Schools trans guidance to be published by Christmas

Schools will receive guidance on transgender pupils by Christmas, but it could be spring before the rules come into force.

Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, pledged to release the guidance before the end of the year after schools said they were crying out for help on how to deal with a growing number of children questioning their gender. 

But even if it reaches teachers before December 25, Ms Keegan has said it will be subject to a “long consultation” before it is finalised. 

During a visit to an artificial intelligence consultancy firm in London on Tuesday, she said: “We will get it out before Christmas. And then we’ll have a long consultation because I don’t want teachers to spend their Christmas worrying about it as much as I’ve spent most of the year worried about it.”

The standard timeframe for a Government consultation is 12 weeks. This would mean the guidance - which is expected to tell schools that they can stop children entering opposite-sex toilets and prevent them from joining opposite-sex sports teams - would not reach classrooms until early March. 

The Government has been promising guidance on trans pupils since 2018.

MPs have warned that without official guidance, schools have been forced to seek advice from third-party providers, which have arguably promoted radical gender ideology in classrooms.

A report by the Policy Exchange think tank published in March found that schools were routinely affirming allowing pupils to change their gender identity without informing parents.

Teachers in one school in Brighton have punished pupils for using the wrong pronouns, a campaign group set up by worried parents has claimed.

Deadline missed on guidance pledge

Rishi Sunak pledged to deliver the guidance by the end of the summer term but missed his own deadline amid a Cabinet disagreement over whether a law change is needed to ban children from changing their gender pronouns at school.

It is understood that Downing Street has decided it doesn’t need to amend equality legislation to bring forward the guidance.

Mrs Keegan said: “I know it’s much awaited, and I know everybody’s very keen to get it”

She added: “It’s a very tricky area. It is difficult. It is a consultation because we’re sure there’ll be lots of opinions around this as well.”

Tanya Carter, a spokesperson for Safe Schools Alliance, said: “We cannot understand why it’s taking so long to clearly instruct schools to follow existing safeguarding frameworks, and to sanction those who fail to do so.

“Single-sex spaces and working together with parents are both long established safeguarding principles in this country, and we do not know why they have been abandoned at the behest of political lobbyists.”