(Scottish) Teachers fear legal action over transgender pupil advice

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

In the Herald

www.heraldscotland.com/politics/19604640.teachers-fear-legal-action-transgender-pupil-advice/

Excerpts:

Leaders at the Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association (SSTA) said their upcoming Congress would see members debate an emergency motion that claims ministers are seeking to make changes without establishing a clear legislative basis. It calls for the guidance to be withdrawn until such an “underpinning” is enacted.

The guidance states: “A transgender young person may not have told their family about their gender identity. Inadvertent disclosure could cause needless stress for the young person or could put them at risk and breach legal requirements. Therefore, it is best to not share information with parents or carers without considering and respecting the young person’s views and rights.”

SSTA concerns focus largely on what happens to details disclosed by a pupil and whether these can be passed on without their consent. Its leaders said there were deepening fears over the professional and legal risks for teachers who are recipients of such information.

The SSTA motion states: “In view of the recently published document ‘Supporting Transgender Pupils in Schools - Guidance for Scottish Schools’ (August 2021), this Congress is greatly concerned over safeguarding and other issues, including: the potential excluding of parents/carers from the process of children under 16 transitioning to another gender; implying that teachers may not pass on information that may be revealed to them by a child without the child’s consent; the potential for professional harm to staff involved in withholding information from parents/carers, including future legal action; that the identified ‘best practice’ has not been rigorously examined for its legal implications nor risk assessed for potential harm it may cause others in the school community, including those with protected characteristics.”

It concludes: “Congress believes it is unacceptable for the government to seek to make such consequential changes without legal underpinning. Congress therefore calls on the guidance to be withdrawn until appropriate legislation has been enacted which can then inform the guidance to be disseminated to schools.”

I have no idea how significant this is?

Trans activists are frothing to keep safeguarding away from this group of children. Teachers regularly consider safeguarding issues when working with children who self harm, look for issues of social contagion when looking at children with eating disorders or who are being radicalised online. Yet with this group teachers are told to stay away. Only affirm. View their families as potentially hostile.

It can't be emphasised strongly enough that isolating children from their carers and leaving them in thrall to random adults are behaviours that predators use - every day .

In other words teaching staff with transphobic views are now worried they won't be able to get away with expressing them anymore?

What is it with the moronic takes all the time? I mean this doesn't just misrepresent what the Scottish Secondary Teacher Association said, it vomits it back up in a wholly unrecognizable way that is just beyond stupid.

And I don't say that lightly.

Here's the situation:

We have laws Scottish schools must abide by. They include The Human Rights Act 1998, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, The Equality Act 2010, Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC), school building regulations, statutory guidance and a whole range of other regulations, safeguarding framewoks and education policies that schools must also adhere to.

What has happened here is that the Scottish Government has created guidance, which (if implemented as written), will see staff violate a range of the above.

What the Scottish Government has also done is passed the buck. They have made it unequivocally clear that all responsibility, including legal liabilities, for implementing the guidance rests with the schools doing it. At best, that means the head of each school, at worst each individual member of staff, from teaching assistants to learning support to teachers.

It doesn't matter what individual teachers or staff members believe about self-id and trans-inclusion in opposite-sex spaces and information sharing - they are bound by law to uphold the rights of all children in schools, to safeguard them all and to include all parents who have not officially been designated a concern for the wellbeing of their child in all decision making about them. (For those parents who have, slightly different rules apply, but as long as they have parental rights, they also must be included.)

And the official guidance from the Scottish Government gives advice that goes against much of the rules schools are bound by.

At long last the only specialist union for Scotland's high school teachers has twigged that this guidance is a danger to their members, because it leaves them wide open to legal challenges, and all without having the backing of their government.

It was obvious that this would happen. The last guidance, commissioned by the Scottish Government, paid for and endorsed, by them, was nonetheless not written and published by the Scottish Government but an outside advocacy group. So when that guidance was found not to be legal, the Scottish Government washed their hands off it.

The new guidance repeats much of the old guidance (how could it not, given who had input again). Although it avoids some of the most egregious breaches, it still gives advice that would lead to violating the rights of children and safeguarding rules. That's because no one writing this new guidance seems to have been willing to engage with campaigners seeking to uphold the rights of all children or the rights of female children or the rights of disabled children or the rights of children from faith groups.

But this guidance is coming from the government, so it cannot be simply ignored.

The union has one job here: protect its members from suffering the consequences of the mistakes made by the Scottish Government.

And someone at that union was brave enough to do this now, with an excellent statement that calls out the Scottish Government for its negligence.

In other words teaching staff with transphobic views are now worried they won't be able to get away with expressing them anymore?

What is it about riding on the trans-train that makes you lose the ability to read, to listen, to comprehend plain English in any form???

👆👏👏👏

A person with a vagina says "Teacher I identify as Tom now you need to use he/his/him pronouns, but don't tell my parents."

Teacher speaks to parents "I need to speak to you about_"
WHO now??
Use deadname - transphobic
Use newname - transphobic
Your daughter - transphobic
Your son - transphobic
Your "child" - which one most have siblings at same school
Your "child in year 8" - parents be like, "so Sarah?" You can't say yes or no or you're transphobic.

It's all just a total trap. It's bullshit.

In other words teaching staff with transphobic views are now worried they won't be able to get away with expressing them anymore?

Award for today's dimmest comment goes to...

It does go to 😎😎

Great pos5 Charlie

Safeguarding flying out the window for some children

Scotland ditching safeguarding for a ideology

Yes - thanks Charlie for setting it out so clearly.

@CharlieParley

In other words teaching staff with transphobic views are now worried they won't be able to get away with expressing them anymore?

What is it with the moronic takes all the time? I mean this doesn't just misrepresent what the Scottish Secondary Teacher Association said, it vomits it back up in a wholly unrecognizable way that is just beyond stupid.

And I don't say that lightly.

Here's the situation:

We have laws Scottish schools must abide by. They include The Human Rights Act 1998, The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, The Equality Act 2010, Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC), school building regulations, statutory guidance and a whole range of other regulations, safeguarding framewoks and education policies that schools must also adhere to.

What has happened here is that the Scottish Government has created guidance, which (if implemented as written), will see staff violate a range of the above.

What the Scottish Government has also done is passed the buck. They have made it unequivocally clear that all responsibility, including legal liabilities, for implementing the guidance rests with the schools doing it. At best, that means the head of each school, at worst each individual member of staff, from teaching assistants to learning support to teachers.

It doesn't matter what individual teachers or staff members believe about self-id and trans-inclusion in opposite-sex spaces and information sharing - they are bound by law to uphold the rights of all children in schools, to safeguard them all and to include all parents who have not officially been designated a concern for the wellbeing of their child in all decision making about them. (For those parents who have, slightly different rules apply, but as long as they have parental rights, they also must be included.)

And the official guidance from the Scottish Government gives advice that goes against much of the rules schools are bound by.

At long last the only specialist union for Scotland's high school teachers has twigged that this guidance is a danger to their members, because it leaves them wide open to legal challenges, and all without having the backing of their government.

It was obvious that this would happen. The last guidance, commissioned by the Scottish Government, paid for and endorsed, by them, was nonetheless not written and published by the Scottish Government but an outside advocacy group. So when that guidance was found not to be legal, the Scottish Government washed their hands off it.

The new guidance repeats much of the old guidance (how could it not, given who had input again). Although it avoids some of the most egregious breaches, it still gives advice that would lead to violating the rights of children and safeguarding rules. That's because no one writing this new guidance seems to have been willing to engage with campaigners seeking to uphold the rights of all children or the rights of female children or the rights of disabled children or the rights of children from faith groups.

But this guidance is coming from the government, so it cannot be simply ignored.

The union has one job here: protect its members from suffering the consequences of the mistakes made by the Scottish Government.

And someone at that union was brave enough to do this now, with an excellent statement that calls out the Scottish Government for its negligence.

The only responsible action a union could take. Teachers and families must not carry responsibility for the safeguarding problems foisted upon them.

Excellent detailed post @CharlieParley. I’m pleased (but a little surprised) that the union has actually noticed and put out that statement.

@Acatcalledcharlie

I spoke to the HT at my DD's school. He was clearly very nervous and worried about saying the wrong thing. He did assure me however that this is just guidance and that the school has their own measures in place. He guaranteed me that my DD would not be sharing changing facilities or accommodation with a child of the opposite sex. He also said that I would be involved in all decisions around my child's wellbeing. I felt re-assured after that.

What has it come to though that I even have to ask these questions and that schools are being given this crazy guidance that they know to be just wrong!

Our school has so far said similar - this isn't statutory guidance, so they don't have to follow it. And that parents would be consulted on any changes.

@terryleather

SNP continues to ignore the people it proclaims to serve, though - still trying to push through shit legislation 'for our own good', no matter what all the experts tell them.

This is what Stephen Daisley called coercive progressivism, which I think hits the nail on the head - the bien pensant inflicting whatever they like on the lessers cause they know better.

They can get tae fuck.

Yes, that's about right.

Quite astonishing to me, after the fiasco of the Named Person scheme, that the Scotgov tries yet AGAIN to produce guidance that threatens to interfere in family life.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49757890

What do they expect families to say? 'Oh, it's not standard safeguarding practise, but right enough, Nicola knows best'?

Two chances.