Are school trip dormitories single sex?

Supervising secondary age students on overnight stays is difficult enough without introducing safeguarding problems.
Frankly, if accommodation is not single sexed, I can't imagine that any teacher with any sense would volunteer to lead such a trip.

Who is your DSL? Is that the person in the wider organisation? If so then I think you should just refuse. I would say that you are uncomfortable with the safeguarding arrangements and cite recent court cases if necessary.

I think kids with gender identity issues should be with their friends, for example my daughter shared with her best friend (who's identifies as a trans boy).
I think this is the way the scouts deal with it too. It's not perfect but as long as everyone consents?????

Hi OP.

In my capacity as a parent I have brought this up with an organisation who stated that accomm on a trip would be 'same gender' (i.e. mixed sex! ).

I pointed out that under the Equality Act 2010 biological sex is a protected category and the Act contains a number of single sex exemptions. Department of Education 2018 guidance:

“With regards to boarding accommodation, Schedule 23 of the Equality Act 2019 allows for separation by sex providing the same standard of accommodation is provided for both boys and girls.”

I also pointed out that EHRC clarification in 2018 states that under-18s cannot legally transition and are therefore legally the sex they were born irrespective of how they identify.

Whether the organisation chooses to do so or not, it is therefore lawful to exclude males from certain designated female-only spaces

I also pointed that an organisation has to demonstrate due regard to the potential impact on all the protected characteristics in the EA 2010 and had they done an Equality Impact Assessment before bringing in their trans inclusion policy on accommodation and whether trip attendees and their parents were consulted.

I got a response back telling me that they hadn't finalised their trans inclusion policy after all and were going to discuss my points at board level. I'm afraid that Covid 19 meant the trip didn't happen so I haven't yet pursued this further but I took their response to mean that they were taking me seriously.

I think many organisations need people to point out the actual law versus what the trans lobby has been saying. Clarity from the current judicial reviews will hopefully help in due course too.

Ultimately, I think the highlighting the safeguarding and legal minefield is the thing that might persuade organisations to stick with single sex provision. Highlight the worst case scenario: "What do you think our organisation's legal position will be if a female child is sexually assaulted or gets pregnant by a male child they were bunked up with on our trip?"

There will presumably be a variety of policies that the school will have to publish that will cover this. A school that a family member is involved with has am overnights trips policy. After I had reviewed a number of the policies (usual lack of sex in the Equalities one, etc) the policy now states overnight trips have single sex sleeping arrangements.

In this circumstance I would just put the responsibility back onto senior management. They can find someone else willing to supervise mixed sex groups as you will be busy that night (washing your hair, perhaps?)

I wondered the same, Fanny.

Why on earth was it decided that a boy who might be gay wasn't allowed to share with other boys?

That is blatant discrimination due to sexual orientation.

Have you raised the fact that this was clarified by aliz Triss in the HoC?

Then we had a parent of a male homosexual pupil who wanted to be tented with girls and we had a meeting with all parents and they agreed in writing for this to be the case.

Leave aside the subsequent gender related discussions, but this ^
Why? Why should a male homosexual be tented with the girls? Did the girls have a say? What age were the pupils I wonder, in terms of the boy being definitely established as a homosexual.
If the boy didn't feel safe to be tented with the other boys then the school should address the homophobia.
Otherwise why can't such pupils just have a single person tent?
It almost feels like a planned Trojan horse, breaking down boundaries.
I would not have been happy if this situation were foisted on my daughters.

I feel for you iced. It’s a perfect example of where “be kiiiiinnd” gets you!

We take selected pupils on a camping trip once a year and up until two years ago single sex was the default and there were no issues with this. Then we had a parent of a male homosexual pupil who wanted to be tented with girls and we had a meeting with all parents and they agreed in writing for this to be the case. Last year (June 2020 - so didn't go ahead) we had a number of trans pupils saying they had a right to be tented with people of the same gender as them (ie we would have pupils of different biological genders sharing a tent). Our school didn't really know how to deal with it and we were really lucky that c19 took this issue out of our hands. Goodness knows what will happen when the trip starts back up again...