twofalls That's an excellent email from you, but what a crappy response!
Let's all keep on making sure that when the shit finally hits the fan, none of the people in charge can say they weren't warned of the stench emanating from all this.
Not in Oxfordshire, but wanted to add something anyway:
Children's Rights Impact Assessments (CRIAs) are meant to be done by the government before allowing any guidance into schools that will be used to make policy changes in schools.
As you've found, just like in Scotland, the flavour of the month is the argument that no one has to assess anything because no one is forcing the schools to use these guidelines.
The Scottish Government is trying to officially and publicly wash their hands off any responsibility for the LGBT Youth Scotland Guidance and for having to make sure it upholds the human rights of children.
While enthusiastically repeating to STV that they "fully support" it.
Without assessing it.
After being told it violates the human rights of children.
If you ever wondered if this, all of this, is a sign of collective insanity amongst those who govern us, this is a good indication.
Furthermore, as you and others have mentioned above, every single school has to do an Equality Impact Assessment before implementing any new guidance that leads to policy changes (as these guidelines do when they change how children are treated from how they were treated before).
Such an EQIA must actually involve consultation with all affected children and their parents/carers - it cannot just be a tick-box exercise - and it must be published. As far as I know no one is bothering to do any actual EQIAs when it comes to these new guidelines for kids who identify as trans.
Nonetheless, ask to see the one your school did. It's your right. Then you can inform them that without assessments their liability insurance will probably not be valid should something happen to a child because they changed any of their policies in line with potentially unlawful guidelines.
I would also recommend getting in touch with the Children's Commissioner in England. They are supposed to make sure that the rights of all children are upheld, but I guess that just like their Scottish counterpart they will have embraced all these new guidelines without critically examining any of them.
However, they will be aware of the recent response of the Children's and Young People Commissioner Scotland to the CRIA written by Women and Girls in Scotland. They've completely changed their tune of enthusiastic endorsement of the LGBT Youth Scotland Guidance to one of concern.
TransgenderTrend will hopefully now follow up with their own CRIA but that's a lot of work, so will likely take a few months.
It's interesting to note that while the group Women and Girls In Scotland has predictably been attacked as transphobic for asking to uphold the rights of ALL children, their CRIA has not actually been attacked on its substance.
On the contrary, the Scottish Children's Commissioner have publicly stated that it was "extremely thorough, well researched, comprehensive, informative and helpful" (which is why they've now reminded the Scottish government of their duty to make sure all guidance used in schools upholds human rights law and the EqA).
The Scottish Government has said it rejected the call for a review of the Guidance because they didn't write it so they don't see why they should assess it. If they could have rejected the call for a review on the basis of the CRIAs findings being wrong, they would have. But they can't, so they're basically reduced to rejecting the complaints about any stench coming from that Guidance by saying it wasn't them that shat it out.
So you could take that CRIA as a starting off point to make your own arguments. You could also check out Dr Kath Murray's recent paper on GRA reform which finds the Guidance breaches even more more articles of the UNCRC.