Not again! - Government is proposing to allow trans-identifying boys into under 18s girls’ school sport - unless it is deemed unsafe

[Another2Cats]

Very much as the title. An account I follow on Twitter/X @ SEENinSport posted this tweet.

https://x.com/SportSEENuk/status/2041037786082329070?s=20

Apparently there is an open consultation from the Dept for Education

'Keeping children safe in education: 2026 proposed revisions'

One of these revisions is that schools may choose to allow boys to take part in girls sports. There are also other issues about 'social transitioning'

It says that there are "some" sports that "may" need to be played in single-sex groups from a certain age. Frankly though, I can't think of any school sports that shouldn't be single-sex activities.

Apart from these sort of 'maybe' sports, the new guidance says that schools will need to consider any boys requesting to play in girls sports in light of the advice on "considering requests for support with social transition"

This is from paras 96 and 97 of the draft proposed changes:

96 Some sports may need to be played in single-sex groups from a certain age to ensure children’s safety, and where this is the case there should be no exceptions. In other cases, schools or colleges may have adopted a policy of single-sex sports for reasons related to fairness.

97 Where there are no safety concerns and a child makes a request relating to
how they participate, schools and colleges will need to consider the request in light of the advice on “considering requests for support with social transition”. This means that the school or college would need to take into account all the relevant factors, including whether supporting social transition is overall in the best interests of the child, as well as considering the impact on other children and the aim of creating safe and fair environments for children to participate in PE.

Frankly, the whole thing about even considering "supporting social transition" is entirely wrong, I feel.

Link to the proposed revisions:

https://consult.education.gov.uk/independent-education-and-school-safeguarding-division/keeping-children-safe-in-education-2026-revisions/supporting_documents/keeping_children_safe_in_education_2026_draft_for_consultationpdf-1

.

SEENinSport has suggested the following:

The survey has 41 questions but Q35 is the key one for sport

If you only have a couple of minutes, you can press return for each question till you reach Q35

They also have a link to suggested answers here:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/67fa41451fd5090aa3fb410b/t/69ceb2a41c966b1fc3a00b94/1775153828864/KCSIE+SEEN+in+Sport+response+Feb+2026+%286%29.pdf

and their website page on the issue is here:

https://www.seeninsport.org/consultation-on-kcsie-2026

The consultation is open until 22nd April and if you wish to contribute your thoughts on any of the questions then the government consultation form is here:

https://consult.education.gov.uk/independent-education-and-school-safeguarding-division/keeping-children-safe-in-education-2026-revisions/consultation/intro/

Of course they were going to do this and the number of people who fell for the oh we have realised women dont actually have penises crap is rediculous.

They have always wanted to push this through

Oh FFS, thank you Cats, I will try to respond.

Thanks for the link. Completed.

How does that comply with FWS?

Bloody civil servants drafting this crap into policy. It runs very deep.

They are redrafting the Equality Act to remove the inconvenient bits.

The inconvenient bits being women and girls rights. Female equality. This is nothing less than setting male precedence and importance over females in law.

And as is now the every day normal of the Labour Party, it is being done in an underhanded, deceitful way. 'Oh yes we'll protect women's single sex spaces' to your face, while the gerrymandering goes on in the background. My disgust gets deeper by the day. The old saying 'you have to have a Labour government occasionally to remember why you never vote Labour' has never felt truer.

A girl is a girl, a boy is a boy. It does what it says on the tin. There is no need to invent specious 'reasons' to justify boys in girls' sports. FFS if they want mixed teams then let them be open about it. Nothing wrong with a mixed team that girls and boys can choose if they wish (I used to play in a mixed hockey team). But parachuting boys into a specifically girls' team is just wrong.

Sounds like Sharia

Relevant parts: DRAFT – NOT CURRENT DfE POLICY

95. As children get older, some sports are typically taught and played in single-
    sex groups.27 The Equality Act 2010 contains an exception in relation to single-sex sport. It applies to participation in any sport or game, or activity of a competitive
    nature, where the physical strength, stamina or physique of the average girl would put her at a disadvantage in competition with the average boy (or vice versa). This means that schools and colleges can separate children according to their biological sex in these circumstances without discriminating unlawfully against them on the basis of their sex.

96. Some sports may need to be played in single-sex groups from a certain age
    to ensure children’s safety, and where this is the case there should be no
    exceptions. In other cases, schools or colleges may have adopted a policy of
    single-sex sports for reasons related to fairness.

97. Where there are no safety concerns and a child makes a request relating to
    how they participate, schools and colleges will need to consider the request in light of the advice on “considering requests for support with social transition”. This means that the school or college would need to take into account all the relevant factors, including whether supporting social transition is overall in the best interests of the child, as well as considering the impact on other children and the aim of creating safe and fair environments for children to participate in PE

Funnily they forget to mention under factors to consider: “you must also consider that it is unlawful to place boys in female sex groups, or girls in boys groups so don’t do this”

Okay - so the draft policy (copied above) is the proposed change??

It looks okay to me - Single sex exemption for sport noted for both safety and also for fairness.

Only in cases where there are no safety concerns and the social transition has been considered (rather than instantly accepted) could this be considered - and then only when it has been balanced against fairness to others.

So from this I would take it that it would be quite hard for a child to access single sex sports if not that sex. There are several safeguards - refusal on grounds of safety, refusal on grounds of fairness, refusal on consideration that it is detrimental to the larger group/ their access to PE (so perhaps related to those with other competing beliefs)

I may well be missing something - but this seems to be an improvement to the 'welcome to all who want to access wrong sex sports'

FFS they don’t give up do they.

Some secondary schools due to size or other needs have mixed PE. I appreciate the strong focus on the school needing to put in those risk assessments and being crystal clear that even in situations with mixed PE, that that doesn't change the need for single sex toilets or changing rooms. I do wish the focus in that section discussing the risk assessments didn't only mention social transition as a reason to do this, ignoring the other reasons these things have been happens for many years. Almost all the PE I did growing up was mixed PE, I don't recall it being that big of a deal.

I'm likely biased as I've had a child who has benefitted from this, most of which has been in previous KCSIEs. When my DD2 was in Year 9, the secondary school she was at went from having a mixed sex PE option alongside single to only single sex; however, there was an adjustment period and parents like me who had kid in mixed PE who had expressed an issue with the change were given the choice of a meeting to discuss the situation and to consent to an individual risk assessment alongside the sports ones the school was already doing. I think it was largely handled well - when there was a sport deemed too risky, she was given the option to go with the girls PE or (what she always chose) to go with the boys who also weren't in that sport for medical reasons to the gym for strength and gym training. There were a few girls like my DD throughout the year groups. I'm aware of only one boy who had been given the option, and he went with the girls for dance for that half term and then - because he was Y11 - he was given and took the option to go to the study hall extra support for exams group.

I absolutely agree when it comes to competitive sports and contact sports that single sex should remain the rule, but school PE can be more flexible than that. The guidance needs to reflect that there are secondary schools that have mixed PE and that there can be situations where different options need to be considered. We can focus on the trans-identifying boys, but I'm more concerned with how many girls already hate PE particularly in how many schools do it with the focus on competitive games that wouldn't work well as mixed sex and those like my DD2 who would just refuse PE - whatever punishment - if she'd been forced to go from mixed PE which had been a lifeline for her to girls' PE when she'd already been given consent by the school to change separately due to how badly she'd been bullied in the girls' locker room.

There are genuinely some PE situations where it is fine for boys and girls to be in classes together - dance is one of them.

Sex segregation for competitive sport for fairness is different.

For goodness’ sake. It’s getting weird to see this reappearing when the argument is now long-settled, but you forget how long the lag is for normies to catch up. Just as it took the activists a decade-plus to get gender thoroughly embedded in the first place, it’s probably going to take a decade for the drones to unlearn the idea that magic words are all you need.

What are these sports that girls & boys can compete in equally and safely?

I think equestrian events comply with those requirements, but what sort of school offers that? Roedean & Eton, probably but not the local comp. Then there's mixed doubles in racquet sports, but that's one m & one f on each side of the net.

What do they mean, does anyone know?

I agree this is an improvement. However it’s still structural misogyny that women and girls have to “be kind” and not have firm boundaries. If it’s not a total ban then it will be used to slowly destroy women’s rights.

The thinking behind allowing men into women’s prisons was once you achieve that it’s hard to say no to any female SSS.

The bottom line is you either have single sex sports or mixed sports.

There are team sports e.g. mixed doubles tennis, athletics with mixed teams e.g.4 x 100, 400 etc where teams of two girls and two boys compete.

Edited to add but very few where they compete one on one. Go carting is another one but as you point out the are niche sports that cost ££.

There are more that can be done as mixed sex lessons though - gym, swimming, athletics, climbing etc can be done in a mixed sex environment in schools - though clearly they still need single sex changing rooms and outcome measures.

I disagree that it is absolute.

This is about school PE, it's about participation - not competition.

Competitions will have their own rules about access to categories.

I don't see the issue with some boys wanting to join in with the girls to do dance or a girl who is particularly skilled at football wanting to join the boys team - especially if there is no access to them playing this sport in their own sex group. As mentioned before risk assessments may need to be done for safety and they change with their own sex.

Also things like trampolining, swimming, badminton.

This is bloody typical, isn't it? It's not too difficult to think of scenarios where there's a pragmatic case for mixed sex PE - might be non-competitive non-contact activities like dance or yoga, might be a very small school where you have trouble finding enough kids for single-sex activities.

None of that makes a case for mixing the sexes in competitive or contact sports, much less mixed sex showers or changing rooms.

So, unless we actually push for a total ban on mixed sex PE, we're still going to have officials bolting on "social transition" and using that to give schools an opportunity to make mixed sex the default.

Of course we could just insist that it is not the business of schools to support "social transition".

Looks sensible enough to me too. Of course it's all in the application but I can see no inherent reason why this is problematic, unless you take a hard ideological line.

Also, the Equality Act and case law arising from it really doesn't entail what some posters on this thread think it does. If you're going to make trans people the hill you die on, perhaps a bit more reading round the subject could be in order?

The guidance is not saying any boy can take part in girls sports and vice versa if they meet the criteria. It’s saying if they are supporting “social transition”.

If they said any boy or girl I.e. no social transition then I agree with you.

So would this only apply to extra-curricular sports in schools or would this apply to Physical Education classes in general? When I was at school PE was often split boys and girls, boys would go off and do rugby, girls would do netball etc but also in those split lessons boys would learn about condoms and male puberty, the girls had sessions about periods and self defence. Which group would the trans identified kids go into?

The only relevant case law is you can only have some thing single sex if you rely on the EA exemptions and in that case it must be single sex. Any case prior to FWS that might suggest different is now dead.