Teaching gender identity in schools

[LadyHester]

DH is a governor in a local secondary school. Today he went on a learning walk, which included a visit to a Y10 Ethics class where the children were being told that being a ‘girl’ or a ‘boy’ was not something that could be determined at birth.
Is this even legal?

I may have to change my name to Toiletdoorgaplady at this point.

Toilet design would be ideal for a lesson on this. Discussing why we have gaps in toilet doors (and why it’s a problem that the government consultation has implied single sex toilets can also have full floor to ceiling doors in public buildings) can bring up the hierarchy of needs and rights.

Why is it that there are door gaps? Safety inside the cubicle, hygiene, air flow, economics (they work better).

Why do you think many schools are replacing the doors with full height ones? Modern cameraphones / gender ideology discomfort/ stop congregations in blocks?

What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages? Which groups are most advantaged and disadvantaged? (People collapsing behind doors = epilepsy, diabetes, strokes, smoke inhalation in a fire, heart problems, pots). Think about the doors opening inwards and locks.

What are needs? Does safety come before feelings of unease? Design a chart of what is most important? Do rights clash?

In developing countries, there has been a major drive to provide separate girls toilets as it improves school attendance. Why do you think this is? (I sponsored a girl in Tanzania with PLAN and they were doing this in their village so I know a bit about it).

With an older group you may introduce the numbers of pupils sexually assaulted in school premises each school day (at least one rape per school day is reported - discussed in Parliament in 2015/6). This was before the move to mixed sexed toilets and full height doors. Does this information influence your decision?

How would you design public toilets? Who do you think designs them?

I remember a deputy head getting very excited about the mixed sexed toilets he’d designed at a school (- maybe on Educating Yorkshire type of programme? ) and it was very obviously designed by a man. Even the toilets were centred so the sanitary bin would be squashed against the toilet. They had one centralised round sink for boys and girls. Bet that was fun with bloody hands.

As noble says because we have to. If I did it by the book I would be delivering Stonewall shite but I chose to pitch it very differently.
@Tinysoxxx I will see if SLT will add toilet design to the curriculum - although as I said, where I teach there are every design (single sex/mixed sex/single unit/accessible). I think our toilet planner was a woman!

Hee hee maybe I should beef it up and put it as a free lesson plan on tes resources?

A very interesting and informative post, Tinysoxxx. It suggests to me that a lot of people involved in commissioning and designing toilets just haven't thought the issues through at all.

Yup. That's exactly why I'm talking with the school about beliefs (referencing back to my previous post and screenshot) when it comes to how this is done.

The conversation is now wider than how gender identity is taught so will also go in to areas that would cover toilet provision e.g. the legal obligation to provide sex-segregated spaces. I've already been in conversation with the school about exactly this (using brilliant info and context from MNers). It all comes together under the guidance that the school will hopefully adopt, in lieu of the interminably imminent government guidance (the guidance from another local authority that I referred to in my previous post). That guidance is based on Safe Schools Alliance and Sex Matters and it's such a helpful precedent that a local authority in the UK already has it in place.

Regarding design, thankfully our school doesn't have the space or desire (or presumably budget) to make everything single occupancy floor to ceiling etc. So what they're doing is supplementary to the single sex cubicled toilets.

This, just say he overheard part of the lesson and thought it was time he made himself familiar with the PHSE materials.

As you said, he may find that when taken as a whole, the PHSE teaching is ok, or, he may be able to make suggestions to improve it.

Maybe a lot of students didn't feel comfortable voicing their true opinions in class for fear of being called a bigot. I would've hated to be a pre-teen and teen girl changing my sanitary pad in a mixed sex toilet. The boys would be stood outside the door laughing because they'd hear pad being opened. There's the increased risk of sexual assault too. I wouldn't want to enter a mixed sex toilet with a group of teen boys loitering.

I believe that things can be gendered eg clothes, hair styles, toys etc. You can be a girl and like boy things and vice versa. You can't change your sex/gender but you can like typically gendered stuff.

In the government consultation, there is a ‘universal toilet’ that is full floor to ceiling door and partitions. They suggest this preferred option is also an option for single sex toilets as well. None of this is technically in place at the moment. But what got me is they obviously hadn’t thought it through with statements like mixed sex are great for inclusivity and disabled people. Inclusivity means disabled people. My disabled Dd is not safe to use the disabled loos in case she has a seizure. It was the difference of being able to go to school or not as they didn’t have the resources to have people accompanying her.

I have said it before but when you see an arm sticking out of a toilet door gap, it focuses your mind on how something you may think of as a minor irritant to privacy is there for a reason.

I do feel for teachers landed with having to teach this stuff.

(As an aside, DD had a year of teaching English abroad with the British Council, and was asked at one point, 'Would you like to teach a session on gender and identity?'
She stared at them and just said, 'No.')

Me too. In their position, I would swerve it completely unless there was a very strong and clear support from the school leadership that I could explore it as belief that not everyone holds and I could make it clear that there was a counter view.

In their position, I would swerve it completely unless there was a very strong and clear support from the school leadership that I could explore it as belief that not everyone holds and I could make it clear that there was a counter view.

The trouble is, "swerving" leaves the field clear for the ideologues.

@PinkNailpolish you may want to read all the comments on the thread that address most of your points.

I also think that boys have changed quite a bit since your day - most wouldn't stand outside a bathroom taking the piss out of a pad opening. They are much more clued up about periods these days. Again openly discussed in our sex PSHE.

I should add I have a small form due to the additional needs of the form and they are very very comfortable with each other.

That's scary.

It would indeed. I'm just empathising with the difficult situation that teachers are in. The lack of guidance from the government on this is abysmal.

Thank you BonfireLady. I do think those of us who are in a position to speak up really should do, and I've found the magic words "Maya Forstater" useful in heading off trouble!

Indeed! The Forstater case is the key to opening the door in the discussion with any employer.

I've also found that it's helpful in other ways too for framing the discussion in general. I used to be very annoyed at the idea that biology had to be considered to be a belief but I feel completely differently about it now because it takes the heat and polarisation out of the conversation. The screenshot that I posted earlier on in the thread is how I generally open the conversation when I'm talking to anyone new about gender identity. I use my daughter's safeguarding statement for all sorts (health appointments, clubs etc) so I've had the conversation plenty of times. I never push my own belief but so far, everyone has at some point in the conversation said that they feel the same as me. Many seem quite relieved to be talking about it.

I disagree, boys are very likely to laugh and take the piss out of a pad opening. There will always be some that will. They grow up but there’s a new cohort to educate. And there will be some girls that are embarrassed even if they know the boys can hear and won’t mention it. Because that’s how it is at puberty. Even adults are conscience of toilet noises.

One block I taught in only had one toilet - a disabled one. Most teachers didn’t use it but I had a bad period and back to back lessons. Some year 7s kicked the door whilst I was rustling. They were jeering and saying ‘the blob’. They got the shock of the lives when I stormed out.

It can't really be swerved by schools. It's in the statutory guidance for RSHE.
Sexual orientation and gender identity should be explored at a timely point and in a clear, sensitive and respectful manner. When teaching about these topics, it must be recognised that young people may be discovering or understanding their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Is there any guidance for teachers about what a 'gender identity' is? That would be useful for those teachers (there must be many of them) who haven't got a clue what a gender identity is supposed to be or why it's supposed to be important.

@TheFallenMadonna it (the subject) can't be swerved, no.
But if I were a teacher I would swerve on delivering it unless I knew that the school leadership a) fully understood the law regarding my employment under the EA (Forstater case) and b) ideally was in full support of teaching it as a belief not as fact.

@OldCrone Lots. It's in the RSE and PHSE materials, much/most of which is written by "specialist" agencies such as Jigsaw or similar. Unfortunately this all teaches it as factual that we all have a gender identity.

What do they say a gender identity is?

I'm in my mid 20s so I doubt teen boys have changed much since I left school.

I should imagine that the majority align with the Stonewall definition.

A person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or something else (see non-binary below), which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth.

https://www.stonewall.org.uk/list-lgbtq-terms

Stonewall lesson plans are linked from the document in the Suggested Resources section, among others.