could ban me from ever talking to the school again.
‘It was Kafkaesque, but I had no choice but to go because they were going to do it without me anyway.’
The subsequent hearing was attended by two school governors and an independent adjudicator, which in Clare’s case was a Department for Education (DfE) employee.
‘She was pleasant, but alarm bells rang as I had started to realise that the Department for Education is ideological itself and that this is where much of the drive in schools is coming from.’
At that meeting, it was agreed that the school would no longer use the SSE for sex education provision.
‘So in that sense my complaint was upheld, although they refused to address whether the lesson plan was or wasn’t appropriate and they said their hands were tied in terms of my right to have access to it,’ Clare says.
‘The governors did state there was no evidence of harassment on my part, which was a great relief.’
However, in the subsequent report into the complaint, Clare discovered the panel had written: ‘Ms Page did graciously acknowledge that her views were not in line with much modern thinking, including that of the DfE.’
‘Those aren’t my views and I didn’t say anything of the sort,’ she insists. ‘Effectively, she seemed to be suggesting my views were backward.’
With the crucial part of her Freedom of Information request denied on the basis of confidentiality, Clare then took her bid to get copies of the lessons to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which also rejected her request.
‘They gave this woolly response which effectively suggested that perhaps the school and I could come to a private arrangement,’ she says.
‘But we need to be able to discuss these things openly with governors and fellow parents. That’s when I realised that the key decision wasn’t whether I could see it; it was whether the public at large could see what schools teach.’
It prompted her to launch a fundraising drive for the £20,000 needed to appeal the ICO’s decision at tribunal, which took place in May.
A month later she received the email rejecting her claim — with one caveat.
‘In her judgment the judge said it would have been enough to see it in confidential circumstances or to sign a non-disclosure agreement. But why would any parent in their right mind do that?’ she asks. ‘It can potentially open you up to legal ramifications.’
It is one reason she is launching an appeal against the decision.
‘This isn’t just about sex education,’ she says. ‘There’s a lot of ideological ideas creeping into other subjects as well, be it climate change, or social justice ideology.’
Recently, Miriam Cates, the Conservative MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge — who has previously warned that sex education provision has become a ‘Wild West’ — introduced a Private Member’s Bill urging the Government to put parents’ rights to see lessons plans on a statutory footing.
‘We desperately need it, because what’s frightening is that people are worried to stand up to this creeping authoritarianism,’ Clare says.
‘I was lucky because I am self-employed, so I wasn’t risking my job by speaking out. But it’s absurd that should be the case when it comes to safeguarding our children. And at the end of the day, safeguarding is at the heart of this.’
Like Clare, many are bewildered that it is taking a legal battle to try to achieve something many previously assumed was their right
Happily, both her daughters are supportive of their mum’s campaign. ‘I’m sure at the outset they were a bit doubtful, but now I think they are quietly proud, because they can see that this dialogue has opened right up: people in politics are talking about it,’ she says.
Clare has also found huge support from fellow parents.
‘It’s really mushrooming,’ she adds with a smile. ‘And it’s a huge cross-section. The parents I’m speaking to are on the Left and the Right; they are Christian, Muslim, firmly atheist. It’s a universal issue.’
Like Clare, many are bewildered that it is taking a legal battle to try to achieve something many previously assumed was their right. ‘There is a sense of, “However did we get here?” ’ she says.
A spokeswoman for Hatcham College said that Ms Page’s complaint of indoctrination was not upheld following a full investigation which the Education and Skills Funding Agency determined had been properly conducted.
She added that the school ‘regularly reviews’ its Personal, Social Health and Economic teaching, which adheres to ‘statutory guidance and recommended best practice’.
With respect to Ms Page’s Freedom of Information request, she said: ‘The school did all it could within the bounds of the law to comply with Ms Page’s requests, as endorsed during recent rulings in the Information Commissioner’s Office hearings.
‘The school has a policy of only using organisations which are prepared to allow the materials to be shown to parents and no longer uses the School of Sexuality Education.’
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