EqualiTeach and the Government Equalities Office

This post was updated on 13th May 2020 with the response we received from the Government Equalities Office.

We became aware early last week of a resource, Free to Be, produced by EqualiTeach which made inaccurate claims about Woman’s Place UK, Fair Play for Women and Transgender Trend; some of which may well prove to be defamatory.

In particular, we were concerned about the text in this, deliberately alarming, red box:

On Friday 1st May, we sent a joint letter with Fair Play for Women to the Government Equalities Office and Liz Truss MP, Minister for Women and Equalities, pointing out that the document not only egregiously misrepresents Woman’s Place UK and Fair Play for Women as organisations providing unreliable advice, but goes on to provide advice that is itself inaccurate and misleading.

We said:

“We believe that it can only be harmful for the GEO to be associated with a resource that misrepresents the law, makes unwarranted attacks on two well-respected campaigning organisations and flagrantly contradicts government policy.

We therefore ask that you publicly dissociate yourself from the document and ask EqualiTeach to withdraw the document from its website.”

We were very pleased to see that, only hours later, Liz Truss tweeted dissociating the Government from the EqualiTeach document:

“This document was not approved by government. It does not reflect government policy. The GEO logo should not be on it and I have asked for it to be removed.”

This has now been followed by a tweet from the Government Equalities Office itself:

“The LGBT guidance for primary schools published by EqualiTeach does not reflect government policy. GEO had no input into the document. The GEO logo has been removed.”

We are pleased by the prompt reactions of both Liz Truss and the GEO to this issue and we look forward to a formal response to our joint letter.

Woman’s Place UK

2nd May 2020

UPDATE:

This is the reply we received to our joint letter with Fair Play for Women from the Government Equalities Office:

Thank you for your email on 1 May regarding a resource published by EqualiTeach.

EqualiTeach was one of six organisations awarded funding under the previous Government todeliver programmes tackling anti-homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools across the country. This included producing guidance materials.

The guidance does not reflect government policy and we have asked EqualiTeach to remove the GEO logo.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

11th May 2020