Charity that wants to ban use of ‘boys and girls’

TAXPAYERS have paid out £250,000 to Educate & Celebrate to fund its mission to make schools more LGBT friendly.

The charity’s website says that it has worked in thousands of schools in the UK since 2012, running workshops and teacher training days. It also distributes books and lesson plans.

It was criticised in 2017 over a book it published that critics said promoted the use of puberty-blocker drugs for children as young as 12. The book for primary school pupils told the story of Kit, who used the drugs to transition from female to male. At the time, former Tory Party chairman Lord Tebbit said: ‘It is damaging to children to introduce uncertainty into their minds.’

Prescribing puberty- bl ocker drugs to children has become highly controversial and was effectively banned by High Court judges last year for most minors unless a court order had been obtained. This followed dire warnings from medics that the drugs were a ‘ live experiment’ on hundreds of children.

Another of the charity’s guidebooks also controversially advises teachers that it is OK to help children get treatment for gender dysphoria – feeling you are the wrong sex – without telling their parents. The charity also advocates banning the use of the terms ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in the classroom and encourages children to replace ‘he’ and ‘she’ with the gender-neutral terms ‘they’ and ‘zie’.

Schools are charged £ 1,200 to take part in its Pride In Inclusion Awards. To achieve Gold, they have to pay a further £1,000 over two years and introduce 30 LGBTfriendly policy changes – including

hosting a fundraising day for the charity.

The charity was founded by former music teacher Dr Elly Barnes, who was made an MBE for her charity work in 2016.

She has links to the Socialist Workers Party and is a member of Schools OUT, a pressure group started by a Left-wing group of gay teachers in the 1970s. Last year, Dr

Barnes attended a protest outside a meeting of a feminist group called Labour Women’s Declaration, who believe demands for rights from transgender pressure groups infringe the rights of women.

The charity’s chair of trustees is activist Julie Bremner, a Cabinet Office civil servant who has joined scores of Leftwing marches.