Single sex schools will be able to refuse trans pupils - Daily Telegraph

But few places in the U.K. still have the 11+ and grammar schools. I believe only NI and a couple of English counties. I’m in my 50s and grammar schools were already a thing of the past when I was at school. So that doesn’t really invalidate the Wikipedia claim that there are very few single sex state secondaries in the U.K, apparently only 410 remain.

Drat it. Wrong thread. Again.

It still needed a population unlikely to talk back, clever elites happy to stop questioning and eager to accept, the unique boiling pot that is social media, and the also unique suspension of people's normal tripwires and trigger points during Covid, to remove enough barriers to faster unravelling.

Covid didn’t happen until 2020. This was all well embedded years before before then.

It was September 2017 when Maria MacLachlan was assaulted at Speakers Corner by a 26yo male activist who went by the name of Tara Wolf.

The petition to have the 6ft+ male sex worker Tara Hudson moved to a female prison after Hudson’s conviction for assault on a male bartender was five years before the pandemic, back in 2015.

Keira Bell was put on puberty blockers by the Tavistock in 2013 and had a double mastectomy in 2017.

Those campaigning behind the scenes for this to happen weren’t just campaigning in the legislature, they were campaigning across all possible fields of influence: health, education, the media, trade unions and the charity sector.

The only way we are going to end this if we stop treating trans and non-binary people as a distinct sex or gender class and start recognizing them as the sensitive individuals they are who need individualized help and therapy, rather than the civil rights cause some claim this to be.

These kids need help, not a category.

pitt.substack.com/p/non-binary

Thank you Gillian Keegan for getting off the fence, at least for a moment.

Giving the Good Law Project is on a continuous losing streak and has just incurred responsibility for all government costs in their latest failed action, I wouldn’t put too much store by their advice. Unless you want to kill a fox with a baseball bat.

The Equality Act allows admission of occasional children of the opposite sex - this was in consideration of staff children and mixed sixth forms, not transgender children. And being a single sex school is sufficient justification in itself not to admit the opposite sex.

Again, you're mixing up direct discrimination and indirect discrimination. Indirect discrimination isn't just less overt direct discrimination, it requires entirely different elements to be made out.

"You didn't admit me because I am Jewish" is an allegation of direct discrimination. In your example, it is a legally valid claim, but factually incorrect.

"You didn't admit me because you have a particular policy that, although applied equally to everyone, puts people with a particular protected characteristic (of which I am one) at a disadvantage, and your policy cannot be objectively justified" is an allegation of indirect discrimination. The recent Primark case was about indirect discrimination - Primark implemented a policy that required everyone to work late shifts. This put women at a particular disadvantage because they are more likely to have childcare responsibilities that prevent late working. The woman that brought the claim won.

Why do the papers report these things in the future tense? Single sex ARE able to refuse transgender pupils, and transwomen ARE able to be excluded from women’s toilets.

They just go to either a mixed school or the school permitted by their sex. You can get bullied for anything. You want to have separate schools for every race, orientation, accent, weight, skin complexion, sexual behaviour? Besides, if anything being trans protects you from being directly bulled - you're part of a protected class that society is celebrating. Plus, being trans is a choice they make.

Quite.
I work with disabled children and have a lot to do with choosing school placements. Parents often say they want a special school because their child won't be 'different' and won't be bullied in an environment with other disabled children.

However, If a mainstream school can make reasonable adjustments and is educationally suitable for a child, then they don't need a special school place. What they need is for the school to have really robust supportive and anti-bullying policies in place to ensure that child is happy and safe in school.

Segregating is not the answer to bullying. Exposure to difference, education and guidance is. That and building up the self-esteem of the vulnerable children.

The bullying concern also makes no sense, in that a girl presenting as a boy is as likely to be bullied in a boys' school as in a girls' school. Possibly more likely, as they will be very obviously the odd one out.

It's not a good enough reason.

I disagree with this, but I would agree if we were comparing adults with adults. We're not.

We're comparing children with adults.

Children are protected differently in law - and this is safeguarding. Children are not mini adults. Part of safeguarding is sex segregation.

The difference between a schools admitting a boy under 'exceptional circumstances' and admitting a trans girl is that it would be possible in the former situation for the boy to be catered for with separate changing and toileting facilities. Presumably, they would be housed separately in dorms and on school trips.

If you accept a trans girl on the basis that they are a girl, you can't then put those safeguarding measures in place.

It's a minefield.

They just go to either a mixed school or the school permitted by their sex. You can get bullied for anything. You want to have separate schools for every race, orientation, accent, weight, skin complexion, sexual behaviour? Besides, if anything being trans protects you from being directly bulled - you're part of a protected class that society is celebrating. Plus, being trans is a choice they make.

Wikipedia might or might not be reliable, but do you actually disagree in this case -- almost all state schools are coeducational (mixed).

Of the grammar schools in England, 61 are for girls. 58 for boys and 44 are mixed. I don't think the numbers involved would make any difference to academic performance - it would be the total ethos of the school, and its control over single sex ways of interacting between teachers and pupils that would have to be changed with even a couple of trans pupils of either biological sex; as well as organisation of "spaces", availability of sports choices and play, competition with other single-sex schools in every academic and sporting area, uniform and personal appearance regulations and on and on and on.

Though I agree a court case would have been useful. Like much of the law, this one is poorly drafted.

That EO exemption reads to me as if this would be an exceptional thing to happen. As others have said, trans identifying students are not exceptional at all. So I think the original meaning of the clause (teachers kids at a boarding school for example) would be the only one which would succeed.

Admitting trans pupils is not an exceptional circumstance these days.

Errr! At the single sex school my child attends has many ‘trans kids’ already. In my teen’s friend group there was 5 out of the 7 of them with trans identities.

No bullying for ‘being trans’. These are children who understand they are one sex at a single sex school.

This is a classic case of hyperbole and as usual your post is not based on reality at all.

@SundaeClub
I understand that the religion example is different but why is it not analogous?

Are you saying the exception in the Act only applies to sex and not other protected characteristics?

It seems like shaky grounds for a legal challenge.

Wikipedia is not a reliable source.
In areas that still have the 11+ most grammar schools are still single sex, at least up to 16. Which raises an interesting point. It's well known that girls outperform boys academically. In my area roughly 20% of year six children take the test of which 10% get places. The girls grammars require at least ten points more for admission than the boys schools do. In these cases the issue is not going to be trans girls accessing girls single sex spaces (unless someone has evidence that they learn like a natal girl?) The problem will be that boys schools will become "trans boys schools" natal boys will be driven out because girls are more academic.

Bonkers.

It's an issue really only for private schools - "in the state sector of the U.K. education system very few single-sex schools remain" (wikipedia), and a decreasingly small number even in the private sector. But some people prefer (for whatever reason) to pay to send their child to a single-sex school, and it seems perfect;y reasonable that such schools should be able to base their admission on biological sex. The vast majority attend co-educational schools and "trans kids" (a term that begs a lot of questions) might be thought to be much better off in one of them!

The vast majority of schools in the UK are mixed sex. They can attend one of them with the rest of us plebs.

Most kids aren’t eligible to get into private schools due to not having enough money and/or not being able to pass selective entrance exams.

.SundaeClub · Today 23:27

Re your post:
I do find it very difficult to understand. In a nutshell -
if a girls’ school refuses admittance to a transgirl could the school be sued?

If so, the Equality Act exceptions do not work as intended, or as Suella Braverman said they did last year. No one can function on the basis that they might be sued.

Yes it is the actual biology which matters.

I'm struggling to understand the argument about indirect discrimination re gender reassignment in single sex schools.

I thought the Equality Act allows for discrimination on protected characteristics where its aproportionate means to a legitimate aim- that's how we can have single sex spaces at all, isn't it?The usual argument tends to be around who counts as a woman for the purposes of the Act, not whether the Act allows this at all - I thought that was clearly established? (Hence the petition to clarify that sex means natal sex not self identified / GRC 'sex').

Yes, that's right. That's what allows a school to apply a single sex policy. In addition, there is a separate section of the EA that allows a single sex school to admit a small number of boys in exceptional circumstances and still be able to operate a single sex admissions policy. If this ability wasn't there, the only options for a school would be wholly co-ed, or never allowed to admit an occasional boy for exceptional reasons. The EA has been specifically drafted to give schools that flexibility.

The example of 'indirect discrimination' of a MtoF child not being admitted to a girls school doesn't hold up, because a natal girl who has undergone gender reassignment would be allowed to attend, therefore it's not discrimination due to gender assignment but to sex?

It does hold up, you're just mixing up direct discrimination and indirect discrimination. They are very different claims. The indirect discrimination claim here requires: (a) a school to have a policy of not admitting boys in exceptional circumstances; (b) that policy to put boys with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment to be put at a particular disadvantage by this policy (as they are more likely to want to take advantage of the school being legally allowed to admit the occasional boy but choosing not to); (c) the policy is not objectively justified (which will require the court the balance the conflicting rights and make a decision).

Wouldn't it be the same if a, for example, Jewish boy was excluded then tried to claim it was discrimination on the PC of belief/ religion, because of being Jewish? Clearly, that is not the reason, because Jewish girls would be admitted.

That's an entirely different scenario, envisaging an erroneous claim for direct sex discrimination.

Surely keeping an established single sex school as single sex is a legitimate aim? If not, then there is no basis in law for single sex spaces ?

I'd have thought the same reasoning applies to faith based schools. But I don't see the TQ+ lobby pushing and pushing at the law to try and undermine those. I don't wonder why.

The Equality Act exceptions for the PC of Sex, should never have been ‘exceptions’ that had to be justified (potentially in a court of law).

They should have been clear legal rights in the first place.