James Beal Social, Affairs Editor | Steven Swinford, Political Editor | Nicola Woolcock, Education Editor, Wednesday November 22 2023, 12.01am GMT, The Times
Pupils should be allowed to identify as the opposite sex only in limited circumstances with appropriate safeguards in place, schools will be told under strict new rules.
New transgender guidance will establish a presumption against pupils changing their names, pronouns and uniforms in classrooms.
The guidance will also ensure that parents are informed if their children tell staff that they want to change their gender identity, because many schools are said to be keeping them in the dark.
Schools will also be told to abide by laws including the Equality Act and must keep toilets, changing rooms and sports separate. However, ministers dropped plans to ban pupils from changing their gender identity in schools completely after being warned that doing so would be illegal.
Draft guidance initially stated that pupils should be allowed to socially transition with the consent of their parents, meaning that they could choose another pronoun or uniform of the opposite sex.
The attorney-general said that an outright ban on social transitioning would be unlawful under the Equality Act and would require new legislation.
Campaigners accused the government of leaving schools at risk of legal challenges. Maya Forstater, from the campaign group Sex Matters, said: “They are passing the legal risk down to the schools rather than ... just saying, ‘Here are some clear, hard lines’.
“It leaves the door open for activist parents, or very unhappy children, to try to negotiate, which is exactly what schools don’t need. They need clear guidance.”
Bayswater Support, which offers help to parents of transgender children, said that schools should be cautious in allowing pupils to use supposedly harmless “nicknames” that might, to them, signify their new identity.
It said that “adult compliance with a new name can signify agreement with the child that the person they were is somehow defective or in need of replacement”, and that renaming should be seen as a safeguarding risk.
The guidance is understood to have been toughened up by Kemi Badenoch, the equalities minister, after a row over how far it should go. Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, is thought to have agreed the new draft, which is expected to be published within weeks.
Tory backbenchers and campaign groups, however, want the rules to go further. They insist that anything less than a total ban on social transitioning will create confusion for head teachers as well as let children down.
Nick Fletcher, a Tory MP who sits on the Commons education committee, said: “Affirming a child as the sex or gender they are not participates in a harmful delusion. It abnegates our adult safeguarding responsibility.”
A government spokesman said: “Given the complexity of the issue, we’re taking the time to make sure the guidance we provide is clear. That work is ongoing. Any degree of social transition could have significant consequences for a child, so it’s vital the right safeguards are in place.
“The government has been consistently clear about the importance of biological sex, and the guidance will reflect that. Schools’ guidance on this issue ... needs to make robustly clear that children cannot be affirmed as the sex they are not by adults in a school environment — and all children should be communicated with truthfully on this.”
The long-awaited transgender schools guidance was supposed to be published by the end of the summer term but was delayed by a dispute between ministers about how stringent it should be.
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