Muslim Parents Withdraw Children Following Forced LGBT Lessons In School
Children removed from the school equate to 80 percent of the school's entire enrolment
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Around 600 Muslim children have been taken out of school by their parents after they were forced into lessons on homosexuality and gender equality.
Parents have kept their children at home from Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, UK, to protest the 'No Outsiders' programme, which teaches children as young as four about LGBT lifestyles.
Children removed from the school equate to 80 percent of the school's entire enrolment, meaning the school is now practically empty.
Pupils have been pulled out of the classroom because the school was 'undermining parental rights and aggressively promoting homosexuality,' The Alum Community Rock Forum told Birmingham Live.
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"Dialogue, petitioning, and protests by parents have been repeated and arrogantly ignored," the forum said.
"Our children, our choice - work with parents not against them."
Weekly demonstrations about the school's controversial programme came just before the children were pulled out.
One demonstration was attended by 300 parents and children last month.
Some Muslims parents who were demonstrating claimed they would rather leave the UK than allow their children to attend Parkfield Community School and learn about LGBT.
In the demonstration, one child carried a sign saying 'Let kids be kids.'
The schools assistant head Andrew Moffat has come under fire for being the person behind the No Outsiders lessons.
Moffat created the scheme to teach children about British values and the Equality Act.
According to the daily mail: Pupils at the school – rated outstanding by Ofsted – have five of these lessons a year, covering areas described in the Act: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy or maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
The programme was first piloted at the school in 2014 and is now also taught at dozens of other schools in the country.
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Mr. Moffat, who is in a civil partnership, was made an MBE for services to equality and diversity in education in 2017.
He is currently shortlisted for a 'world's best teacher' award.
He resigned from a former teaching post at another school after a row with Christian parents over lessons challenging homophobia – and is now facing even more vociferous complaints from parents at Parkfield, where 98 percent of the 750 pupils are said to be from an Islamic background.
Mariam Ahmed, whose four-year-old daughter attends the school, organized a petition against the No Outsiders project.
She said: "What they are teaching is not right, they are too young. There are nine parts of the Act, and they only seem to be focusing on one, homosexuality, and that is wrong. They need to have an ethos which reflects the area.
It's not just because we are Muslims; there are Christians here too. We don't have a vendetta against homosexuals, and we respect the Act.
We respect that Mr. Moffat is gay and we are happy for him to teach."
One father at the school, whose six-year-old daughter attends the school, said his wife wanted to flee the country rather than let her daughter attend the lessons.
The man, who did not want to be named, said: 'My daughter has been asking questions my wife did not know how to answer.
"She is too young for this. A family who lives near me have already returned to Pakistan because of it."
Some of the parents said Islam did not allow homosexuality, while others said they were not against it, but blamed the teacher of promoting 'personal beliefs.
