Photos by Rhiannon Adam

LONDON, U.K. Andrew Moffat never thought a lesson plan could be this controversial.

But when the primary school decided to teach children about diversity and LGBTQ rights, parents at his Birmingham school protested loudly. Beyond Brexit, the controversy in the Muslim-majority community was one of the biggest national news stories in the U.K. this year.

The primary school teacher was caught completely off-guard by the protests which began in January when one mother pulled her 10-year-old daughter out of the Parkfield Community School, telling a local paper that children were too young to be learning about same-sex marriage in the classroom.

Moffat, a finalist for one of the most acclaimed educational prizes, the $1 million Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize, had designed No Outsiders around a series of childrens books that promote equality across all sections of society.

But angry parents accused him of changing the moral position of family values and converting children with a heterosexual background towards believing that homosexuality is fine.

On a recent day, Moffat sat down with HuffPost U.K. to talk about what it was like to be at the center of the storm.

The conversation has been edited for clarity.

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How did No Outsiders start?

Id been teaching for eight years and I was doing lots of work on emotional literacy. I was doing lots of work on picture books and then a group started called No Outsiders, which was funded by the Economic Research Council [Britains oldest economics-based think tank]. It was a two-year academic project about how do you teach about sexuality in primary school and it was the first time anyone talked about doing this. [The ERC] put a call out to primary school teachers, and so I joined that group. So thats where it all came from.

No Outsiders ran for four years without complaint. Were you surprised at the level of reaction to the program this year?

Yes, the whole school was shocked. It came out of nowhere, especially because weve had four years of fantastic support from parents. Over the course of four years, weve had 38 No Outsiders workshops where parents have come in and looked at the books, and weve talked about it. Theyre saying its really, really important. To go from that to suddenly huge demonstrations with parents saying they didnt know about it was a shock.

Protesters have accused you of promoting personal beliefs. What would you say to that?

Id say Im not promoting anything, Im teaching about equality. And what No Outsiders enables us to do is teach about equality and diversity within a framework. And the framework is that every child knows that they belong, and thats the bottom line. You want every child to know that they belong in school.

I want children to be proud of who they are. And I think all parents want that for their children. Its an anti-bullying resource. No parent wants their child to be bullied.