Trans Guidance For UK Schools Delayed Until Next Year
December 8, 2022UK government guidance to help teachers deal with the growing number of children identifying as trans has been delayed.
The Department for Education was due to publish draft guidance before the end of this year, helping schools with questions over toilets, changing facilities, uniforms, and sports teams.
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But education Secretary Gillian Keegan said, according to Yahoo! News, it will not be published until “early next year” and admitted “I haven’t seen any of it yet.”
Ms. Keegan, who became the fifth education secretary in the past year after being appointed in October, told MPs on the education committee: “We completely understand the issue, the urgency, the sensitivity, the concern from parents and the concern that some teachers are also raising.”
She refused to give a date for when the guidance will be published.
Ms Keegan said she will step her way through the issue with a “big dose of common sense and transparency.”
She admitted that people are “frightened to go on Twitter” to discuss it “because we have seen very, very public, very high profile people become targeted because of their views on either side of that debate.”
She added: “The most important thing is we retain the ability to have a sensible debate. That’s really important.”
The Department for Education has been criticized after claims it is a “free for all” in schools with some children being taught that “sex is a spectrum” and fearing being called bigots if they disagree. There have been calls for clearer guidance amid concerns that schools are making decisions that leave some girls without single sex toilets, changing rooms, and sports teams.
Conservative MP Anna Firth pushed for the guidance to be published urgently, saying it is “clearly critical and needed.”
Conservative MP Caroline Ansell warned that said some teachers are so concerned at what they are being asked to teach that they are calling in sick to avoid having to “deliver curriculum materials that they think are quite damaging.”
She added she spoke to one grandad who was “utterly dismayed” when his five year old grandson came home and said “today we were learning if we are in the wrong body.”
Ms. Ansell said: “The grandad said he wouldn’t dare raise this as a concern because otherwise he would be deemed to be transphobic. […] I understand there is new guidance coming to help schools in this, but all the while, week by week, term by term, schools are still trying to navigate this terrain.”
Nadhim Zahawi, the former education secretary, had been working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to produce guidance for teachers. A draft had been expected to be published this autumn. That date was then pushed back to the end of this year.
Officials are believed to be considering telling schools to allow trans children to wear the uniform of their choice, provide gender neutral lavatories, but stick to single-sex sport.
Conservative MP Nick Fletcher said parents “need to know they can ask what is being taught at school and where they can go if they don’t get any help from school.”
Read related myGwork articles here:
Teachers Need Clear Guidance About How To Deal With Trans Children, Nadhim Zahawi Says
Leaked EHRC Guidance Reveals Plans To Exclude Most Trans People From Bathrooms
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