General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders in England and Wales Geoff Barton Monday called for clearer guidance on how teachers can support trans-identifying pupils in schools. Despite attempts to be sensitive to the issue, Barton noted strong public opinion makes the task difficult. Barton highlighted the release of a paper by the right-wing think-tank group Policy Exchange as increasing the difficulties facing schools.
The paper based on freedom of information requests sent out to 24,000 schools in England and Wales found that a number of secondary schools were not informing parents when their child was questioning their gender identity. Schools were asked a series of questions about their policies on issues ranging from whether schools would disclose to parents as soon as a pupil “comes out” as transgender or questions their gender, to whether children should play in sports teams that don’t match their sex registered at birth. Only 154 of 304 schools responded, and not all of the schools responded to all of the questions asked. The paper found that only 39 of the schools “reliably” informed parents when pupils identified as trans or questioned their gender.
Former Secretary of State for Education Rt Hon Nadim Zahawi MP stated in the report that the Policy Exchange report makes an “important contribution to the growing body of evidence demonstrating that urgent attention needs to be paid to the ways children are being impacted by gender identity beliefs,” while Nick Fletcher MP noted, “a systemic safeguarding blind spot when it comes to gender-distressed children and their peers.” Co-Patron of Policy Exchange’s Biology Matters Project, Rosie Duffield MP stated in the foreward of the report, “it appears the system is rotten to the core.” Duffield concluded that Parliament and society at large “must end this reckless experiment now.” Writing in The Times, Duffield stated that “Schools are failing in their duty to protect gender-distressed children.”
