My own concerns over the state of Scottish education were piqued in 2022, when hundreds of parents and teachers in Glasgow protested against the increasingly ‘pornographic’ nature of sex-education lessons. Kids were being given graphic illustrations of sex acts and questionnaires asking about their own sexual activity. Two years on, and we at the SUE now have a constant stream of parents and teachers telling us similar stories about contemporary sex education. As one Glasgow parent explained to us: ‘When a headteacher of a primary school tells you, “You’ll be pleased to know we’ve taken the clitoris off the curriculum”, you know something is going seriously wrong.’

The teaching of graphic, intrusive sex education to such young children is bad enough. Worse still is the widespread promotion of transgender ideology. School kids from primary school onwards are being told that they might have a gender identity that differs from their sex assigned at birth. A nursery worker told us recently that primary schools have culled ‘old fashioned’ childrens’ books, featuring men and women and boys and girls, in favour of gender-affirming alternatives, such as Julian Is a Mermaid, a tale of a boy who wants to become a mermaid and be ‘seen’ for who he really is. And a troubled teacher in Aberdeen told us that kids have been asked to vote on the introduction of gender-neutral toilets.

Of course, none of this insanity comes as a complete surprise. Gender ideology and identity politics more broadly have become deeply entrenched in Scotland’s educational establishment. The General Teaching Council for Scotland openly states in a 2021 document that the purpose of education is ‘to promote social justice’. Reaching a senior position at a Scottish school will almost certainly rest on your commitment to promoting the ‘correct’ identitarian worldview

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