UK Edition
Parents who won't let their son wear a skirt may have to be referred to social services, schools advised
Parents who refuse to let their son wear a skirt to school may need to be referred to social services, a council’s guidance has advised schools.
Mothers and fathers who dismiss a “gender questioning” child’s requests to change their name could also be a trigger for concern, according to Brighton and Hove City Council’s “Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit”.
The guidance advises teachers on how to handle a number of different scenarios, including if parents say: “I refuse to allow my son to change his name or wear skirts”.
Schools are advised that some parents may “struggle” to accept their child’s gender identity and it may be a long time before they accept the change.
“If a setting has a significant concern about the child’s wellbeing and or safety in relation to how the parents or carers are managing the exploration of the child’s gender identity it may be necessary and advisable to follow safeguarding procedures,” schools are told.
The Department for Education (DfE)’s statutory guidance on safeguarding says that staff with concerns about a child must alert the school’s safeguarding lead, and if necessary contact social services or the police.
Another scenario outlined in Brighton and Hove City Council’s guidance document is parents who contact the school to ask: “My daughter doesn’t want a boy changing next to her, what if he looks at her body?”
It explains that in such a case, “it would not be appropriate to remove the trans pupil from the changing rooms”.
Instead, the school should focus on increasing their “training and awareness raising” to ensure that all pupils understand that a transgender girls is a “real girl”.
The guidance document, now in its third edition, was produced by Allsorts Youth Project, a charity that supports young people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Queer (LGBTQ).
It advises that in “all cases”, transgender pupils should be allowed to use the changing room that corresponds to their gender identity, rather than their biological sex.
This means that any boy who identifies as a female should be allowed to use girls’ changing rooms, even if it makes other girls feel “uncomfortable”.
“It is important to ensure that these are safe environments for all by challenging underlying attitudes and bullying behaviours,” the guidance says.
A spokesman from Brighton and Hove Council said the version of the toolkit, which is published online on the Allsorts Youth Project’s website, is undergoing final checks before being sent out to schools.
The teacher, who claimed they were a “grammatical purist”, refused to acknowledge that the pupil self-identified as a boy and failed to use the pupil’s preferred pronouns of “he” or “him”.