Education body accused of 'indoctrinating' students with pro-trans messaging in GCSE Spanish lessons

Gender-critical campaigners have accused an education body of attempting to "indoctrinate" pupils with pro-trans messaging in GCSE Spanish lessons.

The criticism comes after a Pearson GCSE Spanish revision guide was found to contain phrases about admiring individuals who campaign for transgender rights.

The contested political viewpoints appear in the textbook aimed at 15 and 16-year-olds preparing for their Edexcel Spanish examination.

Pearson has defended the content, claiming the phrases represent optional examples rather than mandatory responses that students must memorise or reproduce.

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The rhetoric lies within a higher-level exam preparation section, teaching students to construct sentences beginning with "I follow/admire him/her because" in Spanish.

Among the suggested completions is the phrase "he/she fights/fought for transgender rights" - rendered as "lucho/luchó por los derechos de las personas transgénero".

It sits alongside more general options such as "he/she is a good role model" and "he/she supports other people".

Approximately 27,000 students took the Pearson Edexcel Spanish GCSE last year.

The company maintained the phrases serve merely as illustrative examples rather than content pupils are expected to learn or deploy in their examinations.

Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at the Sex Matters charity, said: "Pearson strikes again with material that presents trans activism as virtuous to students."

She argued the company's intentions were transparent, noting that while other sentence examples remained vague, the transgender rights phrase stood out as notably specific.

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"This is yet another example that reveals how extensive and subtle the indoctrination of children in schools is," Ms Joyce added.

Meanwhile, Kate Barker, chief executive of the LGB Alliance, described the approach as "incredibly inappropriate", accusing Pearson of indoctrinating children "in a live and contested political issue by sneaking it into the classroom via foreign language textbooks".

This is not the first time Pearson has faced scrutiny over its language examination materials.

The company's specifications for French, Spanish and German GCSEs permit students to employ gender-neutral pronouns, nouns and adjectives, using alternative spellings with symbols such as asterisks, colons and underscores to convey "non-binary identity".

Former French education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer labelled this guidance "absurd", noting such inclusive terminology is rarely used in France.

Pearson collaborated with Stonewall for several years, with the LGBT charity helping develop editorial guidelines on inclusion in 2018, before the partnership ended two years ago.

John Denning, head of education at the Christian Institute, urged Pearson to "take decisive action to root out this ideology, or schools will no longer able to trust it, either as an education publisher or as an exam board".

The content firmly defies the landmark Supreme Court ruling last year, which declared gender as strictly rooted in biological sex.

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