Trans guidance for schools quietly dropped

NATIONAL transgender guidelines that would have forced girls’ schools to admit trans pupils have been quietly scrapped by the equalities watchdog amid fierce opposition from feminists.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) was to publish guidelines to help schools navigate the debate between biological sex and gender under the 2010 Equality Act.

Teachers across England, Scotland and Wales were expecting them soon, following three years of delays.

A draft copy said excluding male pupils from girls’ schools with an admissions policy based on sex at birth would be “indirectly discriminatory”. A girl who formally transitions to boy must be allowed to stay at the girls’ school, or this would be “direct gender reassignment discrimination”, it added.

Schools were told to install genderneutral lavatories and changing rooms where possible, including on residential trips, or let pupils use the facility that fits their gender identity.

In PE, a boy who feels they are a girl could not be excluded from girls’ sports lessons. Teachers were warned refusal to call trans pupils by their new names and pronouns could break the law.

Parents and academics said the plans showed “what a mess we create when we conflate sex and gender” and eroded biological sex. They have been ditched.

The EHRC said: “Considering the lack of definitive case law, it has become clear that publishing our guidance may not provide schools with the clarity we hoped. This would not be in the best interests of young people.”

Local authorities and the Crown Prosecution Service have produced their own trans guides over the past year, each backing gender-neutral facilities. But the CPS and Oxfordshire county council withdrew their guides after two teenage girls alleged privacy violations at the High Court.