Working Group - KCSIE 2026 changes - improve the guidance via the consultation process, promote more responses & more

Bumping this because we’ve had more than our share of ploppers this morning, which has pushed this down the threads.

To the Good Law Project. This is wrong:

‘It would be entirely lawful and legitimate for a school to provide toilet and changing facilities entirely in self-enclosed lockable rooms, designed for use by one pupil at a time. Indeed, where this is practicable, this may be the most sophisticated way of addressing the needs of all pupils. The guidance should make this clear.’

It is not lawful and legitimate as there is such a thing as safeguarding.

If you look at more of your own words:

‘It is indirect discrimination to adopt a policy, criterion, or practice which puts people with a
protected characteristic at a particular disadvantage compared to those without that
characteristic – unless doing so can be justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’.

So what you are saying here is your ‘sophisticated’ fully enclosed toilets should not put children with heart conditions, epilepsy, or diabetes (ambulant disabilities) at a particular disadvantage compared to those who are medically healthier - unless doing so can be justified as a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.’

Forget legislation and the legalities. Just think about this morally. Can you see now how your ‘sophisticated’ toilet design will be dangerous to the most vulnerable children at school? Do you know anyone with these medical conditions? What about any person in a club/pub/supermarket/school toilet who has had a cardiac arrest (upto 11% of cardiac arrests happen on the toilet)?
There’s at least a dozen children in most big secondary schools with medical conditions that mean they are more likely to collapse, conditions they may or may not even know they have. It doesn’t matter how they identify or how the school identify them. You can’t opt in or out of a medical condition or medical emergency.

You’ve wasted £500k on trying to flog dangerous non-domestic toilet designs on everyone. They will never be as safe for women, children or anyone medically vulnerable as single sex toilets with door gaps.

Where would you rush to if you suddenly felt nauseous? Why do schools have defibrillators? Where do pupils take drugs in schools or smoke spiked vapes? Where are pupils assaulted? Why do companies sell voice activated alarm systems targeted for gender neutral toilets with preprogrammed commands ‘help me’ or ‘stop it’?

Join the dots.

Phew

Tomorrow night, 11:59pm

Can I just check - does this close tonight or tomorrow night?

Bayswater Support Group have done a useful post on X

that’s says this:

Key concerns:
Social transition has "significant effects on [the child's] psychological functioning and longer-term outcomes", including potential medical implications. Consequently, no education professional has the expertise to assess a child's "best interests" on this matter as suggested by the draft guidance (e.g. para 254, 256 etc.)

Encouraging an assessment of "best interests" in cases of gender-related distress contravenes KCSIE's own stipulation in para. 45 "Only appropriately trained professionals should attempt to make a diagnosis of a mental health problem."

Teachers do not acquire the necessary expertise to assess "best interests" when a child enters puberty (paras. 258, 259, 264, 265).

The draft guidance puts children at risk by encouraging teachers to stray beyond their professional expertise, handing them a highly consequential decision that they are not qualified to make.

This is true even if parents consent to social transition. Parents are not always well-informed about the consequences this may have for a child, so while parental consent is important, teachers must not be given the impression that there is a green light to proceed as long as parents approve. Teachers cannot determine whether this is in the child's "best interests" (257) even if the parents might think so.

The draft guidance fails to define social transition and thus confuses personal expression (which is uncontroversial as long as a child complies with uniform regulations) with teachers treating a child as if they were the opposite sex (which has profound consequences for the child and their peers).

The guidance must articulate more clearly that social transition in the context of a school involves harnessing the child's peers and teachers as a form of 'therapeutic community' to affirm the child as the opposite sex (or non-binary or other identity).

The guidance is not clear that safeguarding considerations take priority over a child's individual agency and their equality/human rights e.g. if an equality claim puts a child at risk of harm.

The guidance mentions 'harm' (para. 261) but does not explain what this means for a cross-sex or non-binary identified child e.g. breast binding, tucking, DIY hormones, heightened dysphoria, online exploitation, misinformation about suicide.

Para 263 promises confidentiality if a child reveals a cross-sex identity to a teacher but does not demand social transition. This means parents are uninformed about something that could indicate underlying mental health issues, trauma, neurodevelopmental issues. This secrecy undermines safeguarding for these children.

Para 252 opens up the possibility of schools drafting their own policies on 'social transition'. This creates a loophole for unevidenced and unsafe policymaking by education professionals, who are not qualified to make decisions relating to mental health.

Para 262 must be reworded to be clear that if a school considers a parent to be such a risk that their child's cross-sex identity should be concealed from them, this would warrant immediate referral to social services (not merely a consultation with the DSL). Otherwise schools will continue to use this as a loophole to exclude parents from decision-making.

Note: The main question to respond to is Question 33 of the consultation. Further information may be added in response to Question 34 on single-sex toilets, changing rooms etc., and Question 35 on single-sex sport.

https://x.com/bayswatersg/status/2045544444066234389?s=46

Thank you. One of the things I'll be saying is that they need to do evidence based risk assessments and do what's best for children's safety as a result of these, not just follow the preferred solution of whoever shouts the loudest and has pet ideas they want to impose on everyone else, which seems to be what's happened so far.

I suppose a quick version, off the top of my head, is something like:

To design-out crime you need to look at the design and the crime. Toilets are very sensitive spaces known for sex, drugs and vandalism eg. sexual activity in a toilet is a specific crime under Sexual Offences Act 2003 (71). They are the place pupils go when they feel ill, physically and/or mentally.

All available evidence suggests mixed sex, completely private spaces in schools should be reduced as much as possible, rather than increased, for reasons of safeguarding and health. Risk assessments and equality impact assessments on adding these completely private, mixed sex designs need to be done for: sexual assaults on girls, children who may self-harm, medical emergencies such as seizures, hypos and drug overdoses, children with invisible disabilities and medical conditions, disease control, cleaning costs, supervision costs, vandalism and building evacuation times. These should be done before considering this as policy.

——————
Please put the above in your own words though if you agree and want to comment.

I hope they will be using software to screen out mass replies that are all the same. With the toilet consultation for document T so many thousands of people cut and pasted Stonewall et al advice, they accounted for most responses and skewed the data.The government analysis showed 79% percent of responses mentioned safety concerns for trans/non-binary people. Fewer than 5% of responses mentioned safety concerns for one of the following groups: girls, boys, children, men, or disabled people. Safety concerns for women were mentioned in 75% of responses; 88% of the responses which mentioned safety concerns of women, specifically mentioned black women, lesbians, and butch women. Which looking at which organisations these specific phrases came from suggests an interesting association with mass cut-and-pastes. The consultation analysis also showed a strong association with making toilet cubicles completely private which is typically the bad solution to a mixed sex washroom outside the toilet cubicle, or only having unisex toilets. Obviously it’s fine to advocate for your cause but the health and safety implications need to be assessed with evidence. Needs not wants.

I don’t think they’ll work. Links haven’t pasted as links in mine and I’ve had to remove all the links I wanted to include as just too many characters

Don’t take my word for it though

Are hyperlinks allowed?

I know, it’s really frustrating that they aren’t enabling meaningful feedback. I’ve addressed this point in response to Q61 (is anything missing).

we can’t explain our point without context and references and there isn’t space to do this

😱 I haven’t even tried to start writing about toilets for this yet. It pains me to work out how to cut my research down. That’s abridged and a cut and paste from a longer document 😬 with more facts.

1200 😱

Thank you very much.

None of these detailed reasons are given by Transgender Trend in their advice re 110. in the consultation, but I can see from you that the answer to the current proposal should indeed be “No” as they suggest.

P.s. did someone mention a character limit!

Yes accessible toilets are mixed sex, self contained, private and have to open on to a circulation space precisely like all other accessible designs - because it is a ‘layer’ of supervision and prevention of misuse (in reality not that great because you can’t see what’s going on inside a private room). CCTV will be retrospective.

The unisex toilet in school design was traditionally opposite reception for the same reason.

At some point between 2020 and 2023, the DfE added a new specification point to its Generic Design Brief:

2.3.20.1g) on each floor, at least one of the toilets allocated for mainstream pupil use (i.e., not including accessible toilets) shall be designed and located so that it can be identified as gender-neutral for use by all pupils whilst ensuring pupil privacy.

Obviously we need the accessible toilets. All pupils need to access a toilet. However these are still problematical in terms of their design. In a ideal world they would be within single sex spaces but I can’t see this happening. It would require major reconfigurations to make entrances wheelchair friendly.

The reason it’s not good to have more unisex mixed sex toilets are because how and what private, mixed toilets are used for. Hidden cameras are a problem - to be honest I have more instances of staff (in double figures affecting potentially thousands of children) than pupils. All men in a variety of toilets (staff, pupil, disabled). Caretakers to headteachers struck off. The privacy and the fact there’s more equipment in such spaces (alarm boxes, mechanical ventilation grills, plumbing) means there’s the privacy and means and legitimacy to be in that space and set up a camera.

Since the DfE told me they do not hold any risk assessments or equality impact assessments on their designs (and later said neither can they tell me what’s happening inside toilets because they do not know the answer under my FOI as it involves too much work trying to find out if they could assemble the data) - I looked to schools in America where they had a similar design.

To find a comparable situation where a gender neutral toilet design has been discussed, it has been necessary to look over toAmerica, where the Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) ‘took on the push’ to try to establish one gender-inclusive bathroom on each floor. It should be noted that American single sex school designs typically have much bigger gaps than traditional designs used in the UK (sometimes along the sides) and are often called restrooms or bathrooms, although do not contain a bath.

The experience of a private, gender neutral toilet room on each floor of a school (directly comparable to the DfE spec) is summed up here:

‘The gender-neutral bathrooms are both horrible and amazing. I am so glad we have them, but they are disgusting, mostly because of the way students treat them. The issue mainly comes from how small and how few they are, and it’s not uncommon that the four small bathrooms are filled with sex, drugs or vaping. We need to address these problems, or the gender-neutral bathrooms will continue to be the most disgusting in the school….I consider everything in the third floor bathroom a biohazard. Almost every time I make the mistake of going in, I leave trying to purge my mind of the horrors I just witnessed. Whether it is people having sex, poop smeared on the walls, or the toilet being clogged with an entire roll of toilet paper, horrible things have happened in that bathroom.’

According to a teacher at the school above, since the number of students who need gender-neutral bathrooms is increasing, one bathroom per floor is no longer sufficient. They have more than one-quarter of our student body identifying as LGBTQ. The bathrooms are in less prominent locations than the men’s and women’s bathrooms, making it easy for students to get away with misbehaving. These bathrooms frequently end up closed and vandalized.
Again the privacy of these bathrooms is an issue. A staff member said the job can be difficult, as bathrooms are private spaces for students, ‘It’s not great because you’ve got a private space that’s publicly accessible and difficult for school staff to monitor. It’s true of any bathroom really.’

Other problems staff and students identified with the gender neutral bathrooms were:
•a continuing issue of faculty monitoring is allotting time to stand in front of a doorway for long periods of time during the school day: ‘I just don’t have enough staff to have people sitting outside of the bathroom.’
•the possible discomfort students may face regarding their identity: ‘Especially for students who aren’t out, if they feel like they are being monitored walking into the bathrooms and getting questioned about their motives in the bathrooms, it can make people feel uncomfortable. That can have a big impact on people’s mental state.’
•Students are not comfortable using them due to state they are left in so will not go to the bathroom at all during the day. They are ‘full’, ‘too gross to use’, ‘filled with vaping at least twice a week’.
•To have enough gender neutral bathrooms for each floor would take a classroom’s worth of space.
•Creative ways of trying to reducing substance use in the bathrooms, such as posters and literature, have been met with resistance and defaced and torn off.
•The suggestion of more cameras around the corridors and common spaces was tempered by the fact they can’t be put inside the bathrooms.
•Students being late to class due to not being able to access the bathroom.

Being America, there’s a business offering a solution! I looked at this system because some schools are now using it over here. Notice the link between key words and the private, mixed sex design. The suggested key words in many of these systems include ‘stop it’ and ‘help me’:

“Smart Sensor Technology Is Keeping Single-Use Bathrooms in Schools Secure

Single-use restrooms in schools are becoming prime real estate for students to vape, vandalize, and more due to the lack of monitoring and witnesses in these restrooms. The shift of schools switching to single-use or gender-neutral restrooms further complicates the security of the school restrooms. This often leads to school restrooms being used for prohibited activities, such as loitering, bullying and aggression, unpermitted vaping, and even as extreme as drug usage and sexual activity. Devices like the HALO Smart Sensor are designed to help keep all school bathrooms safe through:

• Vape and THC detection
• Aggression and vandalism detection
• Motion and occupancy detection
• Alerts for Keywords, Panic Buttons and Occupancy counts
• Keeping bathrooms secure while also protecting the privacy of individuals”

To date the most reliable data the U.K. Parliament discussed was in 2016 (from a journalist contacting every police force) who said there were 600 rapes reported in British schools within a 3 year period. It’s difficult to establish where these happened and there’s lots of caveats to this figure. However it is obvious these are happening in private spaces. As an ex-teacher I was pretty shocked. https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmwomeq/91/9105.htm

‘Everyone’s Invited’ do mention school toilets as the location of sexual assaults, including disabled toilets (the longstanding mixed sex private toilet space). Ofsted published the Review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges (2021). They said ‘It is hard to get an accurate picture of the scale and nature of sexual harassment and violence between children and young people in schools and colleges, as there is no centralised data collection …’
Ofsted said the problem of sexual abuse was so widespread, and incidents are so commonplace that ‘It recommends that schools, colleges and multi-agency partners act as though sexual harassment and online sexual abuse are happening, even when there are no specific reports’. ‘Children…especially girls…do not want to talk about sexual abuse for several reasons, even when their school encourages them to. For example the risk of being ostracised by peers or getting peers into trouble is not considered to be worth it…They think they will not be believed, or that they will be blamed. They also think that once they talk to an adult, the process will be out of their control.’

We don’t need more mixed sex, private spaces in schools.

I would hope that the relevant laws which govern staff members in relation to opposite sex spaces cover off these scenarios. If they don't, that's quite the safeguarding fail.

I would also hope that for the first scenario there would be something written in guidance that says staff members need to loudly announce their intent to enter a facility for the opposite sex if they believe they need to enter it during an emergency.

The second one is easier as the tent is empty - if an inspection was being done while someone was in it (and could be getting changed), that would be inappropriate.

Paragraph 196 lists several documents with guidance/legislation relating to accommodation. I don't know which cover school trips have no idea which legislation covers toilets and changing rooms in schools.

I have a question about this, please.

110. Where a school or college provides mixed-sex toilets in addition to single sex toilets, schools and colleges should assess safeguarding risks and plan accordingly, for example, mixed-sex toilets should open directly onto public areas (e.g. a corridor).

Transgender Trend says ‘No’ to this, but mightn’t it be likely these days that a school might legitimately have a few toilets that are larger, fully self-contained rooms opening on to a corridor, for disability/no designated sex?

On the topic of not allowing staff to access opposite sex dorms/toilets/changing rooms - I'm not sure this is feasible to ban, as sometimes you might be the only available adult in the area when something goes down.

Or, during the day on a residential trip, what would the issue be with a female teacher doing a tent inspection of a boys' tent?