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

The last bit about perception actually pretty clear. If you bully or exclude someone because you think they're a girl that is sex discrimination, even if they're not actually a girl but a feminine looking boy.

If you bully someone because you think they are transgender then that's gender reassignment discrimination, e.g. if a teacher thinks a boyish girl is actually a boy who is trans and repeatedly chucks her out of the girl's toilet then that might be gender reassignment harassment but not as long as it doesn't keep happening. A school should know what sex their pupils are and should be able to warn staff (and possibly pupils!) that she's a girl after the first complaint.

The Supreme Court did allow for the possibility of excluding a masculinised woman from a women's group but that was about women who'd been taking testosterone bringing a beard and broken voice to a women's rape support group not a tomboy using the girls' toilet.

I think it's one thing to say that an 8 month old baby can't have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment but a completely different thing to say a 16 year old who can make their own medical decisions and appointments can't have it.

The term ‘gender neutral’ toilet made an appearance for a few years. Design-wise it’s never been a regulated term. The phrase ran along in addition to the term unisex for a while. Now, in the latest edition, it’s back to unisex.

Yes and plenty of schools have recognised this and do not change pronouns or names for this reason. I suspect these are the schools where there are fewer students who are gender questioning because the social contagion is not propped up by the adults.

In my DD's secondary toilets are labelled female and male and there is no 'mixed sex by stealth' going on. It's all probably helped by the large religious communities whose children are at the school and for whom gender ideology and its demands obviously affect their religious freedoms.

When 'discrimination' is spoken of I always think that there's been huge discrimination between schools in terms of the safeguarding. My daughter's school follows the law and no girl is forced to strip off in front of a male bodied individual or participate in contact mixed sex sports (they do mix for non-contact sports). OP's daughter clearly is having a worse school experience because that's not the case in her school.

You can't trumpet the law when it goes in your favour and ignore it when it doesn't though.

I completely understand that lawyers have written this and make no comment about the extreme capture of the law by transacitvism (see the Bench Book debacle etc).
Common sense states that claiming that the pc of gender reassignment can apply to an 8 month old, 2 / 3 year old etc is nonsense and dangerous for the reasons I've already stated above.

It's wrong. It may be the law but it puts children at risk and that's unacceptable

It was clarified in 2023 (so pretty recently, and I think probably in response to Kemi Badenoch's efforts to write trans guidance for schools) in the EHRC technical guidance to schools that children can have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment so I'm assuming that lawyers have already looked at this.

The consultation deadline is the 22nd April and as many of us as possible need to respond. We know that the chaps at Stonewall, gendered intelligence, translucent etc are fuming that this is being addressed as a safeguarding matter. They will be responding trying to maintain the trans stranglehold on policy in schools and it's critical that as many parents as possible respond from a child centred pov.

The old EHRC guidance was legally wrong

The technical guidance to schools, or some other EHRC guidance? I'm not clear on all the details here.

There shouldnt be any legal guidelance that states a child - of unspecified age - can have the pc of gender reassignment. To me it undermines the pc of age and the right of children to be safeguarded against an age inappropriate ideology. But I understand that the trans activist influence is far more powerful in law than the rights of children to be safe.

It's incoherent and the failure to account for age and safeguarding means we'll continue to see the Munchausen parents with "trans" toddlers and transactivists discussing children as mini adults rather than vulnerable children entitled to be safeguarded.

Yes, it's all blocked up from the top. The old EHRC guidance was legally wrong and was shown to be wrong in the FWS/Supreme Court judgment. New EHRC guidance for service providers has been passed to the Secretary of State for Education but Bridget Phillipson is still sitting on it although the FWS judgment and the EHRC's interim guidance that followed were pretty plain - sex means biological sex not gender identity, and gender reassignment protection doesn't give people the right to be treated as if they are the opposite sex. They only have to be treated equally with people of their own sex.

A child might or might not be allowed to wear opposite-sex clothes to school but permission to wear a dress either applies to all boys or to none. Schools might reasonably decide that any boy who wanted to could wear a frock. It might depend on whether the school uniform frocks were decent on teenage boys - some skirts might not be, revealing bulgy crotches or whatever. Decency is a legitimate aim.

The KCSIE guidelines are still unclear about who has the protected characteristics of gender reassignment and what exactly it means for those who do.

It's also unclear because the protected characteristics protection applies to people who are perceived to have a protected characteristic under the Equality Act, even if they don't actually have it. (E.g. discriminating against someone because you think they are gay even if they're not).

"I also blame the DfE and Ofsted for not stamping it out from the top down"

Agreed. The damage done by allowing male transactivists to have so much influence over children's education has been immense. I note that Amanda Spielman (ex head of Ofsted) who presided over much of the initial promotion of this in schools, has now reverse ferreted and is highly critical. Haven't noted any apologies from her but in the spirit of that golden bridge hope, hope she keeps speaking out.

One thing that occurs to me is that there needs to be an instruction to schools that these issues must only be addressed vie the KCSIE guidelines as a safeguarding issue, not as a separate policy that counters this.

"Trans" guidance for schools is based on the demands of adult groups, predominantly male dominated, over keen on influencing children into boundary violation, erasure of sex based language, spaces, sport etc.

It must be made clear that they mustn't adopt additional policies that undermine the KCSIE guidance.

@BonfireLady interesting about Forstater because the technical guidance to schools says that the harassment provision of the Equality Act doesn't apply to gender reassignment - repeatedly telling a trans child that they look silly wearing a dress could never constitute harassment under the Equality Act.

I don't know anything about legal stuff though and I don't know why harassment only applies to certain protected characteristics here and whether that's only a school thing.

Gender reassignment is irrelevant because the school is protected in its decision to only allow girls to wear dresses under the single-sex exemption

It has to be a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim though, I'm not sure what the legitimate aim of stopping boys wearing dresses would be?

Apologies for the ambiguity @noblegiraffe . I guess it's technically the current guidance, considering it's still live and hasn't been replaced.

From your post above:

"A member of school staff repeatedly tells a transsexual pupil that ‘he’ should not dress like a girl and that ‘he’ looks silly, which causes the pupil great distress. This would not be covered by the harassment provisions, because it is related to gender reassignment, but could constitute direct discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment."

My understanding following the SC judgement and the Forstater case before that is that:

• repeatedly telling a child that they look silly wearing a dress could constitute harassment. Saying it once is not very nice but wouldn't. The PC of gender reassignment is relevant here if that child is a male, but it's the threshold for harassment that is more important. This is my understanding from Forstater. However, I don't know whether the Forstater judgment on this harassment threshold, versus expression of lack of gender identity belief, applies to schools (where children are the service users)
• as long as all male pupils are told that they can't wear a dress, there is no unlawful discrimination. Gender reassignment is irrelevant because the school is protected in its decision to only allow girls to wear dresses under the single-sex exemption

and b) recognise that the previous EHRC guidance doesn't reflect the law....

Can you clarify this bit please, @BonfireLady ?

Jumping in here to say I do blame schools where those schools have been given every opportunity to a) see the harm that their leadership (and safeguarding) team's behaviour is perpetuating and b) recognise that the previous EHRC guidance doesn't reflect the law.... and still they persist.

Schools like the OP's daughter's and my daughters' fit into that category.

I also blame the DfE and Ofsted for not stamping it out from the top down.

Thanks, it sounds like she might be slowly extricating herself, and it sounds like she never took a medical route? Fingers crossed for continued progress.

The school sounds like a mess, but then honestly I think all schools are when it comes to this due to the continued almost but not quite publishing of govt guidance. My school doesn’t have a policy at all, I think they just roll with things case-by-case. It does leave teachers not knowing where we stand though.

The guidance does need to be clear. I think teachers who have spent the last decade being told they should instantly affirm need a clear rationale as to why that has changed as a safeguarding issue. Because they are going to be accused of transphobia or feel transphobic when they don’t.

She’s doing pretty well thanks, at uni now and lots of signs of desistence but she still uses the “boy name” with friends and as her “known as” with the uni. She renewed her passport recently in her birth name despite going a long way down the line with a deed poll. She organised and paid for that (passport) herself so 🤞

I had quite a lot of contact with DSL and head as well as an inside track on what was going on at school, so I know there was a draft policy and an inset session on it but also that a final version has never emerged. Nothing was ever done about teachers using the wrong name- tricky to prove. The ones that I suspect were doing it didn’t use her name in parents evening conversations just used “you”.

When DD started sixth form she changed her name by asking the sixth form office. I found out a week or so later when topping up her dinner money on ParentPay. It turned out that the new gender questioning children policy contradicted the previous policy on name change (that students were free to do this in sixth form). DSL did apologise and offer to tell DD she needed to change back but our relationship was so fragile at that point we felt it would be humiliating for her so she kept it. We’ve never used it at home and we always referred to her by her birth name in all interactions with school which made parents’ evenings extremely uncomfortable for all.

I don’t get the impression that teachers at the school have been well briefed about the policy (the draft included the bogus suicide figures which we did address but have never seen a final version so don’t know if this was taken on board).

The school guidance is vital to clarify what is known e.g that social transition is not a neutral act, a large proportion will desist if not affirmed and the suicide risk is in line with other children with comorbidites like ASD, depression or anxiety.

May I ask how it is going for your daughter? What happened when teachers continued with preferred pronouns/name after you said no?

Please would someone let me know what the guidance directed at children/teenagers is supposed to be about having a feeling of an inner gender that is separate from your sex at your birth?

I am asking as I have now seen three books in a row , one about ‘daring kids’, the two others about puberty/growing up, which state as a fact - equal to reproduction or menstruation - that they might have a gender that does not match the sex they were told at birth, or words to that effect. Two of these were in a public library, all might be in school libraries. I think it must be the norm and feel concerned.

I'm not blaming schools by the way @noblegiraffe - well I do blame a few schools in Scotland who've jumped into this with both feet, but not schools in general. The guidance needs to be clear and straightforward and not rely on unspecified "exceptions" so it helps schools do the right (safest) thing and stand up to pressure from parents and pupils.

What you've said about the old guidance is why the new one is so urgently needed. And why it needs to be right.

Oh yes, I was going to say "It might be the only area of their lives where they get that much response so readily from adults and peers" but I was too late to edit.

Children "policing themselves" (and each other) on pronouns isn't healthy either. It's especially confusing for young children and what are teachers supposed to say if a child asks? "Jane is really a little boy but we all call her "she" because that's what she wants and we feel sorry for her"? That's the truth but is that acceptable?

I think it is good for the guidance to tell parents who ask for support that no, they can't expect pronoun changes.

In my experience, children police themselves on pronouns.

There's still plenty of potential here for a child to socially transition at school among their peers, name and pronouns and for parents to remain completely unaware. The KCSIE guidance only kicks in when a child or parent makes a request to the school for support.

Yes, no one has to push, demand or coerce if it's going to happen without any of that. The children involved, in my experience, are not the pushy, demanding and coercive types. They are more the quiet, vulnerable, more likely to be bullied types. People, particularly teachers but also other 'nice' children are inclined to feel protective of them, and want to do what they can to make their lives a little easier. If this is calling them by a preferred name and pronouns, then this is what happens (note: this happens even without a school instruction, lots of kids socially transition among their friends first before the school gets on board).

And people can say Cass says no, but you need to remember that the Cass review was only published two years ago and schools have been dealing with this for well over a decade. And for well over a decade the understanding has been that deliberate misgendering is a dick move.

Consider the technical guidance to schools from the EHRC that was published in 2014 which contains:

"A member of school staff repeatedly tells a transsexual pupil that ‘he’ should not dress like a girl and that ‘he’ looks silly, which causes the pupil great distress. This would not be covered by the harassment provisions, because it is related to gender reassignment, but could constitute direct discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment."

You can tell how long ago it was written (it's still live) by the fact that it uses 'transsexual'. Note that the example for direct discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment explicitly uses the misgendering 'he' in its example of a teacher who is potentially breaking the law.

Don't blame schools for socially transitioning kids when that's the legal guidance we've been given, that the DfE have explicitly directed us to teach about gender identity as fact. It hasn't required pushing or demanding or activist teachers, just reading the documents we've been provided and acting on them.