The transgender guidance for schools has been delayed – again. Schools are in desperate need of this guidance. Every time a child expresses the wish to change their gender at school, teachers are placed in an impossible position. Either they act as unlicensed medical practitioners by affirming the child’s new identity, or they risk losing their jobs for refusing to do so and being labelled as transphobic.
According to reports, the reason for the latest delay is that Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch had asked whether the guidance could be made tougher in terms of how and when social transitioning could take place in schools - but that these changes have been held by the Attorney General to be unlawful. If this is the case, the Government must not be afraid to change the law. The well-being of children must come first – and the Cass Review was explicit that social transition is an active intervention with long-term consequences.
Too many in Government have come to view the Equality Act as akin to Magna Carta, rather than what it is: a complex piece of legislation passed less than 15 years ago, with implications that are still being unpacked. Very few Parliamentarians were thinking of children self-IDing into a different gender, when the definition of gender reassignment in the Act was drafted. Of course, there is much in the Equality Act which is worth keeping – but Ministers should not be afraid to amend the bits that simply do not work.
The reality is that many schools do not view the issue of gender distress as a safeguarding issue. In spring, Policy Exchange published research in which 33 per cent of schools told us they would not inform the designated safeguarding lead when presented with a gender distressed child. 72 per cent told us they were not informing parents when their child discloses gender distress at school and four in ten were operating policies of gender self-ID.
