Cases of the youngest children socially transitioning should be “vanishingly rare” under proposed schools guidance, the expert who led the review into children’s gender healthcare has said.
Baroness Hilary Cass, whose review of NHS gender care for under-18s led to sweeping changes including a ban on puberty blockers, welcomed the draft published by the Department for Education but accepted it is impossible for it to be “completely foolproof”.
Former schools watchdog boss Baroness Amanda Spielman has warned the proposed guidance does not go far enough and could “drive wedges” between schools and parents in some cases while Conservative MP Laura Trott said it “opens the door to children as young as four being referred to in a way that does not reflect their biological sex”.
The proposed guidance, published late on Thursday just before Parliament went on half-term break, states that schools should consider avoiding “rigid rules based on gender stereotypes” and should take time to understand children’s feelings while being aware of “potential vulnerabilities” such as them facing bullying or needing mental health support.
If a child or their parent makes a request for them to socially transition, schools should take a “careful approach”, the guidance says, discussing it with families and taking account of any clinical advice that may have been received.
Schools should seek parents’ views, with only “rare circumstances where involving parents or carers would constitute a greater risk to the child than not involving them” cited.
Baroness Cass told the Press Association: “When I was doing my (NHS) review, the default seemed to be to not contact parents, whereas this (guidance) is saying that you should contact parents unless you really think there’s a significant risk to the child if you do so.
“So it has turned it completely the other way around. So I think there’ll be much less risk of the sorts of things that I was hearing of children being socially transitioned without their parents knowing as a routine.”
She welcomed the guidance being statutory and subject to consultation and review.
She told PA: “I think all of that is a step forward.
“I think it’s impossible to make this completely foolproof, as it were, because it’s complex. But I think, in as much as they (the department) can be clear, I think they have been.
“I think the other thing that’s good is the emphasis on it being really exceptional for a young child to be allowed to socially transition.
“That should be vanishingly rare, and not without, ideally, clinical advice, because that’s much more worrying if you have transition of a very young child.”
The updates, which have been put out for consultation for the next 10 weeks, have been proposed after the 2024 Cass Review and last year’s Supreme Court ruling on biological sex.
Setting out the approach to support children who are questioning their gender, it says that schools must maintain single-sex toilets based on biological sex for children over the age of eight, and in some sports where there are “safety reasons for single-sex PE”.
It also states that if a child does not want to use toilets or changing rooms for their designated biological sex, schools should consider whether they can provide an alternative.
Former Ofsted boss Baroness Amanda Spielman said the proposals are “not good enough for me”.
She told BBC Radio Four’s Today programme: “They (the guidelines) enable schools to act on what they perceive to be a solution, which may, in fact, be – the problem that the school is looking at – may be something that is part of a much bigger picture where parents and clinicians are discussing, thinking, acting responsibly in the child’s interests, and the school is substituting, with no clinical expertise, its view of what is in the child’s best interests.
“This could drive huge wedges between schools and parents in some of the most difficult cases.”
The newly proposed guidance is different to the draft guidance published under the Conservatives, which said primary school children should not be using pronouns different from their biological sex, and schools could decline requests from older children to change their pronouns.
The new draft guidance instead states that schools and colleges supporting social transition “might consider discussing options with pupils and staff such as using names instead of pronouns”.
Baroness Spielman said the guidance “doesn’t help schools or anybody who is uncomfortable about being compelled to use the language of preferred pronouns”.
She added: “This guidance appears to leave it open to schools to mandate that for teachers and for pupils, and I foresee that there will be many challenges to that.”
However unions have generally welcomed the draft guidance, saying it will provide “consistency” for schools on how to address their approach to gender-questioning children.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), said schools would only not refer to parents if they felt it was unsafe to do so.
Asked what schools should do if they believe a parent may be angry about their child wanting to transition, Mr Di’Iasio told Today: “Having angry parents is something that headteachers deal with on a day-to-day basis.
“And anger is not a reason not to tell a parent.”
A safeguarding risk is different from a parent being upset or anxious, he added.
However, Mr Di’Iasio said: “In a social way, I think there’ll be no problem with a choice of pronoun. This is about people getting on together in a school setting.”
The Stonewall charity said the final statutory guidance must reflect the experiences of young people questioning their gender, adding that “many in the LGBTQ+ community, especially trans people, are increasingly feeling their voices are not heard”.
Gender-critical campaigner Maya Forstater, from the organisation Sex Matters, welcomed a move to put guidance on a statutory footing, to ensure “schools have the same legal duties towards all children” but warned against a “dangerous fairy tale” of “allowing children and parents to think that a child who starts their education as a girl can graduate as a boy or vice versa”.
