EHRC consultation - schools technical guidance

Adults are not school children, so yes, of course that's different.
If you want another (better) reason, here's one: I don't believe in the concept of the 'trans child'.

I’m not connecting the dots from letting someone change uniform to them thinking everything resolves around them. What about adults? Do you think it’s okay for a trans woman to wear a dress or a skirt?

For one reason, because one of the purposes of schooling to teach your little smashers that the world does not revolve around them and their feelings. Or, indeed, those of their parents.

Why is it not OK?

I don't think it is OK for a boy to come to school in a skirt. At all. I think he should be sent home and told to change. But obviously I am a terrible old bigot.

loophole loophole 🙄

Thank you. That's another loohole closed although will inevitable make running some benign activities (reading with children) more challenging for schools to administer.

Safeguarding...
There's been a change.

From 1 September 2026, the law about regulated activity with children has changed.
Previously volunteers working with children did not require an Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check if they were sufficiently supervised by someone else eg a teacher at the school where the volunteer is giving a talk.
The change to the regulated activity threshold means that any volunteer working with children on more than 3 days in any 30-day period or overnight , requires an Enhanced DBS check with Children’s Barred List. This could potentially include some of your members who regularly give talks to schools. Young people’s participation in training courses could also fall under the regulated activity threshold.
The GOV.UK website provides more information and useful examples of who this change affects: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/change-to-the-definition-of-regulated-activity-with-children-from-1-september-2026

That's such a childish response. This is an adult discussion about this exceptionally vulnerable group of children being potentially harmed by the tone deaf technical guidance from the EHRC that pays no attention to the rights of children to be safeguarded or knowledge of how schools operate.
A pp has pointed out how the EHRC are simply using the pc of gender reassignment that allegedly applies to children of any age (therefore including babies) and has ended up providing guidance that potentially makes these children less safe in schools.

I have no idea how this should be resolved but ignoring society's need to safeguard children is not the way forward.

They are a group of children with the PC of gender reassignment. Ignore that and just pretending that they are a regular member of their sex with no additional needs doesn’t reflect reality and will just lead to distress.

They do not exist as one group though do they?

They exist as 2 groups, one group of males and one group of females.

That's the whole point.

It sounds like you want to just stick your fingers in your ears and pretend these children don’t exist as a group. The distress they feel is real and forcing them into distressing situations because it fits your worldview isn’t the answer.

That doesn't mean society should accept the removal of safeguarding for children just because transactivists until recently have held the power and been able to undermine good practice in schools. I've said for years that educators have been systematically deskilled. Their well established professional knowledge about how to support and educate vulnerable children has been eroded by the niche demands of transactivists. This technical guidance builds on that undermining of children's welfare and rights.

We need to support organisations like Sex Matters, Transgender Trend etc in challenging all this. The law is an ass in pretending that the pc of gender reassignment applies to children and babies. It's time to start pushing back at this tsunami of adults sexualising and adultifying children and to insist on returning to the fundamental principle of safeguarding them. This should be at the core of responses to this grim guidance.

But the problem there is that the protected characteristic of gender reassignment applies to children.

If it didn’t apply to children then this legal guidance could look very different, but as it does, then hands are tied a lot of the time.

😀Foundation of bullshit is very apt.
These is also "professionally dangerous" guidance.

It ignores the requirements that schools have to safeguard children.
It promotes dangerous safeguarding practices (the changing elsewhere in adult spaces )
It mangles the schools requirement to promote consistent age appropriate , educational policies (the pronouns nonsense, ignorance of sport / PE for children issues.
It advocates (yet again) the handing over of professional responsibilities for management / pastoral care etc) to unqualified queer theory lobbyists.
And more...

Well said.
These are completely age inappropriate and dangerous issues to lay on developing children. Sadly that's not stopped society from promoting them.

Far too much ignorance about children - all encapsulated in those guidelines.

How does a child know whether they are or not (ignoring completely the common sense element of absolutely not letting them enter the world of madness)

They also highlight that inviting queer theory activists into schools to discuss matters of sexuality and identity with children below the age of consent is a school potentially weakening safeguaring and abdicating their responsibility to others
"Adults (and older teenagers) who wish to talk to vulnerable children about their sexual orientation and feelings about their bodies may not have the child’s best interests at heart, or may simply be out of their depth. Without careful safeguarding such groups can attract predators and radicalisation, and spread socially contagious feelings of dysphoria, anxiety and introspection. Telling children that it is “transphobic” not to allow them into opposite-sex facilities can cause school anxiety and avoidance".

There's a lot to unpick but it's great to see a proper education focus on all this rather than the adultification of children demanded by queer theory lobbyists.

Schools however are well practised in making reasonable adjustments for children in order that they can access schooling.

It would need to be demonstrated that allowing a distressed pupil to change away from their peers in order that they can participate in PE lessons is actually an unreasonable adjustment.

What a pleasure to read that Sex Matters intervention. They're starting to unpick the challenges raised by seeing children as mini adults.

"A boy who identifies as transgender, non-binary or gender-questioning, or who is effeminate or gender non-conforming, is a boy who might be perceived as having the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. He may in fact be a child that grows up to realise he is gay, or he might grow up and live as a transsexual. Treating that child differently — encouraging his exclusion from boys’ sports and facilities, requiring other pupils and staff to treat him as a girl and excluding him from the ordinary rules that apply to boys (while not allowing him access to girls’ sports and facilities)— is not “inclusion”.

Sex Matters is fully aware of Cass's conclusion that so called gender medicine is built on "shaky foundations" and poor quality research so it's good to see the EHRC challenged about their flawed assumptions that these vulnerable children have been in any way accurately diagnosed. Schools should not be undermining their well developed systems and practices in a way that results in these children being less safe.

I am unconvinced by Sex Matters’ argument.

• ”It says a school should not require a child who identifies as transgender to use the correct changing room, calling this “unlikely to be justified”, and suggests a staff facility instead. This gets the law backwards: requiring a pupil to use the changing facility that is safe and suitable for their sex is not discrimination. But it is discrimination to treat the child’s use of their own sex’s facilities as inappropriate, and to move the child to an inferior, less safe space. Schools should make sure there is zero tolerance of bullying, not agree that children who identify as (or are perceived to be) LGB or T should not be in facilities for their sex.”

But these children are not being offered alternative facilities because of bullying, they are being offered alternative facilities because being in correct sex facilities causes them distress. Bearing in mind that KCSIE now requires that schools should approach social transition with extreme caution, the involvement of parents and of medical professionals, are Sex Matters saying that actually schools should overrule professional advice that the child should socially transition because the doctor is wrong?

Which would set up a precedent whereby schools can overrule any reasonable adjustment for any child with SEN recommended by a medical professional because the school doesn’t think it’s what’s best for the child.

Sex Matters think it is 'seriously flawed'

The guidance is required to be in line with the Equality Act 2010. We think it has serious flaws.

1. It is completely inadequate on sport, barely addressing the legal obligation of schools to ensure girls receive a fair, equal offer of sport and PE.
2. It steers schools towards treating children who identify as transgender differently from their peers. We think this is likely to amount to unlawful gender-reassignment discrimination against those children, as well as sex and belief discrimination against other children.
3. It encourages schools to allow children to make inappropriate choices,and to invite into their school and take advice from organisations that will undermine safeguarding and compliance with the Equality Act.

https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/ehrc-technical-schools-guidance-is-not-fit-for-purpose/