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

Please would someone remind me:
is information in books intended for children, which might easily be in school libraries or the children’s section of libraries, currently allowed to state that, regardless of their sexed body, they might have been born in the wrong body for their ‘gender’?

I thought this was not allowed, but perhaps that was only true in the Conservatives’ planned guidelines that never got implemented after the last election.

Agreed. Back in the day, the out of control transactivists in the Crown Prosecution Service wrote some abysmal guidelines for schools in which they attempted to police children's friendships by insisting that any gender confused child who was not immediately accepted into a conversation / friendship group had been subjected to transphobia.
It was a stark example of how coercive control of others is embedded in the thinking and actions of these adults. They were completely oblivious in their desperation to impose their demands on children. Once the CPS were threatened with a judicial review the guidelines were hastily withdrawn rather than face judicial and public scrutiny.

It's not harassment to tell the truth about biological reality. Saying it is = attempt at coercive control.

Agree that it's an obvious safeguarding failure to pretend children can change sex. We'll look back on this in horror in years to come. It's an obvious failure of existing statements in KCSIE e.g. emotional abuse including expecting children to understand concepts not compatible with their development and understanding - given most adults can't define gender this seems self-evidently true of all children in schools.

If asked I'd bet good money any children asked would equate feeling like the opposite 'gender' (i.e. sex) to what toys a child plays with and what clothes they like to wear. This seems a poor reason to set a child on a pathway which will result (in adulthood at least now I hope) in medical interventions on a healthy body and will result in confusing and harmful psychological interventions during a key period of psychological development (i.e. childhood).

The problem is that gender ideology relies on coercive control, and whilst that works well and is in fact the point for adult males because they want power and to use women and girls (not mutually respectful relationships) what will happen with children is that the other children will try and avoid anyone trying to compel their speech or position themselves as more important than the others. The adults in school may well go along with it (through fear or stupidity) but although they might be able to compel pretence, lying and speech of all the other children in school (which is clear emotional abuse of them - as defined in KCSIE) you cannot force children to be friends. And parents certainly will safeguard their children against this abuse and have their children's backs to resist this attempt at coercive control of them and many parents will also be unwilling to participate in clear emotional abuse of other children too.

Edited to add: somehow added in the wrong quote here. Sorry

It doesn’t confer additional “rights” e.g. access to opposite sex facilities or compelled speech from others regarding pronouns.

I think this is unclear, re pronouns, particularly when it comes to teachers.

The EHRC guidance on gender reassignment gives this example of 'harassment'.

But the technical guidance to schools says "Unwanted conduct by a school towards a pupil that is related to the protected characteristics of gender reassignment, religion or belief, or sexual orientation and which results in a pupil suffering a detriment is not covered by the harassment provisions. However, it is unlawful under the direct discrimination provisions of the Act if the pupil suffers a disadvantage." so I don't know whether that harassment example would apply to schools (and if not, why not).

Apologies if I’ve missed the point but hasn’t it been established by the SC (and later followed by the Darlington judgment) that the PC of GR protects the holder from discrimination but does not confer additional privileges? So in this case a gender questioning child would be entitled to the same education as a non gender questioning child of the same sex. It doesn’t confer additional “rights” e.g. access to opposite sex facilities or compelled speech from others regarding pronouns.

Therefore it seems a moot point whether or not children have the PC of gender reassignment or not - as all children are entitled to an education provided by the state. (And none entitled to compel speech or access opposite sex facilities)

I may well have got this horribly wrong in which case please someone correct me.

Thank you.
I still don't believe that this has been legally tested alongside the rights if children to be safeguarded. We know that the EHRC has published incorrect guidance in the past influenced by activists.

It just seems so evidently hazardous to children. Sorry - I don't mean to derail the thread so will stop now. It's such an age inappropriate, dangerous thing to state about children that I find it hard to believe we must accept it.

The EHRC has always been clear that the protected characteristic of gender reassignment applies to children.

Here's their technical guidance to schools

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/2024/Technical%20guidance%20for%20schools%20England%20updated%20September%202023%20-%20amended%20July%202024.docx

We are always told that it does - but how has this been established? What age does it kick in? A 1 year old, 5 or 8?
How does society's responsibility to safeguard children balance again someone insisting that their 2 year old is really the opposite sex?

I suspect this is another fake Stonewall law promoted by the men desperate to transition young children that everyone passively accepts. Having said that, I appreciate it would need testing in a court of law.

Just as we had to have the Supreme Court to confirm that of course sex means biological sex, we need to have it confirmed that of course the PC of gender reassignment can't possibly apply to babies, toddlers, little children etc and nobody intended that when this was written into the statute.

(sorry for the rant - it just enrages me that we're expected to accept this frankly predatory demand about children).

But To be honest I don’t think schools should allow changes of pronouns at all.

This is where the protected characteristic of gender reassignment applying to children causes real problems.

Would it be an idea to come up with some suggested bullet points for responses to the questions from the perspective of parents wanting to safeguard their children?

We know that the activist groups desperate to erode children's boundaries / promote parental alienation are all over this and it's really important that parents voices are finally heard. For too long strangers have been allowed to impose this adult ideology on children. Although the draft is a a good start, there are some gaping holes that will still allow transactivists to inappropriately dabble in vulnerable children's lives and we need to highlight this.

Completely agree @noblegiraffe

Very much agree. And it needs to be clear. It can't be endlessly waffly and obscure.

I don't understand why they won't say what social transition is (well I do, it's because TRAs might have a tantrum). Really all social transition can ever be is pretending a child is the opposite sex to the one they really are (and sometimes also trying to coerce others into pretending this). They don't want to say it clearly because when you realise this is it, it becomes absolutely obvious why it would be a safeguarding failure for a teacher to do this.

You'd think they could find a few English teachers to make sure it's clear and concise.

Fantastic point.

I think that the instruction to staff not to change pronouns/name for a kid merely on their say-so needs to be in Part 1. It's such a massive change of culture from what has happened previously in schools (and indeed from what staff have been encouraged to do) that it needs to be an explicit instruction. If it is truly considered a safeguarding issue for school staff to socially transition a student, even as an individual teacher, then there needs to be a guarantee from the DfE that all staff are required to have read it, and signed the form to say that they have read it.

Wow @Cantunseeit that's quite the experience with the bonkers (and clearly unfit to be there) teacher!!

(It sounds like you had the head and DSL being the sensible ones, whereas I have the opposite)

This is why we're going to need court cases. People need to see they really can be accountable.

It's one of the major failings in safeguarding law and structures in general that there is no real advantage to safeguarding well. Most of the examples in safeguarding training where people have spoken up / whistleblown in recent training I've done is where those people have nothing to lose - no social ostracization, no job to lose.

There is no accountability for failing to safeguard so people can just pretend they're doing it whilst not actually bothering when it gets hard, which really good safeguarding will quite often be.

Bloody hell. The teacher said that they'd support 10 girls having their leg amputated? Their healthy leg? Not fit to be a teacher!

What does she do if a child says it really, really hurts them and makes them specially sad if she doesn't give them an A (or whatever number grade, I'm old school) even though they don't bother to try that hard and their actual work is only a D grade? And how does she mitigate the hurt it creates for the hardworking A-grade students that the grade inflation erases their achievements?

Surely a unisex school uniform policy and ability for a child to change their name only with parental consent should cover all bases? No pronoun changes. sex-based data collection and single sex changing and toilets with third spaces for any child that needs it. This is obviously really the only sensible solution. Pretending to a child they can in any way change sex is clear emotional abuse.

I do think a lot of harm has come from DSLs - they are in the position of power here.

This.

I hope we see more court cases, but it's a huge ask for parents.

Yes. IANAL but as I understand it, parents will only have standing to sue if their child has come to some kind of harm. Proving that in a school environment will be harder than in a healthcare setting. But I would like to think that a public enquiry will expose the rot in school leadership teams in the future. That won't stop children being harmed in the meantime though 😞

In situations where the head and DSL are two different people, I can well imagine them each providing air cover for the other... along with everyone else in the Pass The (Accountability) Parcel game....

Head: yes I'm accountable for the school but I the DSL is responsible for safeguarding and it's important that I don't interfere with that

DSL: I had the full support of the leadership team in this difficult and nuanced situation. We needed more guidance from the DfE and took legal advice on how to proceed.

Governors/MAT boards: we are satisfied that the school followed the right steps by following guidance and taking legal advice

Lawyers: the school is responsible for how it chooses to act on legal advice

DfE: the school/LA is accountable responsible for its decisions.

Etc etc. Nobody ever has to open the parcel and say "it was me!".