Single sex schools will be able to refuse trans pupils - Daily Telegraph

[flyingbuttress43]

This was the front page lead in this morning's print edition. Apologies if this is a thread already but I can't see it.

[[//www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/17/single-sex-schools-can-reject-transgender-pupils/]]

Government guidelines to be issued "within weeks" according to the DT will allow head teachers of girls and boys schools to reject applications from pupils who identify as the opposite gender. School leaders will also be told they can refuse to use different pronouns if they are demanded by a pupil.

Apparently the guidance will come after school leaders and governors met lawyers to discuss fears that they could be at risk of discrimination claims from the parents of trans-identified pupils if they refused to accommodate them. Schools will be reassured they would not be breaching the Equality Act
2010 if they did so.

The DT says the guidance is being drawn up by Edication Secretary Gillian Keegan and the equalities minister Kemi Badenoch and is intended to provide clarity amid the dramatic increase in the number of pupils saying they are trans.

Though I agree a court case would have been useful. Like much of the law, this one is poorly drafted.

Wikipedia might or might not be reliable, but do you actually disagree in this case -- almost all state schools are coeducational (mixed).

Of the grammar schools in England, 61 are for girls. 58 for boys and 44 are mixed. I don't think the numbers involved would make any difference to academic performance - it would be the total ethos of the school, and its control over single sex ways of interacting between teachers and pupils that would have to be changed with even a couple of trans pupils of either biological sex; as well as organisation of "spaces", availability of sports choices and play, competition with other single-sex schools in every academic and sporting area, uniform and personal appearance regulations and on and on and on.

They just go to either a mixed school or the school permitted by their sex. You can get bullied for anything. You want to have separate schools for every race, orientation, accent, weight, skin complexion, sexual behaviour? Besides, if anything being trans protects you from being directly bulled - you're part of a protected class that society is celebrating. Plus, being trans is a choice they make.

The difference between a schools admitting a boy under 'exceptional circumstances' and admitting a trans girl is that it would be possible in the former situation for the boy to be catered for with separate changing and toileting facilities. Presumably, they would be housed separately in dorms and on school trips.

If you accept a trans girl on the basis that they are a girl, you can't then put those safeguarding measures in place.

It's a minefield.

I disagree with this, but I would agree if we were comparing adults with adults. We're not.

We're comparing children with adults.

Children are protected differently in law - and this is safeguarding. Children are not mini adults. Part of safeguarding is sex segregation.

They just go to either a mixed school or the school permitted by their sex. You can get bullied for anything. You want to have separate schools for every race, orientation, accent, weight, skin complexion, sexual behaviour? Besides, if anything being trans protects you from being directly bulled - you're part of a protected class that society is celebrating. Plus, being trans is a choice they make.

Quite.
I work with disabled children and have a lot to do with choosing school placements. Parents often say they want a special school because their child won't be 'different' and won't be bullied in an environment with other disabled children.

However, If a mainstream school can make reasonable adjustments and is educationally suitable for a child, then they don't need a special school place. What they need is for the school to have really robust supportive and anti-bullying policies in place to ensure that child is happy and safe in school.

Segregating is not the answer to bullying. Exposure to difference, education and guidance is. That and building up the self-esteem of the vulnerable children.

The bullying concern also makes no sense, in that a girl presenting as a boy is as likely to be bullied in a boys' school as in a girls' school. Possibly more likely, as they will be very obviously the odd one out.

It's not a good enough reason.

Why do the papers report these things in the future tense? Single sex ARE able to refuse transgender pupils, and transwomen ARE able to be excluded from women’s toilets.

Again, you're mixing up direct discrimination and indirect discrimination. Indirect discrimination isn't just less overt direct discrimination, it requires entirely different elements to be made out.

"You didn't admit me because I am Jewish" is an allegation of direct discrimination. In your example, it is a legally valid claim, but factually incorrect.

"You didn't admit me because you have a particular policy that, although applied equally to everyone, puts people with a particular protected characteristic (of which I am one) at a disadvantage, and your policy cannot be objectively justified" is an allegation of indirect discrimination. The recent Primark case was about indirect discrimination - Primark implemented a policy that required everyone to work late shifts. This put women at a particular disadvantage because they are more likely to have childcare responsibilities that prevent late working. The woman that brought the claim won.

Giving the Good Law Project is on a continuous losing streak and has just incurred responsibility for all government costs in their latest failed action, I wouldn’t put too much store by their advice. Unless you want to kill a fox with a baseball bat.

The Equality Act allows admission of occasional children of the opposite sex - this was in consideration of staff children and mixed sixth forms, not transgender children. And being a single sex school is sufficient justification in itself not to admit the opposite sex.

Thank you Gillian Keegan for getting off the fence, at least for a moment.

The only way we are going to end this if we stop treating trans and non-binary people as a distinct sex or gender class and start recognizing them as the sensitive individuals they are who need individualized help and therapy, rather than the civil rights cause some claim this to be.

These kids need help, not a category.

pitt.substack.com/p/non-binary

It still needed a population unlikely to talk back, clever elites happy to stop questioning and eager to accept, the unique boiling pot that is social media, and the also unique suspension of people's normal tripwires and trigger points during Covid, to remove enough barriers to faster unravelling.

Covid didn’t happen until 2020. This was all well embedded years before before then.

It was September 2017 when Maria MacLachlan was assaulted at Speakers Corner by a 26yo male activist who went by the name of Tara Wolf.

The petition to have the 6ft+ male sex worker Tara Hudson moved to a female prison after Hudson’s conviction for assault on a male bartender was five years before the pandemic, back in 2015.

Keira Bell was put on puberty blockers by the Tavistock in 2013 and had a double mastectomy in 2017.

Those campaigning behind the scenes for this to happen weren’t just campaigning in the legislature, they were campaigning across all possible fields of influence: health, education, the media, trade unions and the charity sector.

Drat it. Wrong thread. Again.

But few places in the U.K. still have the 11+ and grammar schools. I believe only NI and a couple of English counties. I’m in my 50s and grammar schools were already a thing of the past when I was at school. So that doesn’t really invalidate the Wikipedia claim that there are very few single sex state secondaries in the U.K, apparently only 410 remain.