Letter to Secondary schools - ensure the EHRC code on single sex spaces is being followed in September - draft letter for feedback

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Purpose as above - make sure secondary schools know what changes they have t make - and - actually make them.

Subject: Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026: action required before 1 September

Dear Headteacher, Chair of Governors and Designated Safeguarding Lead,
The new edition of Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 comes into force on 1 September. It is statutory safeguarding guidance, and schools must review their policies and practice accordingly.

We recognise that some schools made arrangements during a period of conflicting advice and uncertainty. The new guidance provides a constructive opportunity to revisit those decisions, correct anything that is no longer appropriate and continue supporting every child with care and compassion. KCSIE specifically expects schools to reconsider decisions taken before the guidance came into force.

1. Statutory safeguarding guidance has changed
KCSIE 2026 contains substantial new guidance concerning gender-questioning children.

Governing bodies, senior leadership teams and safeguarding leads should review existing policies, staff guidance and individual arrangements before September. This must lead to practical changes on the ground, not simply revised wording in a policy.

2. Parents and carers must be central
KCSIE states that “Parents and carers have the leading role” in their children’s lives.

Parents should be involved from the outset and throughout any decision-making process. They should be told promptly about requests for social transition, invited to meetings, given the information being considered and allowed meaningful time to express their views before decisions are made.

Parents are essential safeguarding partners, not people to be informed after arrangements have already been implemented. Their views must be recorded accurately, given great weight and considered when arrangements are agreed and reviewed. KCSIE says outcomes are best where children have supportive family relationships and schools work with parents to establish what is best for the child.

3. Social transition is not neutral pastoral support
KCSIE describes social transition as an “active intervention that may have significant effects”.

Schools must therefore not treat affirmation as an automatic response, routine pastoral support or a simple administrative change. Individual staff must not independently initiate or implement changes to a child’s name, pronouns, uniform, records or treatment. Any request must go through an authorised school process with full parental involvement, safeguarding oversight and proper consideration of the child’s wider circumstances.

The appropriate approach is, in effect, watchful waiting rather than automatic affirmation: supporting the whole child compassionately, allowing time for feelings to be explored and avoiding actions that may prematurely consolidate a fixed identity.

This is consistent with the NHS approach, which is open-minded, developmentally informed and mindful that gender-related feelings may be transient. It considers mental health, neurodevelopment, family circumstances and wider wellbeing rather than beginning with a predetermined outcome.
Support must remain respectful, non-directive and free from bullying, while keeping the child’s future options open.

4. Single-sex facilities
KCSIE is explicit that pupils must not use toilets, changing rooms, boarding or residential accommodation designated for the opposite biological sex, “with no exceptions”.

Schools must provide separate toilets for boys and girls aged eight and over. Most toilet provision should therefore remain conventional single-sex facilities, in which the entire room, including cubicles, sinks and circulation space, is reserved for one biological sex.

A small number of individual universal toilets may be provided in addition. To be genuinely self-contained, each must:

• be a fully enclosed room intended for one pupil at a time;
• be lockable from the inside;
• contain its own WC, washbasin and hand-drying facilities;
• open directly onto a well-used, observable public corridor, not into a shared mixed-sex lobby.

A cubicle opening onto shared mixed-sex sinks or circulation space is not a self-contained universal toilet. KCSIE requires mixed-sex toilets to be individual lockable rooms opening directly onto public areas, while DfE premises advice requires toilet locations to allow informal staff supervision without compromising privacy.

Universal toilets are more expensive and space-intensive because each duplicates walls, doors, plumbing, sinks, ventilation and other fittings. Any proposal must demonstrate genuine need, value for money and sufficient remaining single-sex capacity.

It must also be rigorously risk-assessed, including emergency access if a child collapses, together with the risks of bullying, assault, harmful sexual behaviour, self-harm and substance use. A small number may meet particular needs, but they should supplement rather than replace sufficient single-sex provision.

5. Accurate records
KCSIE requires schools to “record a child’s biological sex accurately” wherever sex is recorded.

This applies to every pupil, including children who identify as trans. All relevant staff must be aware of each child’s biological sex wherever this is necessary to discharge safeguarding duties.

Accurate records must inform the use of toilets, changing rooms, residential accommodation and every other arrangement organised by biological sex. Schools must not allow uncertainty, informal practice or inaccurate records to undermine these safeguards.

Three actions for every school

We ask each school to:

1. Publish its updated policies - Review and publish compliant safeguarding and related policies on the school website before 1 September, including arrangements concerning social transition and single-sex facilities.
2. Communicate the changes to parents - Explain the updated policies and practical arrangements through the school’s normal parent communications before, or at the very beginning of, the academic year.
3. Explain its toilet provision- Confirm how existing or planned provision complies with KCSIE 2026, how sufficient single-sex facilities are being protected and how any universal toilets have been assessed for safeguarding, emergency access and value for money.

We wish to help schools make these changes proactively and sensitively. After 1 September, we will review publicly available policies and approach schools where clarification or correction appears necessary. Where significant concerns remain unresolved, we will raise them with the governing body, academy trust, local authority or other appropriate oversight body.

We hope every school will use this opportunity to demonstrate transparent governance and respect for the safety, privacy and dignity of all children.

Yours faithfully,

I'm so impressed with you.
This is an existential fight, a civil war, that so many citizens have no idea is happening.
You're part in winning this battle of ideas is soundless in the noise that epitomizes life in the UK in 2026.

Bump

OP, good letter. Comprehensive. You've done so much already, this is just the next step, I know.

A few thoughts:

a. It's very long (and perhaps needs to be!) - do you think head teachers and governors will read it? (I suppose it doesn't matter, because they have to comply with the guidance anyway)

b. Re toilets and changing rooms: what if they come back to you/other parents with "it's too expensive " or "we're looking into that" or "we're waiting for more funding in next year's budget"? This excuse seems to be gathering momentum.

c. Letters should be sent in any way that ensures that schools can't pretend they never received them.

Whilst you are discussing toilets, it would be useful to add this bit in about toilets which collates information from several sources on current guidance and reasoning from me based on old British Standards on schools and research.
Governors are responsible for supporting pupils with medical conditions in 2015 statutory guidance. Guidance also states all cubicle doors need to open outwards from the outside (sometimes by altering the hinge mechanism) or the door lifted off its hinges. I think the later is less satisfactory as it’s less easy to do but I think it’s too long to add here and all manufacturers should know this anyway.

Add:
For Key Stage 2 upwards, there is the option in single sex environments for toilet cubicle partitions and doors to be spaced a maximum of 150mm off finished floor level. This design safeguards and supports pupils with medical conditions such as those with epilepsy and diabetes, allowing quick detection of anyone suffering a medical emergency. It helps prevent misuse such as multiple occupancy, and aids ventilation and thorough cleaning. Space above the door aids ventilation and helps prevent misuse.

I personally think that the DfE should have a toilet fund for schools to access. They signed off these mixed sex designs.

I always wondered what a civil war would be like, to be involved in one.
I mean, I know my history, and see civil wars elsewhere.
I never guessed it would be a war of unreality v reality, the professional managerial classes v citizens.
And that it would be happen almost silently, behind closed doors, policy meetings, the lawyers at the forefront.
And that all those eminent individuals whom you'd expect to point out magical thinking and the erosion to women's and kid's rights, those never backwards in coming forward over the likes of Brexit, Farage, Trump, Johnson etc, would stay quiet.
A country where the "great and the good" just wave away women's concerns, don't bat an eyelid over teens transitioning on the NHS, happy to see Normie Brits silenced.
There's been a mantra developing since the Brexit vote, of the Somewheres versus the Everywheres.
The Everywheres are everywhere else than with women and kids.

That's excellent. 👏👏
Who is it designed to be from? parents? named individuals? or sending it out to every school via email?
Given the intrusion of transactivism into primary schools I'd include them if possible.

I'm a bit hesitant about suggesting anything else as being concise when writing about this is critical but ... might it be useful to also flag the statutory RSHE guidelines?

Well done - that's so constructive

Please don't send this to a headteacher in the last week of term before the summer. Most of it is already in KSIE and headteachers will be reading and actioning this because it's a legal document so you're teaching them to suck eggs.

You could easily cut it down to a request to see school policies in September once they have been written.

I get what you mean. But. This is aimed at schools who may have had a history of non compliance or could perhaps have a reminder, which is most of the schools in the country sadly

Agreed. Given the tsunami of illegal, anti safeguarding policies and trans rhetoric that's been sent to schools by lobby groups, unions etc, something as accurate as this is much needed - especially for those who've failed to execise due diligence.

However there is a legitimate issue about senior staff being exhausted and failing to note stuff that comes in at the end of the year. If this is being emailed I'd send it twice - now and for the 1st week of term.

Do you think they are more likely to read a document they are legally required to action, or an email from a parent? Ask to see the new policies, don’t rewrite KCSIE.

There needs to be a practical guide to changing toilets into single sex spaces. If you design it right, it covers lots of statutory guidance like reasonable adjustments and supporting children with medical conditions.
Pupils use toilets for all sorts of reasons and one interesting thing in the Scottish school designs is that they were talking about refuge spaces. That’s better than children using toilets for that.

the risk - is activist schools interpreting KCSE as something it is not - for example that a cubicle counts as a single sex space. Or that social transition is a step that can be taken easily.

That, is why I think these letters need writing, that's why I think schools need to be held to account. I'd love to think they are just well meaning teachers doing their best in the trenches, but, my own and so many others experience says thats not the case.

I believe someone’s stayed up watching England!

Yes. That’s why the changes in the DfE design booklet this year are so important. I hope they do not, for instance, say that this new unisex secondary school design is single sex by sticking female pictograms on one side and male on the other. I am sure there’s going to be a lot of excuses going on.

Of course, that last post should say this isn’t really a photo of true unisex design - it’s just that’s what it was called in the press release.

Lots of schools have this ‘unisex’ or ‘gender-neutral’ design with the shared metal circular sinks. This is going to require more £££ to put right.

They have to abide by the ECHR. The EHRC was made in response to the ECHR.
Schools cannot implement blanket exclusions without running afoul of broader human rights protections (like the right to privacy and non-discrimination).

That’s not true on any level.

According to who? The UK is a signatory of the ECHR. The EHRC was formed to do equalities locally. (Something which it’s failing to do now).
Doesn’t matter though because when the UK is against the ECHR the UK will lose massively again. Due to unscientific court cases and segregation.

😂
Might be a good idea before posting incorrect information to have an understanding of the statutory nature of KCSIE & other legislation and guidance that applies to schools and children. Which is what this thread is about.

Brilliant letter, thank you for taking the time to draft and for sharing it.

Wrong in every way. 🤯

On the one hand you have

The Equality and Human Rights Commission
"We are an independent statutory body with the responsibility to encourage equality and diversity, eliminate unlawful discrimination, and protect and promote the human rights of everyone in Britain."

"Our role is to make these rights and freedoms a reality for everyone. We use a range of powers to do so, by providing advice and guidance to individuals, employers and other organisations, reviewing the effectiveness of the law and taking legal enforcement action to clarify the law and address significant breaches of rights."

and on the other you have

The EHRC was formed to do equalities locally.

Heading off the derailment from my interlopers quickly….

any and all concrete feedback on the letter is still very welcomed from all of you - cheers

Sorry, it's not clear from your post who 'they' are, has the DfE design booklet said that the design in the photo is not an example of unisex toilets if sides as designated, or is it yet to be published and you're hoping that it will clearly state that it is not?

(as a different point, there really needs to be a window in that picture, the smell would be horrific!)

Are you envisaging that other parents can use this or are you thinking about sending it out to all schools ?
I can see that either is possible.