Ministers finally agree guidance on trans pupils

Teachers who want to support social transition need to become outliers.

In my experience they very much already are.

Almost all of the teachers I know are very firmly on the side of gc ideas and only feel hamstrung by the regulations/guidelines.

I'm hoping that these guidelines are enough to at least show teachers that the genderist ideology is one choice of ideologies that is not shared by most people. I think that's key. If we can show that it's a very specific set of ideas, and that not everyone shares it and that belief in 'gc' ideas is protected in law, we may be able to come back down to some kind of sense.

The Guardian's take is somewhat different... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/22/guidance-expected-to-allow-transgender-children-to-socially-transition-in-english-schools

It's ridiculous advice like this that will hopefully raise flags within schools.

No safeguarding lead with any credibility would think that it is appropriate to involve siblings in a secret that needs to be kept in school away from their parents. Even if they have already somehow managed to accept the idea that keeping the secret in the first place was in the child's best interests.

Hopefully, any such safeguarding leads are surrounded by colleagues who can challenge this. The most obvious challenge being to cite the impact of social transition from the Interim Report of the Cass Review. The more widely this report is circulated in education, the greater the understanding of the harms associated with the affirmation pathway. I hope the guidance references it and breaks it down in a clear way.

Teachers who want to support social transition need to become outliers. I suspect that the majority will be doing so out of a misplaced understanding of how best to support children but there will be some activists in the mix too. Any that continue along the secret affirmation pathway once there is clear unambiguous guidance (I'm not holding my breath on this current draft, given the potential gaping loophole in the "exceptional circumstances") should be managed as a safeguarding risk. Even if they are doing it out of kindness and support, they are a risk to children.

Jenny Gilruth is not very bright. That's astonishing advice, and surely contravenes many school safeguarding guidelines?!

It’s certainly going to be interesting. In Scotland where the guidance is to support social transition with or without parental awareness or agreement (and last week Jenny Gilruth told one of my MSPs this includes telling siblings at the school but not parents where the child wishes). This is non-statutory guidance yet schools like my daughter’s former school, George Watson’s, say they have no choice but to follow it.

it won’t surprise me at all if some schools in England flip that round and say because the DfE guidance is only guidance and not statutory they don’t need to follow it.

Picking and choosing which argument suits them?

Also, safeguarding goes both ways and teachers need to safeguard themselves.

The keira bell case has put a lot of onus on any agency involved in the safeguarding of children to be individually responsible for ensuring any child has the capacity to consent to any type of transition. I can imagine when the court cases start rolling in quite a few teachers being held responsible for indoctrinating and encouraging their students and then allowing them to transition in their 'safe space' classrooms without parents knowing. As the cass review says, we have no idea what the impact of socially transitioning a child has, so as a teacher there is NO WAY I am taking the liability on.

There will be much wailing by transactivists . But the guidance is out for consultation which will finally enable open discussion. If safeguarding is the main focus, it makes it more difficult for transactivists to push the "children must be free to explore this ideology / fetish.
As this thread shows, we go down all sorts of rabbit hole discussions (uniform, sexism, the incoherent laws etc) and there's no doubt that will happen during the consultation.
BUT we've now got so many articulate organisations, legal commentators and the majority of parents who will finally be able to speak up. The "behind the scenes" power of the activist groups to insist that only they can speak about children has been neutered.

Of course certain parties will try to position it as such Sideways.

It seems to me like almost everyone on this thread is being duped, again?

The guidelines are meaningless if they can be interpreted by those who simply want to continue doing what they are doing so.

It’s like what Suella Braverman said to Risihi Sunak in her resignation letter. It’s magical thinking. It’s willing this to stop and thinking it will with a few guidelines open to interpretation. It is typical Tory spinelessness, trying to stop this without doing anything that could upset establishment guardian readers.

My concern is that this is going to be seen as “the new section 28 brought in by the evil Tories who just want to kill everyone” and the hysteria around it will bear no relation to reality.

This is 'guidance' and we've been here before. Like putting a sign up in the park saying "please don't abuse the kids"

"Headteachers will be told to abide by existing laws including the Equality Act and must keep boys' and girls' toilets, changing rooms and sports separate."

Since they were ignoring the Equality Act before there's no reason to suppose this suggestion is going to make any difference

"Ministers ruled out a blanket ban on social transitioning after concluding it would require time-consuming primary legislation and could in any case be unworkable"

So there is not currently any law protecting children from the whims of any teacher, the government can't spare the time to make one and they suspect the schools would ignore that too.

I feel better already.

I think not having compelled speech and ensuring single sex provision will help

I hope the pronoun issue is resolved

I hope that the delays and issues being grappled with aren't linked to uniform.

I imagine clothes are an area that illuminates the different origins in concerns - those who oppose gender norms and stereotyping and those who think that boy and girls should conform to gendered norms.

I expect the majority of the DM's target demographic are the latter whilst the majority of readers of this board are the former.

Guidance looks, not perfect, but promising.

The DfE must also ensure rogue 'trainers' don't undermine it with their ridiculous fecking genderbread unicorns etc etc etc.

You dont say how the parents found out.
Being trans is in no way comparable with lesbian.
Existing safeguarding protocols will not always work. That's why they are updated quite often. It still is not a good idea to make schools and other pupils collude to hide someones new identity. You cannot prevent people from talking.

Could this really be the beginning of the end for social contagion in schools?
I imagine that there are thousands of teachers like me who will go in this morning feeling utterly relieved.

But why isn't it considered sex discrimination for there to be a different uniform for girls and for boys? Why can a boy not claim that it's sex discrimination that he can't wear a skirt just because he wants to?

I believe that for a practice to be discriminatory it has to result in disadvantage. The boy would need to demonstrate he was at a disadvantage relative to the girls (not that he "just wants to" wear a skirt) and that the school had no justification for separate uniforms.

Of course. But as has been pointed out to you several times, there are protocols in place for situations when a child is in danger from their own parents. The parents are always included as the child's primary carers.

Transsexualism is a medical pathway. Teachers shouldn't be making medical decisions without the parents' knowledge.

And in the case of transsexualism, it's often the ideologically driven schools which don't have the children's best interests at heart, not the parents who just want to prevent their children from making irreversible decisions while they are too young to fully understand the consequences.

I think it could be argued as indirect discrimination on the basis of GR if you don't allow the trans identified boy to wear the girls' uniform, because the policy is making it harder for trans identified boys to attend the school than other boys. It's not direct discrimination because they're being treated exactly the same as boys without the GR characteristic.

But why isn't it considered sex discrimination for there to be a different uniform for girls and for boys? Why can a boy not claim that it's sex discrimination that he can't wear a skirt just because he wants to?

The implication seems to be that it is discrimination on the basis of gender reassignment if a boy who self-identifies as trans can't wear the girls' uniform, but it's not sex discrimination to stop a boy who doesn't identify as trans from wearing the girls' uniform.
I think it could be argued as indirect discrimination on the basis of GR if you don't allow the trans identified boy to wear the girls' uniform, because the policy is making it harder for trans identified boys to attend the school than other boys. It's not direct discrimination because they're being treated exactly the same as boys without the GR characteristic.

Our school just has a gender neutral uniform policy, I think that's more appropriate in this day and age. The skirt is kilt-like so it looks suitably conservative on boys or girls anyway. (Wish someone would apply the long hair must be tied up rule to DS, he's a scruff and he's not taking hints from me. I do wonder if they're overlooking it deliberately in case he's a delicate flower with gender issues. He's not.)