Help with contacting school regarding the Equality Act

[ginginchinchin]

Hi all

I've just checked my local senior school policy on Equality and it contains the following:-

Statement of Intent - Legislative Framework

1.2. The Equality Act 2010 provides a modern, single legal framework with three broad duties:

 Eliminate discrimination
 Advance equality of opportunity
 Foster good relations

1.3. College fully understands the principles of the Act and the work needed to ensure that those with protected characteristics are not discriminated against and are given equal opportunities.

1.4. A protected characteristic, under the Act, is as follows:
 Age
 Disability
 Race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin
 Sex (including transgender people)
 Gender reassignment
 Maternity and pregnancy
 Religion and belief
 Sexual orientation
 Marriage and civil partnership (for employees)

and this is the section on Gender reassignment

1. Gender reassignment

5.1. The Act ensures legal protection against discrimination (direct or indirect) for everyone under the nine protected characteristics mentioned previously, including gender reassignment.

5.2. A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if that person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person’s sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

5.3. All members of staff and students have a right to privacy, which includes the right to keep one’s transgender status confidential.

College staff should not disclose information that may reveal a child or other staff member’s transgender status.

5.4. The college will appoint a staff member in whom any transgender child can confide and who can deal with any issues that may arise, for instance bullying or harassment.

5.5. A glossary of terminology related to the transgender field can be found on the Gender Identity Research and Education Society website. www.gires.org.uk/

I can see they've conflated sex and transgender in section 1, and there's quite a bit to challenge in section 5. I was hoping for some pointers that I can use in a response, considering Liz Truss's statement yesterday.

Thanks in anticipation!

Have you seen the brand new guidance from the DfE? That might mean that the parts around keeping confidences could need reconsidering.

Hi - if you've got the time please have a look at earliers threads only a few weeks ago on this where there is loads of info about schools sending out info that is inaccurate.

These are the actual protected characteristics as published by Parliament:
www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4

Sex is about biology.

Trans gender people have their own catagory "gender re-asignment"

Basically just say they are misquoting the law (as evidenced by link)..

They are a school. They should ensure they teach the actual truth.

Whoever told them that may want sex to mean what they have listed, but in the eyes of the law it doesn't.

And sex does not include

Had a quick look and here are two recent threads which may have info to help you:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4017015-schools-equal-opportunities-policy

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4006198-School-Equalities-policy-gender-instead-of-sex

Thank you so much for your pointers. I'll get reading tonight - I want to have emailed them before Monday.

Good luck OP, let us know how you get on.

5.3. All members of staff and students have a right to privacy, which includes the right to keep one’s transgender status confidential.

College staff should not disclose information that may reveal a child or other staff member’s transgender status.

Well I hope that by this they mean for example if a girl tells their teacher they think they are non-binary but they aren’t ready to "come out" yet then the teacher can't tell other pupils. Which I would support.

I hope they don't mean that when a boy starts the school and says he's a trans-girl he gets to change with and share dorms with the girls and the girls (or parents) aren't allowed to be told he's a boy.

If it's the latter then I don't see how that would work anyway because unless the child is new to the school then everyone is going to know that Nathan is now Nancy, so you can't really not "out" Nancy's transgender status, unless teachers want to pretend that Nathan left the school at the end of last term and Nancy is a new child. Which would be ridiculous. But then there never is any practical or logical thinking in woke school policies so potentially it is that.