Britain’s schools are in crisis. So why does our Education Secretary seem more concerned about pushing transgender rights?
JUST before her first big TV interview following last month’s General Election, Education Secretary Justine Greening alerted broadcasting staff that she would use the opportunity to make a major announcement.
What could it be, wondered the studio teams. An important decision about Tory policy on grammar schools? Her own mischievous intervention on the soft v. hard Brexit rows splitting the Cabinet? An attack on Chancellor Philip Hammond in view of the fact that he’d just denied her extra Treasury money for England’s schools?
Certainly, her Tory colleagues would have hoped she might offer an eye- catching education policy initiative at a time when opinion polls put Labour eight per cent ahead of the embattled Conservatives.
But no. Ms Greening’s big announcement was a proposal to make it easier for transgender people to legally change their sex.
As part of the Tories oh- so- trendy equalities agenda, trans people would no longer need a medical diagnosis and new rules would make it simpler for those who identify as the opposite gender — whether or not they have had a sexchange operation — to have their birth certificates altered.
Forget the fact that this controversial announcement which would offend many Christians was made on the Sabbath, Ms Greening also challenged the Church of England on the issue of gay marriage.
She urged more churches to hold gay weddings and said that the Church of England must make sure it ‘ keeps up and is part of a modern country’.
Such finger-wagging at the Church establishment caused consternation considering that Ms Greening’s own government’s equal marriage legislation explicitly states that it is illegal for the Church of England to marry same-sex couples.
But then we shouldn’t have been surprised by any of this.
For, in her secondary role as equalities minister, Ms Greening has been desperate to embrace a host of what many traditional Conservatives see as less-than-pressing issues.
She has announced a string of radical social reforms that didn’t feature in the Tory election manifesto, including prostitutes being allowed to donate blood.
BUT her critics argue that with the country lagging behind in the international education league tables, with policies to increase the number of grammars having been abandoned and signs that school reforms are going into reverse, Ms Greening ought to be concentrating on her principal job as Education Secretary.
After all, in the most recent league tables published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, British schools are languishing in 15th place behind Estonia and Vietnam.
Almost half of children leaving primary school can’t read or write properly — and just five per cent of schools are achieving a high standard overall.
You might hope, therefore, that Ms Greening’s priority would be to improve standards, get more Treasury money for schools and fight for new grammar schools — those beacons of excellence which can lift disadvantaged children out of social and educational poverty.
But the fact is that, at heart, Ms Greening has never shared grammar school- educated Theresa May’s passion for more selective schools. Mischievously, a colleague has nicknamed her ‘ Minister for Bog Standard Comprehensives’.
Indeed, there is growing anger among her Tory colleagues.
Many are asking why on earth, instead of focusing on transgender issues, she has not taken advantage of Jeremy Corbyn’s shame-faced admission that his election campaign promise to wipe out all student debt was a sham.
I was told by a minister: ‘ We are getting increasingly fed up with Justine pursuing her selfindulgent obsession with gender issues which 99 per cent of the population do not see as the important issues facing this country right now.’
Yet such issues are profoundly important to Ms Greening. Two days after the Eu referendum, she came out as gay. It was the day of the Gay Pride Festival and the Remainer proudly tweeted: ‘Today’s a good day to say I’m in a happy same- sex relationship, I campaigned for Stronger In but sometimes you’re better off out!’
Later, she said: ‘ Doing my tweet was the best thing I’ve done in many, many, many a year. Actually it gets better every day. I am better for being who I am and being clear about that.’
Given that personal background, it was no surprise that Ms Greening wishes to champion the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) cause.
undoubtedly, the happiness that Ms Greening has achieved in her personal life makes her passionately believe that others should be able to enjoy similar contentment in their own lives.
Thus her comment on Sunday: ‘This government is committed to building an inclusive society that works for everyone, no matter what their gender or sexuality and today we’re taking the next step forward.’
For several years, Ms Greening has been in a relationship with woman who has worked at Roehampton university.
Many suspect that a strong influence behind the minister is her partner, who has been linked with the LGBT Forum group in Wandsworth, South London.
Its aim is to ‘ raise awareness and campaign on issues relevant to the Wandsworth LGBT community’ and ‘build partnerships to challenge homophobia’.
It also holds film-nights, for screenings such as Who’s Afraid Of Vagina Wolf — an eccentric all- female romantic comedy about a woman who lives in a friend’s garage in Los Angeles and despairs of life until she meets a female muse.
Ms Greening was persuaded by her partner to come out after giving her a book, The Glass Closet, by Lord Browne, the former head of oil giant BP, who was outed after he was exposed for lying in court about his relationship with a former male lover.
RECENTLY, he said this year’s 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act ( which decriminalised sex between men over the age of 21) came at a time when ‘the institutions and values that made such progress possible are increasingly vulnerable’.
Lord Browne added that a ‘growing vulnerability is compounded by complacency’, adding: ‘As we celebrate 50 years of progress for LGBT people, it is essential to remember that, even in the most advanced societies, constant vigilance is needed.’
until coming out, Ms Greening, 48, had never been a high- profile campaigner on equality issues.
Indeed, rather the opposite. In 2007, she was absent for a Commons vote deemed critical
by social liberalisers in which MPs were asked to bring in legislation that made it illegal for hotels and other businesses to turn away gay couples.
Ms Greening has had boyfriends in the past — including Mark Clarke, a former Tory Parliamentary candidate, who was tipped to be a minister by society magazine Tatler but became embroiled in controversy over allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, drugtaking and drunken behaviour by his campaign team.
Clarke has since been banned for life from the Conservative party.
After she came out as gay, Ms Greening, who has never spoken about her relationship with Clarke, was asked if she had ever questioned her sexuality. She replied: ‘I don’t think I’ve been super-analytical about myself.’
Now, liberated by being out and proud, she seems intent on making up for lost time by pushing forward with reforms for the transgender community.
However, she will face huge opposition. One Tory MP told me: ‘If we make it too easy to change sex, what happens if 300 male prisoners decide they are really women? The consequences across all areas of society could be uncontrollable.’
Brought up in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Ms Greening attended a local comprehensive.
During her childhood, her father was made redundant from his job as an administrator at British Steel — an experience his daughter described as ‘the hardest year of her life’.
AFTER getting a degree in Business Economics and Accounting and an MBA from London Business School, she became an accountant and finance manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers and then was elected as a Tory MP at the second attempt in the 2005 General Election.
Swiftly promoted to Cabinet, she was made International Development Secretary in 2012 and was a keen advocate of the Tories’ deeply unpopular policy of committing 0.7pc of GDP, around £12 billion a year of taxpayers’ money, to international aid.
Her department was accused of using aid as a ‘slush fund to give to their favourite causes’. When it was revealed that £5 million had been given to Ethiopia’s version of the Spice Girls, Ms Greening defended the decision as one that helped the ‘ empowerment’ of women in Africa.
After the Tories were re-elected in 2015, she was put in charge of galvanising the young to vote Remain in the EU referendum.
Her failure to get more young Remainers to the polls was in marked contrast to the way that Labour inspired hundreds of thousands of youngsters to vote for Mr Corbyn on June 8 this year.
She says she felt ‘sick’ when she heard the British people had voted to leave the EU.
After David Cameron’s resignation, she was one of the first leading Tories to support Theresa May in the leadership contest.
Duly rewarded with the Education Secretary portfolio, her record is mixed to say the least.
She’s lamely backed away from a pledge in the previous Tory manifesto requiring pupils who have failed to reach basic targets for reading, writing and maths at the end of primary school to resit the exams in their first year of secondary school. Also, there is talk of lowering exam standards, with the suggestion that the pass grade for GCSEs should be changed.
Teaching unions have welcomed these proposals — to the horror of many Tories. But Ms Greening seems happy to back her pet causes. Thus her desire to push the LBGT agenda.
She has quoted a report which found 75 per cent of people in same-sex relationships do not feel they can be open about it.
She said in relation to her own decision to come out: ‘ I can certainly relate to that. But I just felt that I didn’t want to be part of that 75 per cent (any more). Hopefully I can encourage the (remaining) 75 per cent to be happy about who they are and to realise what I’m steadily realising: people like you for who you are.’
Clearly Justine Greening is a deeply compassionate woman, but whether her obsessing with transgender issues will be a displacement activity — to avoid dealing with the huge issues facing the country’s education system — is another matter.
Certainly, many traditional Tories will wonder if she’s in the right party.