Working Group - KCSIE 2026 changes - improve the guidance via the consultation process, promote more responses & more

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Hello everyone - I was hoping to start a working group of some sort in order to respond to the proposed changes to KCSIE (Keeping Children Safe In Education)

Press release https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-publish-new-gender-guidance-for-schools

Proposed changes and response mechanism https://consult.education.gov.uk/independent-education-and-school-safeguarding-division/keeping-children-safe-in-education-2026-revisions/

I have a large personal interest in this. If you are not aware, I am the father in this article in The Times https://archive.ph/C4eXs

Can we come together to build a strategy of supporting the parts the changes which are great, for example the very clear statements of toilets and changing rooms being single sex?

And think how to propose possible changes to the statements about sport and especially about allowing social transitioning at school?

I'd very much love to hear your ideas and suggestions. I don't want to lead the group especially or tell anyone what to do - I am certain there are people with more knowledge than me, but I thought I could start off the conversation?

Excellent plan. I assume the usual groups (Sex Matters, Transgender Trend, etc) will have recommendations that could be collected here too?

Pronouns need tackling.

The single sex spaces stuff will be law but didn’t harm in showing support for that

This comment needs to be in kcsie

Good points here https://www.transgendertrend.com/socially-transitioning-child-primary-school/

The biggest issue is that kcsie is based on evidence- the evidence is Cass. It’s been added to year on year following serious case reviews and other evidence around safeguarding.

we can make points and must make sure our reasoning is sound but unfortunately at the moment Cass is likely to take precedent unless Esses and Bell’s challenge goes through

Great idea, I'm in.

I think there's a power in the grassroots nature of MN. A hell of a lot of people on here for whom one of their primary day jobs is keeping their children safe and holding their school to account when they don't safeguard properly. All those other groups are great, and they'll add a lot from their own particular perspective, but as the NHS Audit shows, MN is a powerful force not least because of our numbers and the wide, wide range of people on here and their experience. This width and depth of experience is IMO fairly unique on here.

There are a lot of people on here who have experience in education in different roles and of what it's actually like in school for children these days. In a whole range of different schools.

I also think there's something worth unpicking about how well KCSIE is already implemented (not well IMO) and about letter of the law vs actual reality and what is in children's best interests. Also something about how gender ideology makes existing bits of KCSIE impossible / redundant. E.g. there's a bit IIRC (I'll have to go back and check) about what to do if a boy is accused of sexual harrassment of a girl and how to keep them separate in the classroom / school day but no mention of mixed sex (either honestly or by deception) toilets or changing rooms. There's something in the bit about emotional abuse about how it can include using a child purely for validation (or words to that effect) but no mention of how this is social transition in a nutshell - it's all about using others (without their consent often) for validation of a lie.

Speilman made an excellent point about “rare exceptions” - how do we ensure that children aren’t being coached in what to say to be allowed to transition?

also, how will we able able to ensure trans activist staff don’t influence matters around compelled pronouns as well as hiding things from parents?

In an ideal world there would be some data collection on numbers of gender questioning children in all schools. As I bet patterns would be identified.

Absolutely. I've been saying this for ages. My observation from local schools is that some have clearly single sex toilets and have large numbers of religious families that would be unlikely to accept gender ideology; others have activist teachers shoving it at children and mixed sex toilets. I think it'd be interesting to look at attendance for girls in the mixed sex toilet schools.

The boundaries the adults in charge set will have a huge impact on the children, including on their mental and physical safety.

No-one wants to look at it though.

There are a number of eminently sensible, excellent headteachers and SLT (and governors) who have been holding the line against an onslaught of gender woo for years and I hope they'll get the credit they deserve for proper safeguarding in due course.

Yes, 100%. I know of a high school that got a new building and lots of unisex loos (fully contained off corridors) and stuck the trans symbol squiggle on them (the mash up of the male and female sex symbols). IIRC they collected various pride awards too.

If leadership basically encourages gender woo woo what chance do the kids have?

I haven't RTFT yet and am currently away for half term but count me in.

"Placemarking" in the thread for now to catch up when I can.

Thank you for kicking this off OP.

I’d be far more worried about internet influencers coaching kids here than trans activist school staff. If anyone has any examples of this, that would be useful to link to.

But 'internet influencers' aren't paid by the state to safeguard children. They're not with them in the same building 6-7 hours a day.

A teacher at DD1s school had trans flag stickers all over her work laptop. I noticed it in a meeting. She wasn't at the school for long as luckily the SLT are fairly sensible.

I honestly really dislike the coercive control element of 'social transitioning'. It's abusive at its very core. We don't tell kids of a particular religion they should expect the other kids to follow their religion on their say so.

'Preferred pronouns' are absolutely coercively controlling bullshit. It's legitimising abuse, narcissism (one child is placed above the others as having a valid identity, the others aren't allowed to identify as wanting to say what they see, they become NPCs in the other child's life). It's emotional abuse. The definition is already in KCSIE, and it's very clearly a breach of that to compel language in the service of one or a few exalted individuals.

Encouraging children to adopt behaviours that are abusive isn't kind even to the child who ends up on top.

There's a big difference between a teacher having trans stickers on their laptop and being an 'ally' and coaching children into saying that they are scared their parents will beat them up if the school outs them to the parents. That would be gross professional misconduct.

I think the internet is far more likely to be a source of that sort of coaching than school teachers.

noblegiraffe

May I ask a question as I believe you’re a teacher?

Within your own school, have you ever heard of or know about any child that believes they have a gender identity that doesn’t match their birth sex?
What would you do or suggest in those circumstances?

coaching online yes.

There are multiple instances of teachers keeping transition from parents have the guidance change

I don't think there's a secondary school in the country where this hasn't come up. It hasn't come up at my school very often compared to others, and definitely less now than previously. We've had children change names on the register, so I have used their new name as I would for any other child with a name change. There have been some changes to pronouns but it is generally easy to avoid pronouns in the classroom as you talk to pupils rather than about them. The most difficult time for pronouns is parents evening where I would use names first then follow the parents' lead if the child isn't there.

This is where the guidance is clear: Parents only need to be told where a child has made a request to the school for support with transition - e.g. can teachers change my name and pronouns.

Which means teachers do NOT need to tell parents if a male child is being called she and Susan by all of his friends. Teachers do NOT need to tell parents if a male child has told their form tutor that they feel like they need to become a girl and that's why all their friends are calling them Susan.

It only says that teachers should not start calling that child Susan. That's all.

It says that schools "should be aware of the potential vulnerabilities of a child questioning their gender including the possibility of complex mental health and psychosocial needs" but it also says that if a child confides in a member of staff about their feelings about their gender there is no reason to break any confidence unless there is a related safeguarding risk.

So a child questioning their gender includes the possibility of complex mental health needs but isn't a safeguarding concern in and of itself.

In my extremely limited experience, a child questioning their gender is a red flag that should certainly be reported on school safeguarding software and followed-up. I think, if a child is being called Susan by all his friends at school, that is also something that parents should be informed about rather than kept confidential due to the red flags it raises around mental health.

The only way you can do 'preferred pronouns' for one child is by undermining safeguarding for all the other children. One of the main points of safeguarding is safeguarding ALL children.

And that's before you get to mixed sex (by coercive deception) changing rooms or toilets where it's an obvious safety risk open to abuse.

And I think this applies if it's only the teachers using wrong-sex pronouns - as children take their lead from teachers and will feel pressure to follow that lead even if not explicitly told to. Far better for teachers to avoid pronouns altogether, though it's difficult to do and adding additional load to already busy teachers so shouldn't be promised, just that they'll try.

I'd personally argue that putting children in a position where the other children are essentially coercively controlled by them (around language) isn't really setting them up for a happy life with lots of friends (friendship needs to be two-way and based on mutual respect), so not safeguarding them either. We don't teach children to lie about other important things.

Quite. There are a large number of fully captured, relatively young staff members, including in private schools.

Teachers may not coach but they can instantly ‘affirm’ at a personal level.

I find it utterly bizarre that teachers, especially at secondary level, would just 'affirm'. They have to deal with cheeky fuckery on a daily basis 'Miss, I'd like to be called 'your Highness' from now on, ok?'. 'No, obviously I'm not going to be doing that Tommy'.

Teachers should be preparing children for adult life not reinforcing extremely ridiculous demands that - unless they're the super rich children of famous people - are unlikely to be adhered to by anyone else around them in their adult life. And which are likely to result in people avoiding them too.

Not under the new guidance they couldn’t. Which is good.

However the new guidance says nothing needs to be done if all the kids are affirming the child, which is probably more of an impactful social transition than teachers doing it - as I said upthread teachers generally only rarely use pronouns - we talk to kids not about them.

The guidance can’t stop sympathy, smiles, a new attention, a solicitous tone of voice with a tilted head etc