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.”"

How can we get guidance before ECHR updates the inaccuracies in their technical guidance?

If it’s not aligned then it won’t comply to ECHR law and will need to change shortly after

😊
I have been writing to this government for many years and countless Secretaries of State for Education - the tories have had 10 of them so far😩
Sadly they've paid far more attention to the lobbyists calling for the transitioning of children, men in women's sports & the removal of single sex spaces for women & girls than to those of us writing about boring things like safeguarding children.

What's frustrating is that political impartiality, entitlement to single sex toilets and only the courts being able to remove parental rights aren't new. They've been enshrined in legislation for years. Yet schools have been bullied / gaslit into ignoring them.

We can’t misalign from the ECHR though

To understand it here you have to look at their laws and guidance

They are silent and not elected but ultimately have legal power when we do our guidance

I've wondered that. If the EHRC technical guidance has been wrong for so many years, then surely new guidance for schools must align with whatever the new accurate guidance is?

Yes I’d say that’s the delay

It’s frustrating as we have to play detective but looking at the op I can’t see how anything can be released until the technical guidance is updated

The EHRC is not going to publish again. That's good as it only makes it a crowded, confused field. I also wonder what powers they had in the first place here. Surely it was always a DfE job, if at all.

(Where the guidance on equality of the sexes at school for instance?!)

The EHRC is not going to publish again.

Doesn’t the quote in the op mean it will be updated?

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.”"

We have guidance, we have comments, we have a whole lot of handwringing, we have open acknowledgement that what is going on is against the law and policy and equality.

What we don't have, apparently, is anyone competent to enforce the law.

Which makes the law pretty much meaningless. If it's optional, and any noisy extremist group can enforce what they want undemocratically, against the law, and the law makers and law enforcers just witter and wring their hands and go dancing at the extremist group parades?

Wtf are we wasting money on MPs for? What's the point of them?

The EHRC is republishing their Technical Guidance for schools.

This guidance is entirely separate to any DfE guidance and covers ALL the PC under the EA and how they apply to schools. There is a version for England and a version for Scotland though they are virtually identical. Work has been ongoing on the revisions for nearly a year.

What the EHRC is not doing is publishing their own separate guidance on supporting trans identified pupils in schools. That is gone but revising their existing Technical Guidance is happening.

You’re better off asking whether the ECHR represents your aims well enough.

TRAs have power because basically international law underpins their aims

As an aside Sex Matters getting the ECHR to change this is huge

I saw a TRA mock Sex Matters on another thread, but what Maya Forstater has done with her case and this change deserves a place in women’s rights history when it is written

As an aside Sex Matters getting the ECHR to change this is huge

Sex Natters have absolutely not gotten the EHRC to make changes. This has been underway for quite some time completely separately to Sex Matters recent correspondence to the EHRC.

The EHRC letter says:

"I would like to clarify that we will not be publishing our own guidance for schools specifically on issues of sex and gender in addition to the guidance being prepared by the Department for Education, on which we are feeding in our advice on equality and human rights law. Duplication of this work risks creating confusion for schools, who we know 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."

sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/2094Forstater.pdf

Presumably it would be wise for the all PCs guidance to just "refer the reader to X". X being the DfE guidance.

God they’re all over the shop

What a mess they’ve created

Presumably it would be wise for the all PCs guidance to just "refer the reader to X". X being the DfE guidance.

No it wouldn’t. The EHRC oversees the whole of the U.K. and it can’t just abandon the Scottish version of their Technical Guidance (nor could it just point to the DfE guidance as education is devolved).

It's a massive scandal that the EHRC legal guidance for schools was incorrect and shows how deep into the State the tentacles of trans extremism has been allowed to stretch.

Remember those appalling CPS "guidelines" for schools that attempted to frame girls refusing to undress in front of boys as a hate crime and inappropriately tried to present children's peer relationships as potential hate crimes if they were anything other than fawning to certain children?
They were withdrawn in the face of a judicial review but I've always wondered how such anti safeguarding, toxic guidelines for children were allowed to see the light of day? And why the Crown Prosecution Service thought they had the right to influence school policy / practice and children's peer relationships.

The assault on children has been relentless and the government have completely failed to respond to countless alerts and evidence of this. At every level, deeply unsuitable adults have been allowed to weigh in on education policy & practice, health care, mental healthcare & even parenting. This has to stop.

The ECHR is the most complicit and worse not talked about

Once we brought in the GRA this was inevitable as we are bound to those rights

How do we get out of that?

Every extreme event that people rail against goes back that law

As for schools guidance we won’t be able to misalign but idk what that means in practise

I did mean for England. Quite how any nation relies on withdrawn guidance is beyond me.

The Scottish version is virtually identical to the English version. The EHRC will need to have a detailed section on the PC of GR, but this time a section which reflects the law. The Scottish Government references the EHRC Technical Guidance and I would expect they will need to reference the revised section once the EHRC publish it. IMO, it wouldn’t make any sense for the EHRC to have an identical document (save the odd word eg “England” vs “Scotland”) other than the section on GR.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the existing document here’s the two versions:

England https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/technical-guidance-schools-england

Scotland https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/publication-download/technical-guidance-schools-scotland

Wasn't it a bit late by 2014? Cornwall Schools wrote a Transgender Students guide booklet in 2012, along with the Intercom Trust, and that was used as a blueprint for lots of other schools at the time.

The DfE signposted the Cornwall guidance in their Equality Act guidance for schools which was hopelessly trans captured at one point - recommending Stonewall & Mermaids to schools along with free publicity for GIRES.
Last time I looked, much of this had been quietly removed but it was no wonder schools went along with all this when the DfE was giving this advice.

thanks, rogdmum.

I think the DfE should just cut to the chase, pass all the paperwork to you, and let you sort it out. For a hefty fee.

I hope that's the case. Healthy Cornwall.org.uk still has links to a worrying list of resources featuring the usual suspects.

Wow

My post was deleted for saying that Iots of children have been subject to direct discrimination in schools due to gender ideology. Which is self-evidently true. Girls who do not have access to single sex toilets, which we know many don't in school, are directly discriminated against on the pc of sex and for many also religion (to spell it out Muslim and Jewish girls who have a religious requirement for single sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms)

Yet the government is pissing about and taking years to produce guidance because they're worried about the risk of indirect discrimination to a tiny minority of pupils.

All the while the law on having single sex toilets for children over 8 IS being broken in many schools.

I didn't break talk guidelines, I have got no email from MNHQ, I've noticed other completely reasonable posts being deleted for no good reason also recently. It's worrying. I thought we were past the days where talking about safeguarding got you deleted and banned, as happened to the wonderful LangCleg (many of whom's predictions have come true).