An Edinburgh school has been accused of teaching “propaganda” to teenage pupils after they were told transgender people are regularly murdered.
Teaching resources seen by The Telegraph show that children are being told that “many” transgender people are killed “simply because they try to be themselves” in a lesson about hate crime.
The information also implies that the Brexit referendum led to a “large rise” in racist murders in England.
On Monday, the City of Edinburgh council was unable to provide any evidence to back up the claims, with no known murder of a trans person ever to have taken place in Scotland.
‘Deceptive mess’
A parent of a teenager at the prominent state school, which she asked not to be named to protect the identity of her child, claimed teachers were peddling myths spread by trans rights activists who regularly insist members of the minority group are facing a “genocide”.
A worksheet states that pupils will face an exam on its contents and adds that young people “often” become criminals because “they tend to have a lot more free time”.
The school is a member of a charter scheme run by the controversial charity LGBT Youth Scotland, which has faced accusations that it is promoting unscientific ideologies in classrooms across the country.
“The statistics being presented to children are a deceptive mess, with no context or anything to back them up,” the parent said.
‘Narrative embedded in schools’
“While they focus on trans people, there is no mention of the domestic abuse which many women face, or disabled people, who are a very vulnerable minority.
“To me, it just seems like propaganda and misinformation, which they are telling students to accept as part of a narrative being embedded in Scottish schools.
“They’re shepherding children towards believing things that aren’t true, which is the opposite of what education should be about.”
More than half of Scottish secondary schools, and dozens of primaries, have joined the charter scheme run by LGBT Youth Scotland, an organisation that endorses puberty blockers and claims there are at least 17 different genders.
Members must agree to allow the organisation to train school staff and some have rewritten policies to state that parents should not always be told if their child socially transitions to live as a member of the opposite sex, for example, by adopting a new name.
‘Scared of being vilified’
The parent added: “Scottish schools and the government now seem obsessed with normalising the idea you can be born in the wrong body, which I think is really destabilising for many children.
“There are a lot of LGBT flags around the schools, pronouns everywhere. A lot of parents and pupils are completely sick of it, but nobody wants to talk about it because they’re scared of being vilified.”
The teaching materials state that “assigned sex” is “based on reproductive organs”, which for trans people do not match “who they are”.
It adds: “Often transgender people have been abused and killed simply because of who they are.”
While statistics on UK murders of trans people are not officially collated, a fact check carried out by Channel 4 News in 2018 based on available data found that in Britain, “a trans person is less likely to be murdered than the average person”.
The school resource also states that since the EU referendum there has been a “large rise in the number of racist incidents in England against ethnic minorities” including murders.
Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns at the charity Sex Matters, described the school exercise as “disgraceful” and said it marked a “new low” in how sex and gender was being taught in Scottish schools.
‘Impressionable teenagers’
“It’s hard to fathom how anyone involved in developing educational material can be so irresponsible as to tell impressionable teenagers the falsehood that people who identify as the opposite sex are ‘often’ killed,” she added.
“Whoever drafted this worksheet has ignored the many ways in which women are disproportionately victims of crime. It seems designed to sideline women and girls, and position every other group in society as more in need of sympathy.”
Edinburgh council was approached for comment and said it was looking into the matter.