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

This is so important.

Also there's still the get out clause for excluding parents and allowing schools to socially transition children in secret. I've not got time to look it up now and I recall they've strengthened it by saying something about it being exceptional to exclude parents if they're a safeguarding risk. BUT - only the courts can remove parental rights and the loose wording of this still allows the committed transactivist adult in a school (or from any of the dodgy organisations) to coerce / groom a child.

If parents pose a risk to their children then that's always a safeguarding issue and must always be referred to the multiagency system. Social services know the law and also know that they cannot make decision without parental involvement (see the legal framework for parental involvement for children in care of the state).

Schools shouldn't in any way be the exception to the legal principles of parental rights / responsibilities for children.

The whole bit on social transition doesn't make sense as is.

Really social transition is 'pretending to be the sex they're not'. That should be clearly stated. If that's not what it is (even though we really know it is what it is), we need a definition including a definition of what 'gender' is. And an explanation about if it's NOT about pretending to be the other sex why pronouns are even mentioned.

Elsewhere it does point out that girls can like trucks and boys can like wearing dresses (or whatever the examples are), so what's the need for 'social transition'?

I think it's partly in there just to appease activists and because of the hopefully quite rare safeguarding disaster where parents have imposed a wrong-sex identity on very small children and lied about it to everyone else. But I don't think the whole of KCSIE needs to have a bit in it to address those children, frankly that should be addressed under the safeguarding and abuse sections that already exist. I suppose there's probably some special accommodation that needs to be made for the fact that institutions lost their collective minds and failed to safeguard over this, perhaps. But puberty's going to happen and the truth will out at that point - keeping the deception going isn't in the best interests of that child.

Really good spot from @BonfireLady !

There's a question I think, given the clarification about single sex spaces, about what social transition is. What are they trying to achieve here? Without a definition of gender as well as of sex it doesn't really make sense.

Are they trying to help confused young children think they can really change sex? That doesn't sound like good safeguarding and they won't be able to use opposite-sex spaces, so why?

Are they trying to enable one very specific subset of children to dictate the language of adults and children? Well, why this one thing and not others, and also that sounds pretty abusive.

What IS 'social transition' and if those children cannot use wrong-sex spaces then why are you doing it?

Lots of children want lots of things, most children want everything to be only about them and all their own way. The adults need to balance what's best for them and what's best for the other children in the school. I don't see how you can do this with 'social transition'. I don't think it's healthy to encourage a child into coercive behaviours or thinking they can somehow just deny the reality of their body. But even if this were fine, I don't think all the other children should have to do what one child tells them even if it's avoiding pronouns altogether.

And we know as in OP's school, there are adults who are pretty firmly attached to the idea that 'girl' and 'boy' can mean whatever they want it to mean. I think KCSIE needs to be VERY clear on definitions. And the draft is not. The social transition bit is full of 'gender' but what does that mean? Does 'girl' refer to a child of the female sex and only that or not? OP's school think it doesn't, that the term 'girl' can include male children, and it refers to 'gender' which again is a totally fuzzy word, and can be whatever they want to further their aims.

Given that the whole ideology is built on abuse of language and coercion, definitions are essential, I think.

It would be worth pointing out that it’s alluded to in the statutory RSE guidelines and the two need to be strengthened to work together across both safeguarding and in RSE.

This is crucial I think @BonfireLady. Good spot.

Also v good idea to look at the changes from the original draft to this proposed guidance. I’m not a fan of AI (and in this case I would worry that it would hallucinate differences) but I’m sure that could be non-AI automated somehow.

[ETA - no slight to those who find AI useful. I just find it complicates things for me.]

Apologies that I've not yet had time to add anything of substance, but I think that a gap analysis of the new proposed guidance and the original draft gender questioning children guidance would be a good thing to do.

One absolutely key missing component that has now been consigned to the bin is the definition of "gender identity". No other government document has ever had this in, and it was useful to have it written down. It was:

Gender identity: is a contested belief. It is a sense a person may have of their own gender, whether male, female or another category such as non-binary. This may or may not be the same as their biological sex. Many people do not consider that they or others have a gender identity at all.

It's so important to recognise that it's a belief that not everyone holds. By coercively pushing it as "kindness" and "respect" to use preferred pronouns, schools are failing to follow the Nolan Principles and also Teaching Standards on promoting their personal beliefs to vulnerable children.

Have DM’ed you @SingleSexSpacesInSchools

Thinking about it, there has been discussion about 'compelled speech' where teachers may be forced to use preferred pronouns when they don't want to, however it may actually be more uncomfortable for the sympathetic teachers to not immediately pivot to new names and pronouns as soon as someone announces them.

I think it's fallen out of fashion, at least around here with teenagers now. I think the adults coming back into the room and being willing to tell the truth has probably helped them to not feel they have to pander or suffer consequences. Obviously - and unfortunately - not in Brighton where the activist adults are still forcing it on OP's daughter and all the other children in the school.

The power differential between adults and children in schools is very important here I think and probably important to reflect that in KCSIE.

In places where the sensible adults have returned I think you'll find fewer and fewer kids go along with it. Surprisingly most teens don't want to spend loads of time being purely a validation tool for others in a relationship that is only one way to their detriment! What a shock!

The guidance can’t stop sympathy, smiles, a new attention, a solicitous tone of voice with a tilted head etc

Not under the new guidance they couldn’t. Which is good.

However the new guidance says nothing needs to be done if all the kids are affirming the child, which is probably more of an impactful social transition than teachers doing it - as I said upthread teachers generally only rarely use pronouns - we talk to kids not about them.

I find it utterly bizarre that teachers, especially at secondary level, would just 'affirm'. They have to deal with cheeky fuckery on a daily basis 'Miss, I'd like to be called 'your Highness' from now on, ok?'. 'No, obviously I'm not going to be doing that Tommy'.

Teachers should be preparing children for adult life not reinforcing extremely ridiculous demands that - unless they're the super rich children of famous people - are unlikely to be adhered to by anyone else around them in their adult life. And which are likely to result in people avoiding them too.

Teachers may not coach but they can instantly ‘affirm’ at a personal level.

Quite. There are a large number of fully captured, relatively young staff members, including in private schools.

The only way you can do 'preferred pronouns' for one child is by undermining safeguarding for all the other children. One of the main points of safeguarding is safeguarding ALL children.

And that's before you get to mixed sex (by coercive deception) changing rooms or toilets where it's an obvious safety risk open to abuse.

And I think this applies if it's only the teachers using wrong-sex pronouns - as children take their lead from teachers and will feel pressure to follow that lead even if not explicitly told to. Far better for teachers to avoid pronouns altogether, though it's difficult to do and adding additional load to already busy teachers so shouldn't be promised, just that they'll try.

I'd personally argue that putting children in a position where the other children are essentially coercively controlled by them (around language) isn't really setting them up for a happy life with lots of friends (friendship needs to be two-way and based on mutual respect), so not safeguarding them either. We don't teach children to lie about other important things.

This is where the guidance is clear: Parents only need to be told where a child has made a request to the school for support with transition - e.g. can teachers change my name and pronouns.

Which means teachers do NOT need to tell parents if a male child is being called she and Susan by all of his friends. Teachers do NOT need to tell parents if a male child has told their form tutor that they feel like they need to become a girl and that's why all their friends are calling them Susan.

It only says that teachers should not start calling that child Susan. That's all.

It says that schools "should be aware of the potential vulnerabilities of a child questioning their gender including the possibility of complex mental health and psychosocial needs" but it also says that if a child confides in a member of staff about their feelings about their gender there is no reason to break any confidence unless there is a related safeguarding risk.

So a child questioning their gender includes the possibility of complex mental health needs but isn't a safeguarding concern in and of itself.

In my extremely limited experience, a child questioning their gender is a red flag that should certainly be reported on school safeguarding software and followed-up. I think, if a child is being called Susan by all his friends at school, that is also something that parents should be informed about rather than kept confidential due to the red flags it raises around mental health.

I don't think there's a secondary school in the country where this hasn't come up. It hasn't come up at my school very often compared to others, and definitely less now than previously. We've had children change names on the register, so I have used their new name as I would for any other child with a name change. There have been some changes to pronouns but it is generally easy to avoid pronouns in the classroom as you talk to pupils rather than about them. The most difficult time for pronouns is parents evening where I would use names first then follow the parents' lead if the child isn't there.

coaching online yes.

There are multiple instances of teachers keeping transition from parents have the guidance change

noblegiraffe

May I ask a question as I believe you’re a teacher?

Within your own school, have you ever heard of or know about any child that believes they have a gender identity that doesn’t match their birth sex?
What would you do or suggest in those circumstances?

There's a big difference between a teacher having trans stickers on their laptop and being an 'ally' and coaching children into saying that they are scared their parents will beat them up if the school outs them to the parents. That would be gross professional misconduct.

I think the internet is far more likely to be a source of that sort of coaching than school teachers.

I honestly really dislike the coercive control element of 'social transitioning'. It's abusive at its very core. We don't tell kids of a particular religion they should expect the other kids to follow their religion on their say so.

'Preferred pronouns' are absolutely coercively controlling bullshit. It's legitimising abuse, narcissism (one child is placed above the others as having a valid identity, the others aren't allowed to identify as wanting to say what they see, they become NPCs in the other child's life). It's emotional abuse. The definition is already in KCSIE, and it's very clearly a breach of that to compel language in the service of one or a few exalted individuals.

Encouraging children to adopt behaviours that are abusive isn't kind even to the child who ends up on top.