Mick Hartley

A slightly misleading headline here…Trans pupils are turned down by girls’ schools as threat to status. No, it doesn't mean that some snooty girls' schools are worried that trans pupils might lower the tone. They're simply making sure that they remain girls' schools:

A leading group of girls’ schools is to close its doors on boys who identify as girls to protect their status as single-sex institutions.

Girls’ Day School Trust (GDST), which represents 25 schools across England, has updated its gender identity policy. Previously, most girls’ schools had been unclear in their admissions policies about whether they would accept transgender pupils.

While many have pupils at the school who have changed their gender identity, asking to be treated as male or non-binary, they had avoided explicitly stating whether they would admit biological boys who identify as girls.

GDST, which includes Wimbledon High School, Royal High School Bath, Oxford High School and Newcastle High School for Girls, says in its new policy: “GDST is committed to single-sex education for girls. Admissions to GDST schools are based on the prospective student’s legal sex as recorded on their birth certificate.”

Quite right too.

The trust says of children who are legally male but identify as trans or nonbinary: “GDST schools are able to operate a single-sex admissions policy, without breaching the Equality Act 2010 on the basis of an exemption relating to biological sex. GDST believes that an admissions policy based on gender identity rather than the legal sex recorded on a student’s birth certificate would jeopardise the status of GDST schools as single-sex schools under the act.

“For this reason, GDST schools do not accept applications from students who are legally male. We will, however, continue to monitor the legal interpretation of this exemption.”

Debbie Hayton clarifies:

As the law stands, children in the UK cannot acquire a Gender Recognition Certificate which means they cannot change their legal sex. So that means that there is no question about girls’ schools excluding girls who choose to identify as boys: they are still female legally as well as biologically. Trans-identified girls are not being turned down.

The group being excluded are boys who identify as girls, but not because of their gender identity. One only needs to look as far as the Equality Act 2010, which allows single-sex schools to “refuse to admit pupils of the opposite sex” [my emphasis]. Those boys remain legally male and therefore ineligible….

But while that might be the real law, for too long the trans lobby has been promoting Stonewall Law — “the law as Stonewall would prefer it to be” — in the words of barrister Akua Reindorf, recently appointed as an EHRC commissioner.

No doubt the lobby will be upset by the GDST policy, but schools must not be misled by them. In the recent past Stonewall Law has been introduced into too many organisations without apparent challenge. But this stand by the GDST is one more sign that things might be changing and both the real law and common sense might be returning. For that they should be applauded.

Another step in the farewell to Stonewall Law, then.