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 don’t think there’s a secondary teacher in the country who hasn’t been asked to do that.

Your view of the type of children in secondary schools who are changing their names/pronouns also doesn’t match my experience in any way. They are usually an extremely vulnerable population who don’t ‘demand’ anything. Name changes appear on the register, pronoun changes have been communicated but I’ve never been instructed to police anything. Kids using pronouns rarely comes up as I don’t usually talk about pupils when they are not there, but name changes are usually adopted without question and kids will self-correct if they get it wrong.

If the kids aren't demanding it, who is? Is it activist teachers or their parents?

If it's an adult pushing a child into it, that's safeguarding red flag territory.

I certainly don't think teachers should be socially transitioning children without even knowing why it's happening and who's asking for it.

I really don't recognise your version of what's going on in schools as any way resembling mine.

Children aren't 'demanding'. There aren't 'activist teachers' 'pushing' in my school.

There are generally extremely vulnerable pupils. Remember the majority of referrals to gender clinics are female, most likely autistic, anxious, depressed, possibly traumatised. Do you think that those kids will be 'demanding' anything? Their parents aren't usually pushy but desperate for help. Teachers generally want what's best for the children and for over the last decade that has been considered to be name and pronoun changes if that is what is wanted. There has been no guidance on how to deal with this from the government and schools have generally muddled through as best they can. Respected institutions who previously gave trusted advice have been turned to in the absence of official support.

Your 'it's all about forcing others to pretend they're the opposite sex' is nothing like my experience of these kids.

What is social transition if it's not pretending they're the opposite sex?

And there have been multiple reports that affirmation has resulted in other conditions being missed / not treated and there is no evidence at all that 'social transition' helps. So why are schools doing it? It's not in the best interests of the child, Cass recommended against it without medical involvement. Any school continuing to do it without consultant level medical advice is on thin ice IMO.

You said

"I personally think that without the enforced pronouns it's highly unlikely we'd see children demanding name changes. It's all about forcing others to pretend they're the opposite sex, name change alone doesn't do that."

You have no idea about these kids, do you?

@noblegiraffe You clearly have a visibility of these children that many of us don't. Please could you shed some light on what actually happens in your school when a pupil informs the school that they have had a change of gender?

I do have direct experience of some of these children. Yes, they're vulnerable but a name and pronoun change on the register doesn't happen for vulnerable children without someone pushing for it. Who makes the decision this will benefit them more than counselling? As Cass pointed out it's an intervention.

There is no evidence, none, that this benefits these children more than counselling would. Why are adults lying to them and setting them up for a fall?

As has been noted many times on this board, the people who benefit from this are adult male transitioners, they are the ones who've pushed this agenda in school.

Just because I've come to a different conclusion than you doesn't mean that I don't know anything about it. I suspect that your school has done things you now feel uncomfortable about but just throwing out personal accusations will not change that.

There are several posters on here who actually have children who are 'gender questioning' who have more or less the same opinion as me. Who have been keen to safeguard their children by not pretending they can change sex and who have had to face enormous pressure and opposition from their schools. This was never in the child's best interest.

Do you really think these vulnerable children would be asking to change their names and pronouns without adults pushing it? If so, why wasn't there loads of this in the 80s?

I am the parent of one of these autistic, anxious, depressed, trans identified girls and yes she is extremely vulnerable and suggestible I think both @noblegiraffeand @womendeserveequalhumanrightsmay be saying the same thing with noble focused on the needs of vulnerable trans identified kids and women focusing on all the other children.

Both groups are important and IMO social transition at school doesn’t help either. The school my DD attended did not allow the kids to change their names on the register (even for an abbreviation) without parents’ permission. We did not give permission for this but lots of parents did. Some teachers did informally use trans identified kids’ preferred names without parents permission even after the school explicitly said they would not do this in their gender questioning kids policy (which was never published or properly explained to teachers due to not having the government guidelines to back up the school’s position).

The school never agreed to change pronouns yet a large cohort of trans identified kids persisted. IMO not using pronouns wouldn’t make a difference if names are accepted.

I think it’s crucial that the new guidance makes the point that teachers are not qualified to socially transition any child(even if parents want them to) and doing so can be harmful to this cohort; AND it is harmful to all children to coerce speech (and even thoughts). Shared toilets/ changing rooms/ sports between the sexes is clearly high risk for all and should not be allowed.

Sorry, my previous post was long and rambling and may have misinterpreted PPs.

To be clear, my position is:
Social transition in schools is potentially damaging to ALL children and shouldn’t happen (this includes name changes). The government guidelines should protect teachers, who should not be expected to take sides or get involved in any way

Gender questioning children are extremely vulnerable and need help from well qualified services (I don’t think these exist yet). Teachers can’t fill in for these services in the meantime.

1. The only way to tell if children will persist is with hindsight, with what happens after children have left school and long after they have left primary school. The evidence is that around 80% will desist and there is no way to identify the other 20% who wont. Unless the schools inspectorate is handing out crystal balls there is no way to identify the minority of children who would persist. And there is no explanation of how social transition could benefit a child in any other way, we now know for example that it does not decrease suicidality. There is no way to identiify "exceptional" cases who would benefit from social transition and therefore no reason ever to include it in the guidance.

1. The Cass Review pointed out that social transition has psychological consequences. Those consequences include increasing dysphoria as the gap between social and physical widens, and an increasing need for affirmation from more people and in more situaitons. The consequences of social transition also include embedding the wish to transition more deeply and drawing children in to physical transition. Social transition extends persistence but it can't guarantee that there wont be regret much later on. Social transition creates persistence.

Well quite. These vulnerable children don't need to "demand" pronoun changes. They ask, they get. Sometimes they only hint, they get, adults fall over themselves to go along with it. It might be the only area of their lives where they get that much response so readily from adults.

That doesn't make it healthy or a good idea.

In fairness, the guidance could state explicit criteria for when these "exceptional" social transitions could be considered. Given that schools are not experts the guidance could say who has the expertise to make such a judgment. A letter requesting these changes from a psychiatrist, say.

And in any case social transition can't include the use of wrong-sex facilities. Names and uniform is all it can be. Guidance can't even insist that other children use wrong-sex pronouns because that's an infringement on them.

Yes, no one has to push, demand or coerce if it's going to happen without any of that. The children involved, in my experience, are not the pushy, demanding and coercive types. They are more the quiet, vulnerable, more likely to be bullied types. People, particularly teachers but also other 'nice' children are inclined to feel protective of them, and want to do what they can to make their lives a little easier. If this is calling them by a preferred name and pronouns, then this is what happens (note: this happens even without a school instruction, lots of kids socially transition among their friends first before the school gets on board).

And people can say Cass says no, but you need to remember that the Cass review was only published two years ago and schools have been dealing with this for well over a decade. And for well over a decade the understanding has been that deliberate misgendering is a dick move.

Consider the technical guidance to schools from the EHRC that was published in 2014 which contains:

"A member of school staff repeatedly tells a transsexual pupil that ‘he’ should not dress like a girl and that ‘he’ looks silly, which causes the pupil great distress. This would not be covered by the harassment provisions, because it is related to gender reassignment, but could constitute direct discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment."

You can tell how long ago it was written (it's still live) by the fact that it uses 'transsexual'. Note that the example for direct discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment explicitly uses the misgendering 'he' in its example of a teacher who is potentially breaking the law.

Don't blame schools for socially transitioning kids when that's the legal guidance we've been given, that the DfE have explicitly directed us to teach about gender identity as fact. It hasn't required pushing or demanding or activist teachers, just reading the documents we've been provided and acting on them.

In my experience, children police themselves on pronouns.

There's still plenty of potential here for a child to socially transition at school among their peers, name and pronouns and for parents to remain completely unaware. The KCSIE guidance only kicks in when a child or parent makes a request to the school for support.

Oh yes, I was going to say "It might be the only area of their lives where they get that much response so readily from adults and peers" but I was too late to edit.

Children "policing themselves" (and each other) on pronouns isn't healthy either. It's especially confusing for young children and what are teachers supposed to say if a child asks? "Jane is really a little boy but we all call her "she" because that's what she wants and we feel sorry for her"? That's the truth but is that acceptable?

I think it is good for the guidance to tell parents who ask for support that no, they can't expect pronoun changes.

I'm not blaming schools by the way @noblegiraffe - well I do blame a few schools in Scotland who've jumped into this with both feet, but not schools in general. The guidance needs to be clear and straightforward and not rely on unspecified "exceptions" so it helps schools do the right (safest) thing and stand up to pressure from parents and pupils.

What you've said about the old guidance is why the new one is so urgently needed. And why it needs to be right.

Please would someone let me know what the guidance directed at children/teenagers is supposed to be about having a feeling of an inner gender that is separate from your sex at your birth?

I am asking as I have now seen three books in a row , one about ‘daring kids’, the two others about puberty/growing up, which state as a fact - equal to reproduction or menstruation - that they might have a gender that does not match the sex they were told at birth, or words to that effect. Two of these were in a public library, all might be in school libraries. I think it must be the norm and feel concerned.

May I ask how it is going for your daughter? What happened when teachers continued with preferred pronouns/name after you said no?

She’s doing pretty well thanks, at uni now and lots of signs of desistence but she still uses the “boy name” with friends and as her “known as” with the uni. She renewed her passport recently in her birth name despite going a long way down the line with a deed poll. She organised and paid for that (passport) herself so 🤞

I had quite a lot of contact with DSL and head as well as an inside track on what was going on at school, so I know there was a draft policy and an inset session on it but also that a final version has never emerged. Nothing was ever done about teachers using the wrong name- tricky to prove. The ones that I suspect were doing it didn’t use her name in parents evening conversations just used “you”.

When DD started sixth form she changed her name by asking the sixth form office. I found out a week or so later when topping up her dinner money on ParentPay. It turned out that the new gender questioning children policy contradicted the previous policy on name change (that students were free to do this in sixth form). DSL did apologise and offer to tell DD she needed to change back but our relationship was so fragile at that point we felt it would be humiliating for her so she kept it. We’ve never used it at home and we always referred to her by her birth name in all interactions with school which made parents’ evenings extremely uncomfortable for all.

I don’t get the impression that teachers at the school have been well briefed about the policy (the draft included the bogus suicide figures which we did address but have never seen a final version so don’t know if this was taken on board).

The school guidance is vital to clarify what is known e.g that social transition is not a neutral act, a large proportion will desist if not affirmed and the suicide risk is in line with other children with comorbidites like ASD, depression or anxiety.

Thanks, it sounds like she might be slowly extricating herself, and it sounds like she never took a medical route? Fingers crossed for continued progress.

The school sounds like a mess, but then honestly I think all schools are when it comes to this due to the continued almost but not quite publishing of govt guidance. My school doesn’t have a policy at all, I think they just roll with things case-by-case. It does leave teachers not knowing where we stand though.

The guidance does need to be clear. I think teachers who have spent the last decade being told they should instantly affirm need a clear rationale as to why that has changed as a safeguarding issue. Because they are going to be accused of transphobia or feel transphobic when they don’t.

Jumping in here to say I do blame schools where those schools have been given every opportunity to a) see the harm that their leadership (and safeguarding) team's behaviour is perpetuating and b) recognise that the previous EHRC guidance doesn't reflect the law.... and still they persist.

Schools like the OP's daughter's and my daughters' fit into that category.

I also blame the DfE and Ofsted for not stamping it out from the top down.

and b) recognise that the previous EHRC guidance doesn't reflect the law....

Can you clarify this bit please, @BonfireLady ?

Apologies for the ambiguity @noblegiraffe . I guess it's technically the current guidance, considering it's still live and hasn't been replaced.

From your post above:

"A member of school staff repeatedly tells a transsexual pupil that ‘he’ should not dress like a girl and that ‘he’ looks silly, which causes the pupil great distress. This would not be covered by the harassment provisions, because it is related to gender reassignment, but could constitute direct discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment."

My understanding following the SC judgement and the Forstater case before that is that:

• repeatedly telling a child that they look silly wearing a dress could constitute harassment. Saying it once is not very nice but wouldn't. The PC of gender reassignment is relevant here if that child is a male, but it's the threshold for harassment that is more important. This is my understanding from Forstater. However, I don't know whether the Forstater judgment on this harassment threshold, versus expression of lack of gender identity belief, applies to schools (where children are the service users)
• as long as all male pupils are told that they can't wear a dress, there is no unlawful discrimination. Gender reassignment is irrelevant because the school is protected in its decision to only allow girls to wear dresses under the single-sex exemption

@BonfireLady interesting about Forstater because the technical guidance to schools says that the harassment provision of the Equality Act doesn't apply to gender reassignment - repeatedly telling a trans child that they look silly wearing a dress could never constitute harassment under the Equality Act.

I don't know anything about legal stuff though and I don't know why harassment only applies to certain protected characteristics here and whether that's only a school thing.

Gender reassignment is irrelevant because the school is protected in its decision to only allow girls to wear dresses under the single-sex exemption

It has to be a proportionate means to achieve a legitimate aim though, I'm not sure what the legitimate aim of stopping boys wearing dresses would be?