Residential trips

[JustFuckOffPlease]

Name changed for this.
I knew it was only a matter of time.

I teach in a secondary school and we've so far not experienced too many challenges to our single sex provisions despite having increasing numbers of teens (mostly girls) that socially transition for a short period.

I'm running a week's residential course (tied to my subject) for 14 yr olds and one biological male who identifies as a girl has requested that they share with their friends. Girls. I responded before half term to this request and said that they must share with friends of the same biological sex. It went very quiet for weeks, but yesterday afternoon, parents have emailed me, cc'ing the Head to express their dissatisfaction that their child can't share with their female friends.

The accommodation we use are dormitories - minimum of 4 sharing, maximum of 8. I've emailed the hostel (who frequently run school trips) to see what their policy is on these matters so I'll hopefully hear on Monday.

We have quite a strong LGBT staff body and an SLT that will tick all the boxes to be seen to be doing the 'right thing'.

I'm anticipating being told that I need to listen to these parents who are insisting that I let their DC share and to not be discriminated against.

What are my options here? There's 4 staff attending this trip, 2 male 2 female. I organise it and I do NOT agree with biological males sharing a bedroom and changing rooms with biological females, no matter what feelings they have.

Yes. You are not allowed to tell them if their daughter will be sleeping in a room/sharing a shower or changing room with a male child who identifies as a girl. It invades the male child's privacy.

They'll boast about it somewhere - organisations must openly praise and celebrate Stonewall as they jump through their hoops (using school funds to do so) in order to work their way though the bronze, silver and gold awards. On their website usually.

@DisappearingGirl Thanks for asking about what happened in our case. I got such great input from the contributors here that I do feel bad for not feeding back. But at all points it has to be about protecting the children, hence keeping things rather quiet. I think this is one of the reasons this crap has got so far - what's really going on is hushed up to protect the children, which means that people simply don't believe you when you tell them that schools are facilitating mixed sex sleeping arrangements for teenagers!

The trip went ahead fine - we hadn't really expected a problem; dd's friend is a nice kid. As are most of her other male friends; most of the boys could probably share with girls without incident but this doesn't mean that schools should make all accommodation mixed sex... But we feel deeply responsible for having allowed a precedent to be set which is incredibly difficult for the school to manage, and will, sooner or later, lead to something awful happening - see the scenarios I shared upthread. We've focused on pointing out the massive legal problems with the wider policy that the school was following. I'll just say that we've made some progress.

@Nimbostratus100 Are you able to share a bit more detail, in a non-identifiable way, on the underage pregnancy situation you described. As I've said above, I completely understand that children must be protected, but people really need to know that these bad outcomes of school policies are already happening, and need to be stopped. If that happened and it was my kid, I'd be taking the school to court. (Whether it was my son OR my daughter!)

When I pointed out that an underage pregnancy could result from a trans-identified child sharing a bedroom with the opposite sex I was treated like some kind of weirdo fantasist for suggesting it. It's just bizarre how people's judgment seems to get scrambled. (Teenagers have sex? What a bizarre suggestion!)

@foodfiend thanks for updating and I'm glad it went okay. I entirely agree with you that it's different when it's personal to your kids and their friends. Need to weigh up the wider principles versus not making things worse in people's real lives.

In fact that overlaps with what I was going to say to the OP, which is, thank you for taking this issue on as a professional staff member. As a parent, I would want to speak up, but would be extremely worried about a) repercussions for my own kids if our family were seen as bigots, and b) repercussions for the trans kid who is probably a perfectly nice kid who is vulnerable to this ideology.

I think the sensible generic safeguarding rules need to come from the school - though ideally the SLT would be sorting this so it doesn't land with individual teachers. In fact, the government should be sorting it out so it doesn't land with individual schools! But thank you OP.

Yes, absolutely, thank you so much OP. The school just told us that if we weren't prepared to say 'no' to this situation why were we expecting the school to do so. I couldn't get across to them that the situation was really coercive, and that a straightforward, consistent policy of 'in these circumstances, we divide by sex, end of' was much 'kinder' to everyone in the long run. Imagine how awful for everyone involved for teachers to have to evaluate every trans identified child to see if they were 'trans enough' or 'safe' to be allowed into the opposite sex bedrooms.

Imagine how awful for everyone involved for teachers to have to evaluate every trans identified child to see if they were 'trans enough' or 'safe' to be allowed into the opposite sex bedrooms.

Awful and I'm pretty sure legally indefensible. You cannot extend the privileges of access to females to some males and not others without it becoming discriminatory.

Really what would sink this is a non trans boy demanding the same rights of access to female children and spaces, because I suspect that would be equally indefensible legally. The comparator for a male child is another male child.

@nilsmousehammer exactly.

And that's exactly what enabled a double rapist to wriggle their way onto a single sex beauty course with 16 & 17 yo girls barely out of school.
The girls weren't comfortable and eventually the predator was asked to leave.

A third space or single room for a pupil could be for one of a number of reasons other than being a trans girl. Someone with a stoma bag is one example that comes to mind.

Depending on the facility where the kids are staying a single room may not be an option, or it involves paying a massive under occupancy fee.

As above: facilities are going to have to start adjusting for this to keep their customers because it's an increasingly frequent issue. And without this option, a lot of teachers are going to just stop being willing to take kids away because of the issues and enormous hassle involved.

But a lot of the parents of trans-identified kids appear willing to fight for their child's right not to be discriminated against, which sounds noble, but in reality means that sleeping in a private room rather than opposite-sex dorm is transphobic.

The solution to this is to stick to the letter if the law. But there's no social protection for doing that so people cave and then the idea of "third spaces" comes up.

I am sure you have a boy in the same year who is visibly predatory/harassing but hard to pin down. I am also sure you have a boy that everyone remembers as getting a girl pregnant.
Put it to the HT "what if Ryan in the same year or Cody in year 12 said he now identifies as a girl? would you allow them to share with the girls, even if they were friends?".

Also if this boy gets to share with the girls, there is no legal basis on which to refuse any other boy who wants to share (in fact, why not ask Ryan's parents if he would like to ask to share) because there is no legal difference between Ryan and "Sammy".

Yes, I knew of a disabled child who needed turning in the night and had to have an adult in the room on residentials - in order not to wake other children the child had a room with themselves, and two adults for safety's sake.

Most stonewall schools have the stonewall logo displayed on their website along with their sports mark, healthy schools badge etc . For some reason ignoring the rights of 50% of your pupil population in a mixed school is seen as something to be proud of.

You cannot extend the privileges of access to females to some males and not others without it becoming discriminatory

Exactly this! It would be discriminating against the other male pupils to allow this male child to sleep in a female dorm. What if a non-trans male wanted to share with their female friends?

So - they either let all male pupils have the option or none. That’s the choice. And the only sensible choice is, of course, the second option: none.

Is this basically a case where if a MALE teacher had said, "Hahaha I know what teenage boys are like, allow this and next year there'll be ten of them claiming they're girls, trust me this is NOT something you want to do!" it would have been killed stone dead, but ... women just aren't allowed to say the same thing?
Call me old and cynical, but that's something I wonder.

Yes. A reasonable adjustment is to recognise that a child identifying as trans does not wish to use sex based provision and to have an alternative such as a single room. But using other children as means of validation is not on, and no one can be exempted from safeguarding policies.

And this is unfortunately what happens when adults teach children that they can expect to change sex. Male children cannot become female children. They can become trans girls. It is not the same thing, they cannot have the exact same provision regardless of the sex based reality, and it is not ok to be unkind to female children to avoid distressing a male one.

Whatever you do make sure you let the parents of the girls know, they have a right to make an informed choice then if their daughter is to share with a biological male. A lot of gender wokeness centres around the trans persons "comfy-ness" and no thought is given to the other girls who have to share.

I love how these trans are also just given single rooms, in hospital wards now they get the most coveted of rooms, the single room with an attached en-suite. They want in the bays with the other women to fulfill their 'gender euphoria' and the women who desperately want privacy or who have high care needs are put in shared bays. So I'm sure if this is resolved with offering a single room to the boy another girl will also wonder why do they get a single room? Many teenage girls don't want to share a dorm but only the trans people get such special treatment at all times.

Speak to the Insurer
They will stop all this

Just speak to them and show them the law that no minor can receive a GRE certificate
They are liable for mixed sex residentials

The hostel replied this afternoon.
It sounded a very cautiously written email which said that they were yet to write a policy on this because they'd yet to encounter it in secondary schools.

The have however, faced this issue in primary schools and had allowed, with parental and pupil permission, the trans child to share with the opposite sex. The hostel also offered to look into single room provisions for our teenage trans pupil.

I've replied and told them that I'm extremely reluctant to place the burden of safeguarding on pupils and parents and that I'll be pursuing the single room provision to try and meet the demands of this particular pupil.

My hope is that this pupil either accepts the room OR bows out of the trip. If they or their parents kick off, then this will be escalated to the SLT's attention. A part of me wants this to happen just so that we, as a school, can actually put safeguarding policies in place to nip this in the bud, for once and for all. I have so much to say (from this thread alone) and it is totally a hill that I'm willing to die on.

Did the hostel check with their insurer? Ask them; as they too are liable for mixed sex residentials of minors.
Minors cannot receive Gender Recognition Certificates, GRC.

I've replied and told them that I'm extremely reluctant to place the burden of safeguarding on pupils and parents and that I'll be pursuing the single room provision to try and meet the demands of this particular pupil.

This. They must be made to understand that children cannot safeguard themselves. Children deciding for themselves what's safe and what isn't safe, is the opposite of safeguarding.

Likewise parents.

What is the point of safeguarding if all you have to do is ask the kids whether they're fine with it or if their parents are fine with it?? It's nonsense.

A similar scenario happened in a school in California, but with the male in question being an adult NB counselor. US 5th graders are 10 and 11 yr olds here.

ktla.com/news/controversy-erupts-after-parents-of-los-alamitos-fifth-graders-learn-of-sleeping-arrangements-at-camp/