February 1 2025 - 3:30pm
“The children of tomorrow must not grow up with the prejudices of today,” according to the Scottish Government-funded charity TIE (Time for Inclusive Education). The charity, which specializes in “LGBT-inclusive education”, has been instrumental in shaping aspects of the Scottish educational curriculum and is now launching a new resource for teachers, the Digital Discourse Initiative, focused on tackling online misinformation and misogyny.
The charity cites the rise of young people being targeted by the “manosphere” and what it calls “the memeification of hate” online, where “forms of prejudice are being promoted as funny or countercultural.” It has consulted both the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think tank specializing in online disinformation and extremism, and Zero Tolerance, a charity dedicated to ending male violence against women, for their insight into the “radical misogyny” boys and young men are consuming in gaming and social media circles. Zero Tolerance, it should be noted, claims that “trans and non-binary rights are integral to, and contribute to, feminism.”
However, TIE is an organization that for some parent groups, notably SUE (the Scottish Union for Education), raises red flags. In 2024, its guidance for schools on how to tackle “anti-LGBT” bullying and promote an “inclusive” education was heavy on rhetoric yet light on substance. It held that “homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are continuing issues within education settings.” Yet the guidance didn’t go into detail about how to deal with teachers or pupils who do not subscribe to the unfalsifiable notion of “gender identity”. According to the SUE’s most recent newsletter, parents are not able to withdraw their children from LGBT-inclusive education.
The introductory video to the Digital Discourse Initiative project states that “children don’t yet have the cognitive tools to tell the difference between factual and false information […] they are still forming their own sense of identity.” If this is the case, then it is proper to ask whether kids who say they are transgender and wish to socially transition know fully what they are doing. Yet the charity’s guidance indicates a fully affirmative approach, in which “staff should be aware of the potential consequences for a young person if their identity is shared without their consent.”
It is vital that Scottish schools — indeed, any schools — are not hostile places where children bully each other. But social education is only part a school’s responsibility — and in almost all other parts of education, Scottish schools are failing. While TIE worries about the children of tomorrow growing up with the prejudices of previous generations, they say nothing about the children of tomorrow having noticeably poorer literacy and numeracy skills than those who came before. In December 2023, it was reported that one in four primary school children were not meeting literacy standards and this has shown few signs of improving. There remains a shameful attainment gap between children growing up in the most and least deprived areas. School absence and truancy statistics are also glaring, with 40% of secondary school pupils reported as persistently absent, meaning they miss at least 10% of classes.
Scottish education, once globally respected, has been in decline since the introduction of the “Curriculum for Excellence” system in 2010, which prioritizes skills over knowledge. Spending per pupil in Scotland is at least 18%, or £1,300, higher than elsewhere in the UK, yet Scottish pupils have fallen behind their English counterparts in both math and science. Then there’s the crisis in behavior: the extent of disrespect and aggression from pupils and lack of support from senior management has resulted in teachers taking industrial action.
Of course, some factors are outside institutional control. A child’s home life and parental support will impact greatly on their relationship with education, and we have still not recovered from the disaster of school closures during Covid-19.
If the SNP government is serious about tackling the decline in Scotland’s education system, perhaps it should give fewer resources to ideologically-driven lobby groups and return to a knowledge-based approach. The dangers online and the corrosive content on the internet is undoubtedly affecting young people globally. But unlike educating Scottish children, that is something Holyrood has almost no control over. It urgently needs to reassess its priorities.
