The UK Government consultation on the draft Guidance for Schools and Colleges: Gender Questioning Children was published on 19th December 2023.
The consultation runs until 12th March 2024
The Government has published two documents to support this consultation. There is the Draft Guidance, and there is a Consultation Guide which describes the consultation process and provides 42 questions as a framework for responses and submissions.
Our Initial Response to the consultation can be found here.
What follows is our full response to the consultation which has been made with reference to our Universal Guidance as the benchmark.
The first ten questions are around the identity and affiliation of the respondent, so we start with question 11.
Structure and overall guidance
This section covers overall structure of the guidance and asks about what your views are and possible implementation issues for schools and colleges.
11. Do you think the structure of the guidance is easy to follow?
[✔] No
12. If you answered no, how could the structure of the guidance change to make it easier to follow?
The structure of the guidance can be improved by taking an approach which builds from a solid foundation consisting of the law and incontrovertible facts. While the idea of setting out ‘Overarching Principles’ is a sound one, these can be clearer and more emphatic. There is no need to mention how to deal with certain tenets of gender identity ideology in this first section. Instead, more focus needs to be given to existing laws which protect children while in the care of schools and colleges and which uphold parental rights. Taking this approach the guidance can start with those functions which schools and colleges ‘must’ or ‘must not’ perform. The non-statutory ‘should’ components can then be scaffolded upon a sound framework of laws and facts. The following references to laws and facts are intended as examples, and the guidance should be expected to be complete.
The Children Act 1989 provides a legal foundation for upholding the interests of the child and the responsibilities of the parents. These principles can be used, in conjunction with the knowledge that allowing a transgender identity places a child in harm’s way, to provide a solid foundation for firmer, safer, guidance.
Schools and colleges need to be reminded of their duties and obligations under Section 3 of the Children Act 1989 and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights as incorporated in the Human Rights Act 1998.
The fact that human sex is binary and immutable is not contested. This must be foundational to the guidance.
S406 of the Education Act 1996 prohibits the promotion of partisan political views. The guidance must make clear that the idea that a child can be transgender is such a view.
Section 4, Language and Terminology belongs either before the ‘Overarching Principles’ or as an Appendix.
Parental rights to seek legal redress against schools or colleges that fail to fulfil their duties needs to be made clear at the outset. The method for doing so also needs to be published. Schools need guidance on how to respond to parents asking “who do I sue”. The presence of such guidance will discourage those ideologues who would subvert the guidance. Already, many unions and activist teachers have expressed their intention to do just that.
13. Does this guidance provide practical advice to support schools and colleges to meet their duties effectively?
[✔] No
14. If you answered no, how could we improve deliverability placed on schools and colleges whilst still providing for schools to meet their duties?
It must be made clear to schools and colleges that a student expressing a wish to adopt a transgender identity has already been the victim of a significant safeguarding failure. The parents must be involved immediately, and a safeguarding investigation launched. There is a very small risk that the safeguarding failure stems from home (e.g. a primary school parent might exhibit factitious disorder imposed on another (previously called Munchausen syndrome by proxy), or a secondary school student might have been made susceptible to grooming into transgender ideation as a result of abuse occurring in the home). In such circumstances, the safeguarding investigation can proceed accordingly. In most cases the safeguarding failure will have arisen from the student’s interactions with peers, most likely online or in the school setting. Activist teachers are also a known vector. Schools need to be aware of these causal factors, and it must be made clear that they are liable for a breach of duty of care should the safeguarding failure be theirs.
Responding to Requests and Engaging parents
This section covers parents and carers involvement and asks for your views.
15. Does this section provide enough detail to help schools and colleges support children?
[✔] No
16. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance to support a child? [tick all that apply]
[✔] How schools and colleges should involve parents in decisions
[✔] How schools and colleges should manage engagement with parents with different feelings or views to their child
[✔] When schools and colleges should seek specialist advice or support
[✔] How schools should put in place a ‘watchful waiting’ period before acting on a child’s request
[✔] How schools and colleges can identify what issues may impact the wider school or college community
[✔] How schools and colleges should handle decisions that impact on the wider school and college community.
[✔] The law
Schools and colleges must involve parents immediately when they become aware of a child having transgender ideation.
The decision must always be to not socially transition a child. Schools must act in the best interests of the child which is always to discourage transgender ideation.
Schools and colleges must support parents who wish to protect their children from gender identity ideology; and the child must see the parents and the school as being in lockstep over this. Too many children have been profoundly harmed by schools getting this wrong.
A simple, straightforward, ‘no gender transition’ rule in schools should negate the need for any further specialist advice and support on that subject. However, safeguarding investigations might lead to particular issues being uncovered that might require additional input, e.g. keeping children safe online.
It is important to recognise that ‘watchful waiting’ is itself a medical intervention, just like ‘social affirmation’, and one schools are unqualified to prescribe without first seeking the consent of parents. It must be made clear that schools are not empowered to decide to take a ‘watchful waiting’ approach without consulting parents. Moreover, we must all be made aware that ’watchful waiting’ is a valid course of action for pre-pubertal transgender ideation, however for adolescents, different approaches are required. Ideally, an adolescent presenting with transgender ideation can be helped to desist with rapid psychosocial intervention and firm boundaries – hence the need to inform parents as early as possible. If this opportunity is missed, then ‘supportive waiting’ becomes the preferred approach. Supportive waiting is similar to watchful waiting but includes environmental and opportunistic interventions.
Impacts on the wider school and college community (presumably, when a child is allowed to socially transition) need to be laid out clearly in the guidance so they are obvious to leadership teams. These considerations (which can be included as an appendix) will highlight how socially affirming just one student has a massive knock-on effect across the community. It is known that adolescent transgender ideation is socially contagious. School leaders of any worth will know the perils of making exceptions to the rules and how such inverse discrimination can rapidly make a school unmanageable.
With such a contentious issue, against a backdrop of ideologically captured unions, aggressive third-party organisations, and activist teachers, it is better for all concerned if the decision-making burden is taken away from schools and made in this guidance: no social transition in schools.
17. Think about the points outlined for schools and colleges to consider on pages 9-11 regarding making decisions about how to respond to requests for social transition.
Are these points helpful?
[✔] No
18. If you answered no, what considerations would be more helpful for schools and colleges to consider? For example, when assessing whether to support a child wishing to socially transition, do you think different weight should be given to the views of parents, the age of the child, the long- and short-term impacts on the child, the impact on other children, and any relevant clinical or medical advice?
The text “If there is no change being requested, teachers can listen respectfully about a child’s feelings without automatically alerting parents,” is entirely inappropriate. This is because transgender ideation is something that can be ‘nipped in the bud’ by rapid, appropriate, intervention. Allowing a child to ruminate on issues of gender is harmful.
Also, “If a school or college wishes to accommodate degrees of social transition” is not a scenario that should be permitted. Concretising an incongruent ‘gender’ identity leads to demonstrable and profound harm. Ideally, it should be prohibited by statute.
‘Make Parents Aware’ must come before “Allow for Watchful Waiting”.
This is a positive statement: “they should note that safeguarding requires an individual to consider what is in the best interests of the child, which may not be the same as the child’s wishes.”
Requiring parental consent “in the vast majority of cases” opens a loophole which will be exploited. It is a fact that children do lie about the nature of their home life to get on the transition pathway. Instead, the guidance should require parental consent in all cases. Further parental involvement must only ever be precluded if the safeguarding investigation into how the child came to acquire transgender ideation indicates such a course of action is in the best interests of the child. except the demonstrably exceptional, and the onus placed on the school or college to demonstrate the proven justification for the exception. This contingency would not be required if, of course, social affirmation were prohibited in school and college settings. It must be made clear that social transition is never in the best interests of the child.
Consideration needs to be given to the fact that the problematic parents will be the ones who want their child to be socially transitioned. How should schools and colleges handle those situations?
Generally, the age of the child does not grant any agency in their desire to be seen as the opposite sex, this is because the nature of transgender ideation in adolescents is that it is cult-like and those pushing it do so on the most vulnerable. There are recorded cases of adults over 25 falling prey to this social contagion and subsequently regretting it. Arguably, society has a duty of care to all those at risk.
Advocating for a ‘cautious approach’ is inadequate. Instead of caution, SAFEGUARDING must be the guiding principle.
This guidance needs to have a stronger ethical and moral grounding. No child should be obliged to participate in a lie about another person’s sex.
Registration of Name and Sex
This section covers how schools record the name and sex of pupils and asks for your views related to how schools record the name and sex of a gender questioning pupil.
19. Does this section on page 12 provide enough detail for schools and colleges to ensure each child is recorded correctly and according to the Education Act 1996, Pupil Registration (England) Regulations 2006, GDPR and the Data Protection Act?
[✔] Yes
20. If you answered no, what further information should be included to help schools and colleges?
Changing Names
This section covers names and asks for your views related to a gender questioning child’s request to change their name.
21. Does this section on page 12 provide enough detail for schools and colleges to respond to a child’s requests to change their name?
[✔] No
22. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance to respond to a child’s requests to change their name? [tick all that apply]
[✔] When schools and colleges might refuse a request in relation to a child changing their name
[✔] What factors schools and colleges should take into account.
There must be a presumption that schools will always refuse a request in relation to a child changing their name when that name is one that is associated with the opposite sex to that of the child. This is because such a name change will almost certainly lead to incorrect pronouns being used and thus a social gender transition will have occurred.
Pronouns
This section covers pronouns and asks for your views related to a child who is questioning their gender and makes a request to change their pronouns.
23. Does this section on page 13 provide enough detail for schools and colleges to respond to a child’s requests to change their pronouns?
[✔] No
24. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance to respond to a child’s requests to change their pronouns? [tick all that apply]
[✔] When schools and colleges should refuse a request in relation to a child changing their pronouns
[✔] What factors schools and colleges should take into account.
[✔] How schools and colleges should respond to other children and staff who do not wish to use different pronouns
The presumption not to allow non-standard pronouns for an individual needs to extend throughout the education system and not be restricted to primary schools. It is known that the greatest risk to transgender ideation by social contagion is in secondary schools and sixth-form colleges.
The statement “if they are confident that the benefit to the individual child outweighs the impact on the school community” requires a judgement to be made. Activists will attempt to cajole schools and colleges, and their staff, that the impact on the school community is trivial compared to the supposed benefit to the individual child. Activist teachers cannot be trusted to make such judgements in good faith. Moreover, there is no benefit to the individual child beyond short-term pacification. Guidance here needs to be firmer, it needs to recognise the perils of allowing judgement calls by unqualified or politically motivated individuals.
It must be made clear that there is a default position, and it is that different pronouns should not be accommodated by any student or staff.
Normalising the tenets of gender identity ideology makes efforts by those wishing to safeguard children from it, and its known harmful outcomes, far more difficult than is desired. This is because such normalisation affords the ideology a legitimacy that is weaponised by those captured by it to have their beliefs ‘validated’. In short, children challenge their parents with the fact that society recognises gender identity. Schools must defend children from such demonstrably false and harmful ideas.
Single-Sex Spaces – Toilets, Changing Rooms and Showers and Boarding and Residential Accommodation
This section covers toilets, changing rooms and showers and asks about its clarity.
25. Does this section on pages 14 and 15 provide enough detail for schools and colleges to respond when a child who is questioning their gender makes a request to use facilities (e.g. toilets, changing rooms, showers and boarding and residential accommodation) designated for the opposite sex?
[✔] No
26. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance? [tick all that apply]
[✔] Toilets
[✔] Changing rooms
[✔ ] The law
The law that separate toilets for boys and girls aged 8 years and over are to be provided must be clarified such that the definition of toilets includes the washing facilities. In recent years there has been a rash of schools rebuilding toilets to be mixed-sex washing areas with separate lavatory cubicles in the mistaken view that such facilities are necessary and legal.
The School Premises (England) Regulations 2012 must be amended such that the phrase in Section 4.2 is changed from: “Separate toilet facilities for boys and girls aged 8 years or over“ to: “Separate toilet and washing facilities for boys and girls aged 8 years or over”.
The term ‘biological sex’ is unnecessary and it implies there might be another kind, ‘sex’ is sufficient.
There must be a presumption that alternative changing facilities or arrangements are not provided. Students should be expected to overcome discomfort when they are in a safe, same-sex space. This approach is critically important for students who are particularly vulnerable to, or have, transgender ideation because those students must overcome any dysmorphic feelings.
27. Think about the circumstances provided in the guidance on pages 14 and 15, outlining the option for schools and colleges to find alternative facilities. Does the guidance provide enough support to help schools and colleges determine how to offer alternative facilities?
[✔] Yes
28. Does this section provide enough detail for schools and colleges to support children who do not wish to use accommodation that is designated for their sex in relation to boarding and overnight accommodation?
[✔] No
29. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance?
The guidance must make it clear that sharing a room with a child of the opposite sex must not be allowed, and that alternative arrangements must not compromise the safety, comfort, privacy or dignity of the child, or of other pupils. The wording in the draft guidance is ‘should’.
Uniform
This section covers uniforms in schools and colleges and asks you about your views on uniforms in relation to children questioning their gender.
30. Does this section on page 16 provide enough detail for schools and colleges to respond to a gender-questioning child who makes a request in relation to uniform?
[✔] No
31. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance to respond to a gender-questioning child, who makes a request in relation to uniform? [tick all that apply]
[✔] How schools and colleges should make a decision about a gender questioning child who makes a request in relation to uniform
[✔] When schools and colleges might refuse a request in relation to a child wearing a different uniform
School uniform policy tends to be a defining factor for behaviour policy and a school’s ethos. Any exceptions granted can quickly become unmanageable in a large secondary school setting. Apart from fostering a shared identity and providing a basis for behavioural standards, uniformity prevents the creation of special castes of students. Accommodating variations for gender non-conformity can serve as an instance of ‘validation’ for a student with transgender ideation and must be avoided.
Physical Education and Sport
This section covers your views on how the guidance will support teachers in relation to children who are questioning their gender and PE and sport in schools and colleges.
32. Does this section on page 17 provide enough information on what to do if a gender questioning child asks to participate in a certain sport or activity with the opposite sex?
[✔] No
33. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance to support children taking part in PE or sport? [tick all that apply]
[✔] How schools and colleges should make a decision about whether a child can take part in a certain sport or activity
[✔] When schools and colleges should refuse a request in relation to a child taking part in a certain sport or activity
“For all sports where physical differences between the sexes threatens the safety of children, schools and colleges should adopt clear rules which mandate separate-sex participation. There can be no exception to this.” – if there can be no exception, schools and colleges must adopt clear rules.
Schools and colleges must not accommodate requests to participate in PE lessons or sporting competitions that are intended for the opposite sex.
34. Think about the circumstances provided in the guidance on page 15, outlining the need for fairness and safety in PE or sport. Does the guidance provide enough support to help schools and colleges determine what is fair and safe?
[✔] Yes
35. If you answered no, what further support should be included to help schools and colleges determine what is fair and safe in PE or sport?
This should refer to page 17.
Single-sex schools
This section asks about your views on how the guidance covers admissions to single sex schools.
36. Does the guidance on the application of the Equality Act to admissions to single sex schools on page 18 provide enough information to support single sex schools in making decisions about the admission of children who are questioning their gender?
[✔] Yes
37. If you answered no, in which of the following areas do schools and colleges need further guidance to support effective decisions on the admission of children who are questioning their gender [tick all that apply]
[ ] The law
[✔] Something else
Avoid the use of ‘biological sex’ it implies there is another kind, the word sex is sufficient.
38. To individuals responding who work in, or represent single-sex schools:
Has your single-sex school previously had to make a decision on the admission to your school of a child of the opposite sex (regardless of whether or not the school admitted the child)?
Not applicable.
39.If yes, was that child questioning their gender?
Not applicable.
Public Sector Equality Duty [PSED]
40. Do you have any comments regarding the potential impact of the guidance on those who share a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, whether negative or positive? How could any adverse impact be reduced and are there any other ways we could advance equality of opportunity or foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic and those who do not?
Best practice guidance which is objective, logical and safe, and which enables schools and colleges to fulfil their duty of care lawfully, cannot be drafted without the removal of ‘gender reassignment’ as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010. Thus, the protected characteristic ‘gender reassignment’ needs removal from that Act of Parliament as a matter of urgency.
The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 affords a legal recognition to transgenderism that inhibits the upholding of reality in schools and college settings. The law is unnecessary and requires urgent repeal.
41. Do you have any comments on the overall approach of the guidance?
[✔] Yes
If yes, please detail below and try to limit your response to under 250 words.
The draft appears to have been constructed without being driven by the best interests of the child – which for the sake of clarity are for the child to be protected from the known harms of gender identity ideology.
Furthermore, the guidance appears not to have sought to maximise the opportunities to keep children safe in education as afforded by current law.
There appears to be little recognition or understanding of the aetiology of transgender ideation, how it is transmitted, how it evolves in the individual, how it can be prevented, and how it can be mitigated, and even cured. Schools and colleges need to know the basics of this before they can comprehend what is in the best interests of the child. The Department for Education must have a far deeper understanding than it does at present. Regrettably, it is the cognitive capture of the NHS which has prevented this knowledge from being widely researched and disseminated. Nevertheless, the onus is on the government to establish the facts, establish what is right, and act accordingly.
In summary, this guidance has been drafted without two crucial ingredients:
1) A safeguarding first approach, and
2) A firm grasp of the nature of the problem
42. Do you have any further comments you would like to share on the draft of the guidance that have not been captured above?
[✔] No
Additional responses which could be useful in formulating your own one can be found from Sex Matters and Transgender Trend.
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/responding-to-the-schools-guidance-consultation/
https://www.transgendertrend.com/gender-questioning-children-consultation-response/
