The Government has briefed the press on the imminent release of its so-called ‘Transgender Guidance’ for schools, which has been long-awaited by many who are concerned about ad hoc ‘social transitions’ taking place – sometimes conducted without parents knowing and in ways that compromise single sex spaces and safeguarding. To date, these transitions relate to pupils’ pronouns and the school uniform they’re expected to wear, and sometimes apply to who can use the school toilets and changing rooms or join the sports lessons and overnight accommodation of the opposite sex.
Despite the current lack of regulation, I have always hoped that such ‘guidance’ would never be issued at all, fearing that when it does its contents (and even just its mooted title of ‘Transgender Guidance’) will create a new paradigm in which the state officially ratifies the belief that some children are ‘transgender’ and need special accommodation in the education system, something that has never previously been affirmed by a government and for which there is no actual proof nor a cast iron legal definition.
It will also, no doubt, introduce a verbose new document that permits interpretation and is open to radical revision – something that the policy-writers at the Department for Education (DfE) seem to specialise in as a method to steer policy in their preferred direction. A far better way to address this issue would be to include it in the Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance, but identifying as transgender remains absent from this crucial safeguarding framework, despite it becoming increasingly clear that the majority of children identifying as trans have other mental health issues and are vulnerable.
On the face of it, though, the Government is keen to sound as if it is taking a hard line against transitioning, with one Whitehall source reported in the Telegraph as saying, “The guidance has been toughened recently… effectively, it means there is a presumption against social transitioning.” But very obviously, a ‘presumption against’ implies the matter is nevertheless to be weighed in the balance by the school and on some occasions the decision will be in favour of social transition. We have yet to hear what factors might affect this decision.
What criteria can a school possibly use to make such a profoundly affecting psychological intervention for just a few children who are apparently thought to be ‘truly transgender’, but not for others? And how will those whose request is rejected react? Will they protest, withdraw from school or jump through whatever hoops are presented as being sufficient proof, e.g. hormone therapy? And what will then be asked of the other children and teachers around them to accommodate the rare instances of supposedly necessary transition? Will it be deemed necessary for them to use pronouns they don’t agree with and collude in the idea that another child is effectively the opposite of the sex from the one they know them to be? The idea seems unworkable in practice and law.
The Government has attempted to reassure that when such a transition does happen, “parents should be informed. It’s wrong that such decisions appear to have been taken without parents being involved.” Some would say that “such decisions” should not be made by a school nor circumscribed by the DfE at all, and they might also note that being ‘informed’ is not the same as having a veto. Will a parent now be unable to prevent their child being socially transitioned at school if they meet the Government specifications in this guidance, but which the parents think is unwise?
Conversely, just because parents will now be told, that should not mean that if they do give permission (or even demand that their child should be transitioned) that their views ought to be the determining factor. Parents make many mistakes and projecting things onto their children can be one of them. The Government and its public services would not support a parent in facilitating anorexia in their child, so why should they adhere to the wishes of a parent who wants the school to facilitate their child’s transition as a response to their gender dysphoria?
The question is not really one of notification or permission, nor of a parent or school’s belief in a child’s gender identity – it is not about being ‘tough’ either. It is a matter of principle, evidence and safeguarding. Should a child ever be facilitated by their school to think they were ‘born in the wrong body’, when there is no clear proof that is true, nor that affirming that belief is the right thing to do – especially given the current availability of online persuasion, injurious breast binders and life-changing medications, which have been shown to follow social transition when desisting would otherwise be the most likely outcome? I would argue the answer is ‘no’.
Apparently, the guidance also discusses “Gillick competence”, which is a test to determine when a child is old enough to consent to medical treatment. This suggests that medical advice might be sought when a school is assessing whether a child is ‘truly transgender’. But that offers little reassurance of there being a precautionary approach, since I have seen RSHE lessons that advise children directly that, according to Gillick, they are likely to be able to access healthcare in secret from around the age of 13. Likewise, there are plenty of doctors prepared to affirm a child’s transgender identity.
So, while the guidance apparently will say that toilets and some contact sports lessons should definitely be single sex, it still seems that, for the first time, there will be a narrow, government-approved route to socially transition children in schools with name changes and new pronouns. And that matters a great deal for society, but especially for the families that have vulnerable children who might be severely negatively affected by having their chosen identity affirmed in this way. Social transition is, after all, a significant psychological intervention that can sway a child’s self-perception and tear families apart and trample on other people’s rights and protections. This is especially true when those affirming the child are their teachers, whom children are expected to respect as authority figures.
The projection of ‘toughness’ by the Government on this issue is telling. They know this dangerous trend is unpopular with most parents and they therefore considered preventing the practice altogether, but feared they could not achieve that without stimulating legal challenges or creating new legislation. Consequently, they seem to have opted for what they perceive to be the next best thing, a fudge that at least dampens the trend, but which still allows for a few mythical ‘true trans’ kids to be abandoned to the gender identity fantasy. For some families that will be a heavy price to pay for the Government’s failure to stand up to the trans lobby (including the believers in their own party).
This fudge is not an incremental step in the right direction it’s advertised as being – it is a leap in favour of official recognition of ‘transgender children’. Worryingly, this might even work against any much-needed legal cases that seek to establish that the protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment under the Equality Act should never be applied to a minor, given that the Gender Recognition Act pertained to adults only. Now, the slim case law that exists in favour of the protected characteristic applying to children has been bolstered by a Government document and the blessing of the Attorney General.
This compromise also takes no account of vulnerable children who are fixated on a trans identity and have already unwisely been affirmed by some teachers, but who might now have that trans status withdrawn under the presumption against transitioning. These pupils don’t need ‘toughened’ guidance; they need a considered and caring safeguarding plan to exit the untenable situation of pretending to be the opposite sex and having supposedly responsible adults agree with them. It might even be psychologically risky to suddenly change a genuinely confused child’s identity according to whatever criteria the DfE tries to lay out and however schools then interpret it.
The Government surely has to realise – indeed finally admit – that they can’t eke out any more of the unprincipled compromises required by our appallingly ill-conceived equalities law, which is too easily harnessed by activist civil servants – and their activist allies in the charity sector – to secure their preferred political outcomes. The DfE and the third sector together have spent nearly two decades funding and ratifying educational schemes aimed at promoting transgender ideology and socially affirming vulnerable kids. And so that is what has happened en masse.
The resulting damage has long been done to many children and embedded in the culture of schooling, and so the Government cannot hope to safely overturn this status quo with just one unclear, non-binding guidance document, overseen by the same Department that has promoted unofficial social transitioning all along. This is to treat the side effects of the Department’s flawed Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) guidance with yet more flawed ‘trans’ guidance.
Instead, the government-sponsored indoctrination that led to this ghastly mess needs unpicking with a public inquiry. And when the truth is formally established – namely, that the DfE created this disaster in schools with unlawful RSE and dodgy ‘equality’ schemes, based on the unworkable combination of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and Equality Act 2010, administered by the Government Equalities Office and Equalities and Human Rights Commission and signed off by a rapid turnover of foolish and ill-briefed Ministers. Only then can a proper plan of action be applied with the pragmatic and ‘safeguarding first’ approach that is needed. But that will require a far-reaching body of new legislation and the enforcement of existing education law, delivered by a much braver, stronger and more principled government than the one we have in office today.
Clare Page is a parent concerned about indoctrination in education. She is currently fighting a legal case to establish transparency in schools, especially with regard to Relationship and Sex Education classes. You can donate to her CrowdJustice fundraiser here.
Stop Press: The Times has more detail on the ‘Transgender Guidance’ for schools. According to this report, medical advice will not be sought when schools are assessing whether to affirm a trans-identifying child’s self-diagnosis and the Attorney General has decided that the Equality Act’s protected characteristic of ‘Gender Transitioning’ does apply to children. Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
It’s all crap, and it has been since the beginning. Here’s a very simple piece of investigation I performed eleven years ago, in January 2013:
https://public-highway.blogspot.com/2013/01/rainmasterall-since-records-began.html
I’d just love to know what the downtick is about.
Care to stump up a fiver to enlighten little me, downticker?!
These are climate alarmists. And ofcourse their comments here would be welcome as it lets us see how absurd they are.
I do not understand why poorly sited stations are thought to have +\- errors.
All cases I have read about seem to have sited with causes of systematic error and none are negative. I have never heard of a station where there was persistent artificial cooling effects. The only errors I have read about are systematic bias upwards.
The East Park complex is a a glazed roof, which clearly acts as a greenhouse. Here is a view from underneath. No wonder alarmists refer to the greenhouse effect.
We are now about to enter into a Labour Government Green Cloud Cuckoo Land where we will all apparently get cheap clean energy. ——-Except where in the world is there a country with such a thing? Cheap clean energy means only one thing –wind and sun. So what country in the world has cheap wind and sun energy? —–The answer is NONE. The countries with the most wind, Germany and Denmark have the highest electricity prices. So why is the wind in the UK going to be cheap? It certainly isn’t so far. A quick look over our electricity bills since we started going daft for wind will reveal that.
The cretinous Green Goon Ed Miliband who gave us the Climate Change Act in 2008 and therefore all of this wind, surely cannot believe his luck that the Tories had an 80 seat majority and chucked it all away after infighting about a silly birthday cake and now he is going to have his grubby eco socialist hands on our energy supply. Although Boris and the fake Tories were heading down the same sort of Green fantasy land that panders to the UN and WEF Sustainable nonsense, it is Miliband and Labour that will really start to hammer us with this pretend to save the planet communism.
In order to get away with this tyranny you need a very plausible excuse and that excuse is Global warming (climate change). But what you find upon closer inspection of this issue is a smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency, but with NO EVIDENCE. So because there is no evidence the climate establishment has resorted to calling failed models evidence instead. They think that if the present some output from a model and refer to it as “science” that the public who hate arguing or discussing science will just accept it and guess what—-they mostly do. So what you get is “warmest ever recorded” and “hottest ever” based on a temperature record that is s complete dogs breakfast of adjusted and manipulated data that if it was happening in any other walk of life the perpetrators would be arrested and charged with fraud.
——OK we are all sick of the fake Tories but if the UK public think life will be sweet under Labour and Miliband than I am sorry but please keep your electricity bills in a folder and see them skyrocket after the phony climate charlatans take over in July.
If we are going to have a Liebour Government with a mega-majority in the HoC, then the opposition has to come from outside on the streets every weekend. We should start next Saturday, BEFORE the election, across the country.
I’m all for that, the Palestine protesters can’t always have the streets to themselves. Though Muslims do seem to be good at dominating public spaces.
Except you would struggle to get everyone in your street to agree to something never mind the whole country. ——-We are about to get what we deserve—An eco socialist pretend to save the planet government that will have smart meters forced into every house to control the supply and cost via dynamic pricing, gas central heating ripped out, taxes on everything based on carbon footprint, priced out of going on holiday or eating eat and astronomical energy bills. If we thought the Green nonsense was bad under the Tories then we “ain’t seen nuthin yet”
As an activist with Reform Uk who are the only party to scrap Net Zero We in our constituency have struggled to get sufficient activists to run a half decent campaign. Can anyone who claims to be worried about rising costs complain yet couldn’t be arsed to get off their butts to help us.
Most will still vote for this parasite political class pandering to the UN and WEF—Traitors
I watched the weather on the news at lunchtime and again in the evening yesterday. The max temperature over the next few days was forecast as 28c at lunch. By the end of the day they’d whacked up their prediction to 31c. Someone obviously said 28c didn’t sound alarmist enough.
Top temp in East Sussex this week, 25c for two days, the back down to 19c to 21c for two weeks.
Forecast today for Milan 24c and Turin 23c
Yes that’s right, a reasonable summer’s day in Southern England.
The red on the weather maps means Communism.
However the Beeboids ( those addicted to the BBC) lap it all up and believe the nonsense. Not only that, but they are bringing their children up to fear our normal mild and temperate climate and then wonder why the children are too fearful to go out into the World.
We are lied to on a daily basis. It’s become quite amusing.
I find this terribly unamusing. The climate changers have gone full-scale COVID a while ago and trying to run their racket on endlessly repeated lies and headlines from perfectly random parts of the world where something happening to suite the narrative is happening. The original attempt was quite successful. I hope the rerun will end up rather less so. But I don’t think this can be taken for granted.
But they are getting away with it
Since they’re controlling the MSM, there’s nobody who could effectively challenge them in public. OTOH, insofar stuff like FB comments go, they’re – at least in Germany – getting nothing but scorn for their claims about breaking heat record after heat record while the temperatures in the real world are rather cool for the time of the year and the weather was mostly rainy so far.
Correct and we all realise that the MSM is just the propaganda department (Public Relations as it is called now) of the Climate Industrial Complex
Met Office monthly anomaly now running at minus 1.2C – the first below “average” month this year. No doubt this will be yet another “warm” month after a few days of sunny weather!
” This might surprise, of course, since the Met Office uses these figures to catastrophise recent increases in national and global temperatures, using measurements down to one hundredth of a degree centigrade”
No it doesn’t surprise, it is the logical conclusion of their mendacity.
How, how, how has every government agency become so corrupt? I feel like we are living through the looking glass. The people who work for the government seem to have no shame about this corruption and lunacy. It is becoming the norm. Nothing can be trusted. Nothing.
I think there is a case for leaving London out of weather forecasts. The large urban heat sink, concrete and tarmac, contributes to an exaggerated temperature.
London is shown with the highest temperature almost every day, even though it it false.
Here’s what chat GPT says. Duh