Tory leadership candidate backs Birmingham school parents

Esther McVey

A contender for the Tory leadership and position of Prime Minister has backed parents who want to remove their kids from LGBT education lessons.

Esther McVey MP was asked by Sky News about the ongoing dispute at Anderton Park Primary School in Birmingham.

Ms McVey said: “I’m being very clear: the final say is with the parents and if parents want to take their young children – that’s primary school children – out of  certain forms of sex education, relationship education, then that is down to them…

“I believe parents know best for their children and whilst they’re still children, and you’re talking there in primary schools, then really the parents need to have the final say in what they want their children to know.”

But she said she opposed protests being organised outside schools.

She said: “People shouldn’t be protesting outside primary schools – that’s young children going into school there. Everybody has to be a little bit more adult, a little bit more grown up in what they do there.”

Mainly Muslim parents in two Birmingham schools have been protesting for months against LGBT teaching to children as young as four. They say the schools are trying to change Muslim beliefs on homosexuality.

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On the other hand, the schools say all they are doing is teaching tolerance and diversity in modern Britain.

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