The stated purpose of the #BeeWell survey is to measure pupil wellbeing. Shelley Charlesworth investigates the concealed gender identity indoctrination in their methods.
What is #BeeWell?
The #BeeWell survey began in 2021, co-founded by the University of Manchester, the Gregson Family Foundation and the mental health charity, Anna Freud. An early partner in devising the survey questions was the LGBT+ charity, The Proud Trust. Other unnamed LGBT organisations are also listed as helping so the language and concepts of transgender activism, (cisgender, sex-assigned at birth) are baked into the project design. It’s now 3 years into its 10-year plan and boasts a growing list of partners and funders, 140 at the last count.
The first survey in 2021 in Greater Manchester involved around 40,000 pupils aged 13-15 in 160 secondary schools. It’s since been rolled out in Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, Southampton, the London Borough of Havering, Milton Keynes and North Devon and Torridge. Each child fills in the online survey at school. This takes around 30 minutes. There’s an opt-out for parents, though only those reading the small print would see that their child will be asked about their ‘gender identity and sexuality.’
Its ambition is not just to collect data on children but to “drive action across society to improve young people’s wellbeing.” #BeeWell wants to “measure wellbeing rigorously, regularly and consistently, so that we can implement targeted solutions to overcome barriers to young people’s progress.”
This is a lofty aim, linking data to social action, so it’s right to ask what are those ‘targeted solutions’ and what sort of ‘action’ is #BeeWell advocating? The assumption behind the project is that there is a shared vision of good ‘social action.’ But as we’ll show, a closer look at the survey design shows that divisive gender politics are built into the project.
Their foundational slogan that “young people’s wellbeing is as important as their academic achievement” also needs unpicking. #BeeWell advertises its data as a resource for schools that will improve their pupils’ wellbeing. The carrot for each school taking part is “data at a population-level (and various groups of their pupil population – for example, boys and girls, different year groups) through our online data dashboard.”
However, most parents may believe that a school’s main job is to teach, for schools to be places of community learning and cohesion, not to be a replacement for the family as the locus of care for children’s wellbeing.
Therapy creep in education
While there’s a long history of some schools being set up on a therapeutic model, what we are seeing more recently is an attempt to introduce this model into all schools, regardless of the intake and parent choice.
The mindfulness movement was one such attempt. It was sold as a way of solving the increase in mental health problems in children as well as help in schools with attendance and behavioural problems.
There’s no doubt the problems are real. The NHS reports that 1 in 5 of 8-16-year-olds has a probable mental health problem. Persistent absence from school hovers around the 20% rate for schools in England.
But the truth is mindfulness as a method of tacking mental health problems just doesn’t work. This may be why the Mindfulness in Schools Project (MiSP) charity has seen a recent downward trajectory in its finances. However, their courses can still be found on the ‘special offers’ page of the head teachers’ union website, the NAHT, including one which trains teachers and classroom assistants in mindfulness for 3-6 year olds. Age is no barrier to being mindful it seems.
The established PHSE provider Jigsaw is less overt about its mindful approach but claims its Early Years programme will “lay the foundations for mindfulness and self‑regulation.”
Not only does mindfulness not work, it’s also been shown to have adverse effects on children who have or are at risk of a mental health problem.
Now the focus has shifted to wellbeing, a state of being happy and comfortable, an expanded form of wellness that takes account of psychological functioning as well as physical.
Collecting data on children’s wellbeing is not new. While earlier data measured children’s wellbeing in largely material terms, ideas about what constitutes wellbeing have since expanded. In 2011 the Annual Population Survey began asking children four simple questions on life satisfaction, feelings about being worthwhile, happiness and anxiety.
Similarly, the annual UK Household Longitudinal Study asks children aged 10-15 about their families, friends, school and feelings. This data was collected on the basis of sex, with respondents being given the choice of either male or female.
But changes are underway. The latest Children’s well-being measures published by the ONS warns that not all its source data uses the same definition to capture sex. For instance, one major source for the ONS, The Children’s Society, had a ‘self-describe option’ in 2022 and ‘prefer not to say’ in 2023 for the ‘gender’ questions.
But #BeeWell is part of a movement which gathers data only on the basis of self-ID. However, unlike the ONS, #BeeWell’s purpose in data collection is to tie their results to social activism in education. And because the survey questions teach children about gender identity as if it were true, it may be that the resulting gender mindfulness is not doing children any good either, as the survey results suggest.
Teaching children about gender identity
The survey begins by asking about gender identity, not sex.
“Are you a
Girl (including a trans girl);
Boy (including a trans boy);
Non-binary;
I would describe myself in another way;
Not sure”
While this is posed as a question, it is in fact extreme political indoctrination. It is teaching girls that they are girls because of identity and not biology, that some boys may in fact be girls. And conversely that some girls may be boys. It also collapses two protected characteristics of the 2010 Equality Act, sex and gender reassignment, and in doing so conceals sex discrimination.
This type of flawed methodology is used by activist LGBT groups like Stonewall and others. In our analysis of the Stonewall School Report 2017 we showed how concealing the sex marker hid the risks of self-harm and suicidality among girls. #BeeWell’s methodology does the same, and this type of survey gets children to collude unwittingly in the deception.
The next question is about ‘gender modality.’ This is a term invented by Canadian trans activist, queer theorist and academic, Florence Ashley. The #BeeWell researchers rely on this definition in their academic papers but it’s doubtful either pupils or teachers would know what to make of it.[1]
The questionnaire simply asks children if they are transgender, using the familiar language of trans activism.
“Some young people are transgender. This means that their gender is different to the one they were assigned at birth (e.g., someone who was assigned male at birth but is a girl, or someone who is non-binary and is not a girl or a boy). Do you consider yourself to be transgender?”
Gender reappears with question 108: “How often do people make you feel bad because of your gender?” Children are unlikely at this stage to know whether this refers to being a girl or boy, or being ‘transgender’ given the gender identity question.
Of the remaining questions, 56 out of 120 ask in detail about emotions and mental health. These are taken from Me and My Feelings, a tool for assessing depression in children. Pupils tick one of three boxes, Never, Sometimes, Always to questions such as “I am lonely; Nobody likes me; I cry a lot; I am unhappy; I get very angry; I break things on purpose.”
Questions like these are likely to stir up strong emotions if a child answers ‘Always’ to any of them. Using this tool for a group of children sitting in class with no help or quick follow-up is likely to cause harm as the work on the adverse effects of mindfulness has shown.
The survey is in effect a primer in genderism. There is no space for a child to say what sex they are and some children are prompted to think they may have no sex at all as they are ‘not a girl or a boy.’
That the transgender question was put in at the request of The Proud Trust is made clear in this footnote citing changes to the survey.
“Additional questions asking young people if they consider themselves to be transgender, following feedback from the #BeeProud project.”
#BeeWell prides itself on feedback saying its Youth Steering Group “is central to discussions and decision-making. And it has the power and funding to commission activities..” The teenagers suggested physical activities and a neighbourhood forest school. The recommendations from #BeeWell for more LGBT+ content in RSE lessons and gender affirmative healthcare has come from the adults on the project, not the children.
What do the #BeeWell findings reveal?
All three #BeeWell survey reports so far have headlined gender identity and sexual orientation as the biggest inequalities in terms of wellbeing, higher in fact than income inequality as measured by free school meals, ethnicity, or special educational needs status.
“Overall, life Satisfaction and mental wellbeing scores of young people surveyed are in line with expected scores based on comparable studies. However, there are persistent inequalities in wellbeing scores, particularly across gender and sexual orientation.
Gay and lesbian young people reported experiencing the lowest wellbeing and reported that they are least satisfied with their lives, followed closely by bisexual and pansexual young people, and those who identify as transgender and gender-diverse.”
The above from the summary of the 2023 findings echoes the two previous years. Gay teenagers and those expressing some sort of gender related distress (transgender and gender-diverse according to #BeeWell) are faring worse than other children.
These figures while giving cause for concern are not surprising. It’s difficult being a gay teenager and those presenting as the opposite sex do get picked on, bullied. Life is harder for them. But is the data collection method itself part of the problem?
There is more detail here about the 2021 #BeeWell survey. 37,978 children from 165 schools took part. 7.08% said they were transgender. This means 2,688 children claiming to be trans, equating to roughly 16 trans identifying children on average in every one of the schools who took part in the survey. This is just not credible.
The ONS census of 2021 showed that of 262,000 people over the age of 16, 0.05% of the population identified as transgender. And this statistic is now known to be unreliable due to confusion over the wording of the question on ‘gender identity.’
Curious researchers ought to have asked why 7.08% of schoolchildren in the Greater Manchester area believe they are trans.
The figures for the differentiation in wellbeing for girls and boys are equally suspect. #BeeWell used local authority records for the sexes for the total number of children taking part in 2021. These came from the information given when a child starts schools, based on their birth certificate. As no child can get a Gender Recognition Certificate they are reliable and show a rough 50/50 split in the sex ratio. Despite this #BeeWell bases its findings on this breakdown of the sex category: 40.03% female and 41.71 male.
Where have the remaining 18.26% gone? Are they boys or girls? Some ticked the non-binary box, some preferred not to say. But the category female itself is not robust as it includes ‘trans-girls’; that is, boys who identify as girls. And what percentage of the girls have been counted as boys in the male category?
Clearly it will not be the first time that the #BeeWell cohort have come across the concepts of gender identity and being transgender. Every part of popular culture and social media is suffused with the idea that identity is a pick and mix option, unmoored from the body. These cultural forces constantly tell children they are at risk of harm from a wider transphobic society.
But rather than holding children in reality, #BellWell lends authority to gender ideology. Children cannot fill in this survey unless they go along with the idea of gender identity. The questionnaire tells them that this is the truth, a boy can be a girl. There is nowhere for children to be truthful about sex and many of the 13-15 year-olds won’t even notice that the assumption is being made. This is invisible indoctrination.
#BeeWell and gender activism
The discussions over the last ten years about the rise in the numbers of teenagers, especially girls, identifying as the opposite sex seems to have passed the #BeeWell team by, despite their project generating many academic papers. It is as if the scandal at the Tavistock’s GIDS, its subsequent closure, and the Cass Review all happened in a parallel universe.
In a paper looking at trans identified adolescents within a minority stress framework the authors conclude by calling for affirmative gender healthcare:
“universal intervention is required. This includes work to reduce institutionalized forms of prejudice and discrimination, including policies and institutions that pathologize gender diversity, fail to recognize the value of gender affirmative care and/or create delays in access to healthcare through increased bureaucracy (e.g. unnecessary assessments and evaluation periods)”
Despite its academic roots the way #BeeWell operates is in line with all the other groups that promote the TQ+ agenda. The Proud Trust is promoted as a source for training and support, and is quoted on the #BeeWell blog calling for an “ all-encompassing ban on conversion therapy” and the “de-platforming of anti-transgender voices” and stoking fears that “ the media and the political institutions hate us, and wish to see us eliminated from public life.”
The Proud Trust’s own kitemark scheme, the Rainbow Flag Award which pushes gender ideology in schools is listed as a useful resource on the #BeeWell website, as is Kooth, the online mental health platform. Another LGBTQ+ partner of #BeeWell is the Hampshire based Breakout Youth, which like The Proud Trust is not Cass compliant and opposes the NHS ban on puberty blockers, claiming “this medication offers a safe pause on puberty, giving young people valuable time to explore their gender identity.”
Labour’s general election win in July 2024 was welcomed as an opportunity by #BeeWell. They saw it as a chance to get Labour to prioritise LGBTQ+ issues as, based on their data, ‘gender and sexuality minoritised youth’ suffer the worst mental health.
Academic lead for #BeeWell, Professor Neil Humphrey at the University of Manchester is enthusiastic about the links with The Proud Trust, writing on his blog: “By working with organisations such as The Proud Trust, who are experts in the inequalities our data has highlighted, we can combine our knowledge to provide support for young LGBT+ people.”
He wants to see more LGBT+ inclusive content in RSE lessons, unaware it seems that much of the T+ content in school is driving the gender-related distress that his survey is recording and reinforcing.
There is no sense that Humphrey or the #BeeWell team have engaged on any level with the Cass Review, let alone the latest statutory safeguarding guidance Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSiE) from the Department for Education, which alerts teachers to the potential safeguarding concerns when a child says they are ‘trans.’
We’ve written in detail about what Dr Cass has to say about the gender-affirming model and the implications for schools. This is our conclusion:
“If we were to sum up the overall finding of the Cass Review it would be that ‘gender affirming care’ has failed children. Without clear evidence it is safe, the gender affirming model used in schools is a social experiment that risks starting a child on a pathway that may seriously harm that child’s future. The new clinics have dropped this model, now schools must follow suit.”
#BeeWell is going in the opposite direction. Its data is driven by harmful ideology. It tells young teenagers that they may be trans and to see whatever is difficult and distressful in their lives through that lens. Its programmes for change, linked to some of the most extreme gender ideologues, like The Proud Trust, will only compound that distress.
The wider picture
#BeeWell is at the forefront of a push to establish a Universal Wellbeing Measurement for children in England. The campaign is under the umbrella of Pro Bono Economics (PBE) which has assembled a coalition of the biggest children’s charities and advocacy groups including the NSPCC, The Children’s Society, Children at the Table, Coram, The National Children’s Bureau and Anna Freud.
Perhaps the driving force for this initiative is David Gregson, co-founder and Chair of #BeeWell and also a Pro Bono Economics trustee.
PBE is also in the wellbeing game: “we use economic analysis and the unique insight provided by our connection to the social sector to help charities, funders, firms and policymakers to collectively tackle the causes and consequences of low personal wellbeing in the UK. We do this in order to end low personal wellbeing in the United Kingdom.”
The coalition wants to bring NHS Digital and the ONS on board. With just a few exceptions all believe in gender identity ideology. The Children’s Society speaks for the majority:
“A young person might identify as cisgender, transgender, non-binary or intersex. Whatever they choose is up to them. It is our job to listen, educate ourselves and be as open as we can.”
If such a measurement were to be put in place using #BeeWell’s survey methodology it will distort data and harm children. The Department for Education must make sure that this doesn’t happen and that all schools are aware that ticking a ‘transgender’ box is a safeguarding issue not an open door for extreme political ideology.
[1] “Gender modality is about modalities of gender, about different ways of being our gender which do not alter its fundamental essence. The terminology recognises the difference between, say, trans and cis women, while at the same time recognising that this difference is not one that makes trans women any less or worse women. Whereas trans and cis women have a different gender modality, they share the same gender identity: woman.” This is part of Ashley’s rambling and circular explanation.
Thank you so much, Shelley. Your detailed investigation and critical analysis of these suspicious sources is so valuable. The self-declared “experts” in child mental health are no such thing. They are groomers for “gender identity ideology”. I will Tweet and re-Tweet.
Excellent analysis
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/a-spoonful-of-sugar
Dusty