May 2018 Guardian
Schools pulled into row over helping transgender children
As more teens come out as trans, experts clash over how schools should help
(extract)
"Davies-Arai says she took an interest in the subject because as a child she had felt herself to be a boy, and she didn’t think it was a good idea to label children like her as transgender because she believes that in some cases, these feelings resolve naturally by the end of adolescence.
While the Allsorts advice states that “trans pupils or students should have access to the changing room that corresponds to their gender identity” and that in PE lessons, students “should be enabled to participate in the activity which corresponds to their gender identity if this is what they request”, Davies-Arai argues that shared changing rooms present difficulties for some girls. Few teenage girls will be willing to admit that they feel uncomfortable sharing a changing room with a biologically male student, she says.
She points out that the technical guidance on the Equality Act for schools suggests offering students “private changing facilities, such as the staff changing room or another suitable space” – the approach taken at Miles’s school.
Susie Green, CEO of the charity Mermaids, disagrees, saying the debate about single-sex toilets seems “engineered to whip up fear” and is equivalent to “arguing people of colour shouldn’t be allowed to use the same toilets as white people in case they make them dirty”.
Claire Birkenshaw, a transgender former headteacher, says the wide range of different advice creates confusion and conflict. “There needs to be clear statutory guidance for schools that incorporates the views of experts from education, the medical profession, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and trans people,” she says. “Rows about a vulnerable and marginalised group in education are not helpful.”
The EHRC is planning to issue guidance of its own next month, something Birkenshaw welcomes. “Schools want to support the transgender young person, but at the same time they’ll be reflecting on how other children may feel, on how staff are going to feel and parents.” (continues)
Davies-Arai says her broader concern is that by affirming students’ gender identity, schools may be nudging them down a route that can lead to cross-sex hormones and life-changing surgery without enough time to reflect. Teachers, she says, “are essentially being forced to collude in an experimental approach towards children with gender dysphoria”. She adds: “You can support children and accept them, without affirming their belief that their body is ‘wrong’.”
Adele Robinson (not her real name), a head of year at a secondary school, shares Davies-Arai’s worries. The school has had 12 children, all girls, come out as transgender in the past 18 months. The majority, she says, have autism, and some have experienced sexual abuse.
When they come out, she says, they have brought in information sourced from Tumblr blogs and YouTube videos. Although her team does its best to “support every child in a loving, kind and compassionate way”, she feels that staff are too frightened to challenge what she sees as harmful practices: “We have chest binders worn in school, which is horrible. If a child was cutting, they would be straight in with a counsellor. Yet damaging developing breast tissue goes unquestioned. It’s a gross failure in terms of child protection.” (continues)
www.theguardian.com/education/2018/may/15/transgender-row-teachers-afraid-challenge-breast-binding