Telegraph: Trans teachers must be allowed to use same showers as female colleagues, schools told

[Signalbox]

“Trans teachers must be allowed to use the same showers and lavatories as female colleagues schools have been told.

“Training from the National Governance Association (NGA) tells governors that staff should be given access to the bathroom “available to other members of their newly acquired gender”.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/18/trans-teachers-to-use-same-showers-as-female-colleagues/

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Newly acquired gender? How very transphobic of them. I thought trans people had always and for ever been their trans gender in their secret brains and hearts and minds.

Teachers have showers? I work in the NHS and we don't have access to showers at all.
Our toilets are all individual room unisex ones now.
Why do teachers need showers? Sorry a bit off the subject I know.

When do teachers ever shower with colleagues of either gender though? I wouldn't want any colleague of any gender to see me naked, and I can't imagine the circumstances in which it would happen. So this is just upping the ante for pure sensationalism.

Maybe I'm being a bit thick but I thought PE teachers showered during the working day routinely - certainly at my secondary school they did?

When will this end???

Oh ffs.

PE teachers potentially, also teachers on school residential trips, I would assume, and some schools may have facilities that can be used by staff who cycle or run to work, for example? (Plenty of other workplaces have those, even if there's no work-related reason to need to shower there).

MAKE IT STOP

I wonder who the NGA consulted to have come up with such erroneous information. They're clearly wrong and have misinterpreted the EA.

At my school, several teachers cycle in and shower, may more use the gym before and after school and use the showers. Just like people in many other workplaces. I don’t, because the thought of the fire alarm going off fills me with horror.

Its ridiculous.

But it’s also strange that people think that teachers don’t ever have access to showers. (It may be the fault of the Telegraph for not realising that nowadays the word “bathroom” refers to any place with washing facilities, including what we would usually call “toilets”.)

Presumably these men who say they're women, having showered alongside their women colleagues will expect to be allowed to supervise teenage girls in their changing rooms as well?

Really makes you wonder about the type of people working at the NGA who see the bodies of women staff as resources for men to access when they choose.

Probably not before the rules are the kids have to get in too

Surely this will fail at the first legal challenge.

NGA - NGA is an independent, not-for-profit charity

So it has no legal standing. It has no official standing. It has no requirement to do anything it doesn't want to do. It is just another Stonewall or BMA and nobody has to follow their "advice".

The sooner those at the top (who should be there based on intelligence and merit) start engaging their brains and thinking, the sooner this stupidity stops. But it won't because a lot of those people get to the top based on WHO they know, not WHAT they know.

There's a big difference between "should" and "must". Schools can choose to disregard this advice and will hopefully do so. Although may be more difficult if local authorities adopt this as policy.

The trouble is that governors rely on the NGA for training. At one time LAs offered training to governors but as budgets are cut this has diminished. Governors are legally responsible for schools and rely on the NGA to provide training. The fact that they've adopted the discredited Stonewall law that's got so many organisations into serious difficulties in the courts in the last few years just shows the stranglehold that these dodgy organisations still have on the charity sector

But I'm not sure how any of this shit ever gets challenged?

Not while I'm in one, they can't!

bigdecisionstomake · Yesterday 19:40

Maybe I'm being a bit thick but I thought PE teachers showered during the working day routinely - certainly at my secondary school they did?

Yes, back when I was at school, in the Bronze Age, they did. We had two blocks with changing rooms; one had rooms with individual showers for teachers. The other didn't and you'd sometimes find the changing room door locked and it would be opened eventually, by a teacher who'd just had a shower.

Never more than one at a time, if I recall correctly.

Funnily enough, this popped up for me on YouTube.

Fwiw, he thinks the NGA guidance is wrong, but all the please don't cancel me's. I think he's a smart bloke though and by putting those in he's making a point, though probably a few genuine concerns. There's also a survey he's pinned at the top of the comments. Worth checking. The comments I did read were mostly supportive of the 'gc' side.

Unless I missed it, he didn't mention the GRC secrecy clause. That, imo, causes many organisations to err on the trans side in these conflicts.

Thanks for this. IIt's another clear analysis of the legal flaws in the NGA "guidance". I can only assume that the writers of this guidance assume that women staff will be too busy or scared to complain in schools that make the mistake of allowing men claiming to be women to access women's spaces like this?

The more women are told they have to accept it the greater the need to push back. Women make up the majority of teaching staff, there is power in numbers - they could work to rule, strike, 'whistle blow' everytime this happens. If 1 teacher is suspended or sacked then all others protest/strike. Or are the majority not bothered about this?

As others have said this affects female students too u expect. This is a safeguarding issue.

What a non story - I've never showered at work.

So allowing one group to choose their shower denies another group the right, previously assumed to be normal, to choose not to shower with members of the first group. Indeed, may force, coerce, compel members of the second group to shower with 1st group members.
Can't they see how wrong - no of course not.