Telegraph: Trans guidance for teachers was wrong, says watchdog

[ResisterRex]

Story in the Telegraph, which says that the EHRC has written to Sex Matters to say their 2014 guidance had things wrong with it:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/16/trans-children-pupils-teachers-schools-guidance-regulator/

"The equalities regulator has said the Government must urgently publish its delayed trans guidance for schoolss_ to provide teachers with “much needed clarity”.
Marcial Boo, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s chief executive, revealed that the watchdog had been privately urging the Department for Education (DfE) to “expedite” their new guidance, amid wrangling in Government over how to respond to children seeking to change their gender identity in schools.
Writing to campaigners, Mr Boo also admitted that the EHRC’s own official guidance, in place for almost a decade, had been wrong to tell teachers that they would automatically be guilty of anti-trans discrimination if they referred to a “previously female pupil” as a girl. He said the regulator was urgently correcting “inaccuracies” in its “technical guidance” on the application of the Equality Act in schools."

"In a letter sent on Wednesday Mr Boo said: “Schools ... are calling for clear information on these matters. We have been urging DfE to expedite their new guidance and expect them to consult on it shortly.”
An EHRC spokesman added: “We urge them to bring forward this guidance as soon as possible, to help provide much needed clarity for schools and families.”"

"But, in a letter to the Sex Matters campaign groupp_, which alerted the EHRC to “errors” in the guidance, Mr Boo said: “You raise important and complex areas of equality law. For example, as you suggest, it may not be directly discriminatory for a school not to refer to a child by their preferred gender (where it differs from their legal sex). However, schools must carefully consider how they justify and consistently apply their policies on this matter to avoid any risk of indirect discrimination.”
Referring to the 2014 guidance he added: “We recognise that since that time, several areas of policy and law, including in particular considerations around sex and gender such as those you raise, have evolved.
”We are currently undertaking a rapid review of this guidance and intend to publish a revised version, correcting the inaccuracies which have been highlighted to us, within the coming weeks.”"

What a mess. Thanks for posting this Rex!

What a miss indeed. I don’t know anything about Mr Boo.

Was this anything to do with the previous head of the EHRC (David Isaacs) being head of Stonewall? So they just accepted the Stonewall dodgy law as correct?

An unimaginable amount of harm has been done to children as a result of this "mistake". How could this happen?

Placemarking to follow this thread.

Encouraging (I suppose, not really after all this time!) that EHRC will be correcting their guidance within weeks.

I hope Gillian Keegan is feeling the pressure.

It’s really bad. And yes I blame Stonewall one way or another.

I agree with those who have been arguing that a public enquiry is needed into all of this.

Accessible link in this tweet

x.com/ronninicole1/status/1703110997483847687?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

Perhaps Mr Boo should have signed up to Mumsnet and learnt something that we have been banging on about all this time?

God, they need to get a bloody shift on.

Yes, it's all a fucking huge mess. And yes, it is their job to fix it. Fucking do it!

And yes I blame Stonewall one way or another.

The real blame is all those spineless individuals, or more likely closet misogynists who not only listened to Stonewall but then amplified their voice.

Without that Stonewall could go on saying any number of things but it would not have an impact on schools, the arts, publishing, women only services.

The UK like any number of other countries have totally nutty groups that believe in unprovable things. And 99.9% of the time, they are totally irrelevant to everyone else.

It was the collaborators who open the door and inviting in the rainbow alliance that caused the damage.

Sounds very like it.

This isn’t actually new. The EHRC have been aware of the issues for quite some time. Their review of the technical guidance to schools was initiated last November (not related to any Sex Matters correspondence- the Tel is misleading on this point) and in May the EHRC told the Scottish Parliament Petitions Committee that the initial review would be completed at the end of this summer.

If the ehrc is encouraging the tory gov I am very heartened, they were worryingly captured for a long time. Fantastic, can't come soon enough. Seems like a kid a day changing names and pronouns this year and I had hoped it was slowing down, sadly wrong.

It's great news that they are finally addressing their contradictory guidance.
I went on a deep dive to make sense of the EHRC gender reassignment discrimination guidance a couple of months ago (to help with school PHSE discussions) and discovered it was a bizarre mix of non-sensical cut and shut info. Sometimes making perfect sense and then disagreeing with itself in a different format. I gave up in the end.
It also doesn't help that the current and previous Attorney Generals have a different view from each other on whether the protected characteristic of gender reassignment applies to children or not.
It will be interesting to see what happens with the Bad Law Project litigation that's currently underway (parent group suing the DfE) comes to a head. This should be a good test for a lot of what's been written as guidance. It would definitely benefit from a tidy up.

rogdmum Isn't admitting the guidance was wrong, new? Previously, hadn't they just withdrawn it/put it on hold but without comment?

Just in case anyone has forgotten to check the Telegraph article has already been archived at https://archive.ph/ - just paste in the Telegraph link in the box provided.

And yes it does seem to be going over old ground. If anyone had the time and patience to monitor the various articles in the Times and the Telegraph you might get an idea who in the Tory party / cabinet is using leaks to get their viewpoint into the public domain!

Here's an archive link to the Telegraph article jic any of the previous links didn't work for you, perhaps this one will

https://archive.ph/7f01p/again?url=www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/09/16/trans-children-pupils-teachers-schools-guidance-regulator/

I wonder if there's any liability here? If a school's been following this guidance and a child has been harmed either by being encouraged in a trans identity or by having to share with or give way to the opposite sex when they shouldn't have had to. Where would the liability lie?

Only on their website. There’s more detail in the SOS petition to the Scottish Govt here:

https://www.parliament.scot/-/media/files/committees/citizen-participation-and-public-petitions-committee/correspondence/2023/pe2001/pe2001_b.pdf

I can't see where they've previously admitted they were wrong in that the guidance had "inaccuracies" - am i missing it? That must be important especially if talking liability(ies)? Seems unusual for any organisation to admit this. Obviously if you've put something out that's wrong, you should be honest but it's not what normally happens.

“We are now clearer that failing to affirm a young person’s new name or pronouns does not immediately constitute unlawful discrimination…”

The current guidance says that it is unlawful discrimination. The EHRC recognised that this isn’t so last November. The EHRC restated this to Sex Matters on the back of Sec Matters’ recent letter to them.

Saying "clearer" sounds like they're moving position. From withdrawal with no comment, to bit more comment (clearer, not clear), plus saying it had things wrong with it. Maybe things have changed. Maybe they've had a planned, gradual shift to add commentary given their own staff have been calling them transphobic etc.

I’ll DM you

Indeed. It’s an absolute scandal.

'discovered it was a bizarre mix of non-sensical cut and shut info. Sometimes making perfect sense and then disagreeing with itself in a different format.'

This sounds a lot like Lady Haldane's judgement on 'sex and gender' for the Scottish Government.

In which she said that both sex and gender are the same thing, and that they are different, iirc.

And the Labour Sex Fudge, in which they will protect women's single sex spaces, and also that men can be women.

Somebody, at some point, has to step up and sort the shit out. It hit the fan some time ago and has been spraying everywhere ever since, and everybody is shouting at each other and pointing fingers, but nobody is standing up and turning the bloody switch off.

While they prevaricate, more children are being harmed, and more women are being harmed, and the fabric of our society and democracy is being harmed. For what? The rights of men to do whatever they like.

There was a strong Stonewall influence at the time actual laws and what is right for women and girls goes out the window.