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/

No, it’s about sport. Which in schools takes place within the structure of PE, but it refers specifically to sport.

It's always a young child used as an example as they don't want you to think about the post pubescent boys.

The issue would be:

This is the girls' yoga lesson.
It is girls only because here are the reasons why this needs to be a single sex activity.
This boy however can be counted as a girl in some circumstances if we think it's ok/most girls don't mind, because very important to him and his sense of self and respecting his identity.
Now he and his parents are expressing how very important it is to him and how disrespected he feels when he can be fully respected as a girl in the yoga lesson but then has to be othered and change alone from the 'other girls'. If he can be a girl sometimes, then he obviously is a kind of a girl and he wants to use the girls' changing rooms. And 'most girls don't mind'.

This is what has happened under Stonewall law, and this is why it ended in the SCJ. Salami tactics. The 'no' has to come somewhere. Either this boy is a boy or he's not.

And until the govt fuck up the law for women and girls to benefit men, he is a boy.

If it’s ok for even one boy to do yoga with girls then it must be open to all boys. If it’s not ok for all boys then it’s not ok for one “special” boy.

The guidance should require schools to re-evaluate whether the activities they offer genuinely need to be sex segregated, and then if they do need to be, that’s a hard line they are required to stick to in law.

If a boy is able to do a single sex sport with the girls due to social transition (which I thought Cass said was harmful btw), then what stops him from going in their changing rooms and toilets?

I knew Labour would be bad, but I didn't think I would hate them this much. Absolute shower of shine.

@MyAmpleSheep Agreed - I don't think there is a reason why Yoga should not be mixed sex.

This might mean just one solitary boy chooses this option, or one solitary girl chooses skateboarding - which could cause staffing issues on supervising changing rooms - which means they say no to it.

The guidance says that schools can choose single sex PE for safety or for fairness. This is single sex - so social transitioning is irrelevant - these students go to their sex PE provision and use their facilities.

This means that if neither fairness nor safety is an issue then mixed sex sports provision is okay - which is how adult sports participation works (not competition)

If there is some mixed sex provision in some PE then the whole socially transitioning thing should be irrelevant and might be a good way for schools to deal with the issue. That said there may simply not be enough PE teachers to allow this - or space/sports facilities.

In terms of school competitive teams this be related to fairness - so sex segregated.

Please can you post a link as I obviously missed this?

It would be very odd for a government to change the equalities legislation without the direct involvement of its own regulator, the EHRC. Is there evidence of this in anything said by Stephenson?

Completed this- thanks for sharing.

Because it’s an opportunity for girls and boys to ask questions they may be uncomfortable asking in front of members of the opposite sex, to raise concerns they may have.

That’s an argument for boys and girls to learn about condoms and self defence separately. Not an argument that girls don’t need to know about condoms nor that boys don’t need to learn self defence.

Again: Why do girls not need to know about condoms and boys about self defence?

I'm the OP, where you talk about social transition not being at its heart - you are mistaken.

If you look elsewhere at the proposed new guidance, there are some 25 paragraphs (251-275) that cover social transitioning.

This proposed policy is not in any way about whether an activity is single-sex or mixed-sex. Schools are already free to arrange different activities as mixed-sex or single-sex.

If a pupil were to request that an activity change from single-sex to mixed-sex then a school or college can decide on that.

However, this guidance very specifically states that if a pupil requests to participate in a single-sex activity designated for the opposite sex then the school will "need" (not 'may' but 'need') to take into account the 25 paragraphs of guidance on social transitioning.

This whole part of the guidance is about dealing with social transitioning in relation to single-sex sports.

Now, of course, the guidance says that schools must not allow pupils into toilets, changing rooms, or boarding or residential accommodation designated for the opposite sex, with no exceptions.

The guidance also says where schools have implemented single-sex sports as being necessary for safety reasons, there should be no exceptions and pupils must not be allowed to participate in these sports designated for the opposite sex.

However, a focus on “safety reasons” implies schools can include trans-identifying children in non-contact sports such as athletics, swimming, tennis etc.

This is disproportionately unfair to girls. Male advantage exists before puberty, and is very obvious at secondary school. Confidence, dignity and privacy are also justifications for single-sex sport.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5510157-labour-draws-up-equality-law-revamp-that-will-inflict-socialism-on-britain

It won't be done openly or honestly, there will be no announcement of what the plan is, obviously, because it would not go down well and would give people time to organise against it.

This would explain exactly why the guidance has been withheld while Phillipson sent members to the EHCR case arguing on the side of getting around the SCJ.

And with safety - you have a small slight ten year old boy playing with the girls. At 12 he hits puberty and shoots up to a sturdy 5’10” - at what point do you tell him that the girls no longer need to pretend he is a girl?

As I thought. It's just wild speculation.

Tell you what, if this turns out to be entirely innocent, come back and say 'I told you so'. I'll be thrilled. Seriously. I will be absolutely bloody ecstatic to be wrong.

If you're waiting for an announcement or anything done honestly and openly by this government that actually protects women and implements the SCJ before you believe it? I'd get a hell of a lot of popcorn in.

Yes - once I would have thought the same but, since then I have watched in amazement as ( amongst other things):

• a senior cabinet minister declares that a man can grow a cervix,
• the now PM said that it isn’t true that only men have penises
• a father in the U.K. is actually having to go to court in a judicial review to prevent males having the right to access his daughter’s changing room at school.

Therefore I find myself unable to have any faith in the decency, honesty or common sense of such persons.

This.

Schools can either apply the single-sex exemption across all PE lessons (as a propionate means of achieving a legitimate aim e.g. it's the only way they can make timetabling work because there are too many sports where mixed-sex participation would be inappropriate) or they could apply it to specific sports only.

Once they've decided how they want to approach it, nobody can socially transition into a sport/lesson that has been classified as single-sex.

My daughters' school made all sports lessons mixed-sex. They tell me that the vast majority of girls hate this, for multiple reasons.

They will simply say what they have said in the past - it's only one or two transgirls, so it really doesn't make much difference and it's unfair to the transgirls to say no. Or, this particular transgirl isn't that good at sport anyway, etc.

I never said that they didn’t, I said that some PE classes were separated by sex, that in those classes these things were discussed. You for whatever reason chose to read that as me saying girls should never learn about condoms and boys should never learn about periods.

It may just be that you have poor comprehension skills or it may be that you have a specific point you’re trying ineffectually to make. I don’t know, but I can go back and read what I wrote and so can you.

I am hard of understanding. Sometimes things need to be spelt out more clearly for me than for others.

Did the girls learn also about condoms? Did they do it while the boys were learning about condoms? When were the boys taught self defence?

Did you mean to say that the girls and boys were both taught about condoms, but separately?

Or is my inference that only girls were taught about self defence and only boys about condoms correct?

If that is correct, do you feel it was a good thing or a bad thing? Has your opinion changed at all since that time?

@Another2Cats well this is deeply unequal treatment for ordinary boys/girls then. If the single sex safety and fairness rules suddenly go out of the window for a boy who says he’s a girl and wants to do yoga, but not for any other boy, how is that equal treatment? I can’t see how one risk assessment would be for one boy and one for another? It’s not like it gets fairer, or the girls are less uncomfortable?

I hate people putting girls in a position where they have to pretend everything is ok and just be silently uncomfortable, it’s terrible lesson for life.

@MyAmpleSheep my question was whether these new requirements would affect PE classes in general and whether the decisions to allow some boys to self identify as girls for some sports would also mean that those boys would be able to self identify into other aspects of PE that are often sex segregated.

My personal view is that no boys should ever be able to self identify into any provisions, services or sports that have been designated as being for girls only. Just to be explicitly clear.

Yes I do think that covering sensitive topics like puberty in a sex segregated environment is important. Those topics will also be covered in PSHE and science classes, and should be to ensure that consistent information is provided to all children. Having additional sex segregated sessions means that girls can have discussion amongst other girls about what they are actually experiencing or what they can expect to happen. Being able to speak about assaults, and learn tactics to get safe in an environment where they may feel comfortable enough to disclose things that have already happened or may be happening is important.

The converse is true for boys, they also need opportunities to speak about issues that affect only boys with only boys. A girl pretending to be a boy will never experience a wet dream, will never get a surprise boner mid PE lesson and not know what to do, boys may be feeling pressure to be macho or to be protectors due to social messaging that a girl may not have been raised with.

If the government decides that boys can be girls for some sports, will those boys also be considered girls for getting changed and for sex segregated classes and for toilet facilities? Where is the boundary, what are the rules for when they are and when they aren’t girls?

Im sure he’d look fabulous in “Bryson pink” leggings with his penis on show. Why would they ever mind?

This is a good point so worth saying again and to be raised in any consultation responses:

If the government decides that boys can be girls for some sports, will those boys also be considered girls for getting changed and for sex segregated classes and for toilet facilities? Where is the boundary, what are the rules for when they are and when they aren’t girls?

How can a school socially transition a child so they join the girls’ trampoline class, and then trot off to the boys’ changing room?! It’s going to cause a lot more upset and distress for all sides than just sticking with simple sex based rules at all times. Confusing or what?