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?

I think it's fallen out of fashion, at least around here with teenagers now. I think the adults coming back into the room and being willing to tell the truth has probably helped them to not feel they have to pander or suffer consequences. Obviously - and unfortunately - not in Brighton where the activist adults are still forcing it on OP's daughter and all the other children in the school.

The power differential between adults and children in schools is very important here I think and probably important to reflect that in KCSIE.

In places where the sensible adults have returned I think you'll find fewer and fewer kids go along with it. Surprisingly most teens don't want to spend loads of time being purely a validation tool for others in a relationship that is only one way to their detriment! What a shock!

Thinking about it, there has been discussion about 'compelled speech' where teachers may be forced to use preferred pronouns when they don't want to, however it may actually be more uncomfortable for the sympathetic teachers to not immediately pivot to new names and pronouns as soon as someone announces them.

Hello everyone - glad this seems like a good idea.

Could we agree a simple goal, maybe:

Produce a focussed set of consultation responses that support the best parts and criticise the worst parts of the proposed guidance, and makes it as easy as possible for lots of people to submit responses.

We can't do everything, so we could start with
• a short list of things we want to strengthen / keep
• a short list of things we want to change / remove / tighten

what's a good number to focus on? Is it, 3-5 good things and 3-5 bad ones?

For each good

• What the outcome would be
• how we think that would benefit pupils

For each bad

• What the outcome would be (unforseen and seen)
• How we think that would harm pupils, their families, others

And keep us focussed on the end goal, not just discussion, it is to help as many people as possible actually respond to the consultation.

Any suggestions for other ways of doing this? try open to ideas!

Not sure where to keep it? Here? A google document? Something else?

Any risk of entryism, Redditors with beards and dresses coming in to mess it up...

How long do we have and how do we encourage people to put in an actual response?

Extract from Bayswater email, sent 23rd Feb

KCSIE Update: Gender Questioning Section Out for Consultation

The government has published updated Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidance, currently out for consultation. Provisions on gender questioning children are included within it, and these are our initial thoughts.

The document correctly warns that pretending that a child is the opposite sex is an active intervention with significant effects on a child's psychological functioning and longer-term outcomes, including pursuit of medical interventions. In light of this acknowledgement it is not clear how the guidance concludes that education professionals are qualified to work with parents to determine what is in the best interests of the child on this issue.

Parental approval does not mitigate the safeguarding risks associated with what is a profoundly consequential decision (social transition) with potentially lifelong medical implications. Parents are not always well-informed about the impact social transition could have on their child. But the guidance tells schools they can facilitate this intervention as long as the parents approve.

Although the impact on other children is referenced in the guidance, this is mostly in the form of hints at the need to respect 'religion and belief'. There is no mention of the right of every child to have the world around them described in accurate and objective language. If teachers use cross-sex pronouns for one child, that impacts the understanding of every other child in the class.

The term 'social transition' itself can mean any number of different things and this language is now creating confusion. For example, the guidance stipulates that:

a. Social (sex role) transition is NOT permitted for toilets, changing rooms, sport, recorded student information.

But:

b. Social (sex role) transition IS permitted (albeit with parental consent, and with some caution) by allowing schools to decide to refer to a child by pronouns that do not match their sex.

The guidance omits mention of the safeguarding risks associated with a cross-sex identity: breast binding, tucking, DIY hormones, exposure to misinformation about suicide, online exploitation. This omission undermines the ability of schools to protect their students

Warnings in the guidance about the harms of 'living in stealth' are undermined by suggesting that some children may nonetheless be living as the opposite sex unbeknownst to their teachers or friends. This is a safeguarding failure that requires action. Quite apart from the profound risks for the child themselves, it is not possible to accommodate 'living in stealth' with accurate sex records, single-sex spaces, and safeguarding other children at the school.

The guidance opens up the possibility of schools drafting their own policies on 'social transition'. This creates a loophole for unevidenced and unsafe policymaking by education professionals, who are not qualified to make decisions relating to mental health, especially where there are clear medical consequences.

Greater clarity is required when it states that if a school considers a parent to be such a risk that their child's cross-sex identity should not be mentioned to them. If this were the case it would warrant an immediate referral to social services (not merely a consultation with the DSL).

We will continue to review the proposals to put together a response to the government consultation, and we urge parents to do likewise. We will issue guidance on responding to the government consultation shortly.

Have DM’ed you @SingleSexSpacesInSchools

Apologies that I've not yet had time to add anything of substance, but I think that a gap analysis of the new proposed guidance and the original draft gender questioning children guidance would be a good thing to do.

One absolutely key missing component that has now been consigned to the bin is the definition of "gender identity". No other government document has ever had this in, and it was useful to have it written down. It was:

Gender identity: is a contested belief. It is a sense a person may have of their own gender, whether male, female or another category such as non-binary. This may or may not be the same as their biological sex. Many people do not consider that they or others have a gender identity at all.

It's so important to recognise that it's a belief that not everyone holds. By coercively pushing it as "kindness" and "respect" to use preferred pronouns, schools are failing to follow the Nolan Principles and also Teaching Standards on promoting their personal beliefs to vulnerable children.

This is crucial I think @BonfireLady. Good spot.

Also v good idea to look at the changes from the original draft to this proposed guidance. I’m not a fan of AI (and in this case I would worry that it would hallucinate differences) but I’m sure that could be non-AI automated somehow.

[ETA - no slight to those who find AI useful. I just find it complicates things for me.]

Posting this here to show efforts are underway from the TIM side https://www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/1rcwt4i/uk_consultation_on_the_proposed_changes_to_the/

The gender identity definition being missing is absolutely key yes very good spot

Should it go back in as is or be improved? As is is probably simpler

What justification would we give?

It would be worth pointing out that it’s alluded to in the statutory RSE guidelines and the two need to be strengthened to work together across both safeguarding and in RSE.

Really good spot from @BonfireLady !

There's a question I think, given the clarification about single sex spaces, about what social transition is. What are they trying to achieve here? Without a definition of gender as well as of sex it doesn't really make sense.

Are they trying to help confused young children think they can really change sex? That doesn't sound like good safeguarding and they won't be able to use opposite-sex spaces, so why?

Are they trying to enable one very specific subset of children to dictate the language of adults and children? Well, why this one thing and not others, and also that sounds pretty abusive.

What IS 'social transition' and if those children cannot use wrong-sex spaces then why are you doing it?

Lots of children want lots of things, most children want everything to be only about them and all their own way. The adults need to balance what's best for them and what's best for the other children in the school. I don't see how you can do this with 'social transition'. I don't think it's healthy to encourage a child into coercive behaviours or thinking they can somehow just deny the reality of their body. But even if this were fine, I don't think all the other children should have to do what one child tells them even if it's avoiding pronouns altogether.

And we know as in OP's school, there are adults who are pretty firmly attached to the idea that 'girl' and 'boy' can mean whatever they want it to mean. I think KCSIE needs to be VERY clear on definitions. And the draft is not. The social transition bit is full of 'gender' but what does that mean? Does 'girl' refer to a child of the female sex and only that or not? OP's school think it doesn't, that the term 'girl' can include male children, and it refers to 'gender' which again is a totally fuzzy word, and can be whatever they want to further their aims.

Given that the whole ideology is built on abuse of language and coercion, definitions are essential, I think.

The whole bit on social transition doesn't make sense as is.

Really social transition is 'pretending to be the sex they're not'. That should be clearly stated. If that's not what it is (even though we really know it is what it is), we need a definition including a definition of what 'gender' is. And an explanation about if it's NOT about pretending to be the other sex why pronouns are even mentioned.

Elsewhere it does point out that girls can like trucks and boys can like wearing dresses (or whatever the examples are), so what's the need for 'social transition'?

I think it's partly in there just to appease activists and because of the hopefully quite rare safeguarding disaster where parents have imposed a wrong-sex identity on very small children and lied about it to everyone else. But I don't think the whole of KCSIE needs to have a bit in it to address those children, frankly that should be addressed under the safeguarding and abuse sections that already exist. I suppose there's probably some special accommodation that needs to be made for the fact that institutions lost their collective minds and failed to safeguard over this, perhaps. But puberty's going to happen and the truth will out at that point - keeping the deception going isn't in the best interests of that child.

This is so important.

Also there's still the get out clause for excluding parents and allowing schools to socially transition children in secret. I've not got time to look it up now and I recall they've strengthened it by saying something about it being exceptional to exclude parents if they're a safeguarding risk. BUT - only the courts can remove parental rights and the loose wording of this still allows the committed transactivist adult in a school (or from any of the dodgy organisations) to coerce / groom a child.

If parents pose a risk to their children then that's always a safeguarding issue and must always be referred to the multiagency system. Social services know the law and also know that they cannot make decision without parental involvement (see the legal framework for parental involvement for children in care of the state).

Schools shouldn't in any way be the exception to the legal principles of parental rights / responsibilities for children.

The social transition bit is a total mess and contradictory to so many of the other sections and indeed the law. 0/10 - fail, try again.

In fact any accommodation by the school to parental delusions about their child's sex and a desire to conceal their sex from everyone else makes it more likely those parents will try and buy puberty suppressing drugs illegally (since they cannot get them legally now). That alone should be a reason to not do it ever, at all!

The social transition bit is a total mess and contradictory to so many of the other sections and indeed the law. 0/10 - fail, try again.

In fact any accommodation by the school to parental delusions about their child's sex and a desire to conceal their sex from everyone else makes it more likely those parents will try and buy puberty suppressing drugs illegally (since they cannot get them legally now). That alone should be a reason to not do it ever, at all!

Yes excellent post @MrsOvertonsWindow

also @womendeserveequalhumanrights’s posts; there needs to be a blanket agreement key synchronisation across kcsie and other areas of the school / education/ curriculum

letters for puberty sessions went out recently and referred the term gender. (Send school, but zero gender confused children.) however it’s so important that the same messages are spread across the school and embedded.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6970e7e67e827090d02d42e0/Relationships_education_relationships_and_sex_education__RSE__and_health_education__for_intro_1_September_2026_.pdf

I also note that they currently link to the old draft guidelines which do discuss gender identity.

as Bonfire notes, the explicit definition of gender identity has been lost from current kcsie and I assume this will be updated to refer to kcsie? Either way this area needs to be stronger. (It includes trans people as the EA still stands .)

im pleased that there’s a line about chosen books in the RSE guidelines - has that made it across to kcsie? That’s really important too. I honestly don’t think it’s ok to leave it in RSE as I know that literacy coordinator won’t be aware of it and merrily wack any old inclusive book in on threading list. Also the arts department/ curriculum leads.

KCSiE will be read by all staff.

Meant to add this

It's really difficult to support kids that are gender questioning if you don't know what gender is.

I don't really know what it is - it seems to be a catch all for a lot of different things and its meaning seems to change in different contexts, I think sometimes quite deliberately. Sometimes it's used as a synonym for sex in other cases not. Sometimes it seems to mean regressive and generally negative sex-based stereotypes of dress and behaviour. Sometimes it's used in the context of an indefinable and unquantifiable 'inner essence' that people claim they feel to get what they want.

Why would you 'socially transition' someone because they like the harmful and restrictive stereotypes associated with the opposite sex? Surely schools should be embracing the fact that some girls like football and some boys like pink?

And as @BonfireLady points out not everyone believes that gender identity is a real thing so acting as if it's a common belief and doesn't need definition is a failure in itself.

Make it make sense.

I've read the section again and it lacks clarity.

".....However, in the rare circumstances where involving parents or carers would constitute a greater risk to the child than not involving them, the school or college should involve their Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) to determine what action is needed to safeguard the child, before the parents are contacted or any decisions are taken" (para 262)

It's good that it's qualified as "rare" but there needs to be a reminder that these decisions must be made in an inter agency context. Parental rights cannot be removed by the police or social services without seeking a court's permission and this must apply to schools.

It needs to be specific that this cannot be the solely the decision of the school - it's outside their legal rights and professional expertise. Given the tsunami of dodgy advice that transactivists have drowned schools in in recent years, the DSL needs to be clear that keeping a social transition secret from a parent is not an act a school can legally undertake - a safeguarding referral must be made if there are concerns and any decisions about excluding parents made in that interagency framework. SS & the police operate & understand that legal framework and are unlikely to be coerced into going against it.

Only Part One will be read by all school staff, which does not include the stuff on gender. That's in Part Two, so teachers will mostly not read it.

It should be noted that it says in the guidelines that some children questioning their gender will have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment (thus the Equality Act will apply to them). Some won't, but the school guidelines should be written as if all children questioning their gender have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

@MrsOvertonsWindow
Today 16:37

You have explained that so well and you would think that point you are making, about how a school would need a court order before they could remove parental rights and secretly affirm a child as trans, and that they should be notifying SS and the police if they think the child is in danger, can hardly be argued against.

It seems so obvious now you say it.

Doesn’t it mean the present guidance, as it stands - for ‘rare’ instances - is against the law ?

The whole thing is rambling in places, It's clear that no child may use opposite sex facilities, dormitories, sport etc then tiptoes around whether children have the pc of gender reassignment. In talking about the importance of tackling bullying it suddenly throws in a sop to transactivists by saying:

"...the school or college must also be conscious of the rights of pupils and staff in relation to their religion or belief. However, schools and colleges supporting social transition might consider discussing options with pupils and staff such as using names instead of pronouns".

How is that going to work? "OK children. Fred is no longer Fred - he's a her/ she. Fifi Trixibelle for the forseeable.

"Do you think we should always call him / her his / her full name (Fifi Trixibelle) or he / she?" Anyone?

Written by people who've never navigated this stuff with children in schools.