Mick Hartley

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has updated its Technical Guidance for Schools. The new guidance is a great improvement on the old, writes Stephanie Davies-Arai in The Critic, cutting much of the ideological waffle – but more needs to be done.

In line with the new EHRC Technical Guidance for Schools, the government must separate ideology from the law and be clear about which is which. Concepts and terms that fall under the banner of ideology include: gender identity, gender affirmation, misgendering, transgender child, cisgender, non-binary, preferred pronouns, deadnaming, gender assigned at birth. None of these concepts appear in the Equality Act….

In order to produce transgender schools guidance that is fit for purpose, there must be clarity on these two points: legislation is not ideology, and child safeguarding always comes first. To spell it out: “affirming a child’s gender identity” is ideology, not law. Social transition of one child is adultification not just of that child but of all children in the school, a complete failure of safeguarding.

The new EHRC Technical Guidance for Schools represents a first step in moving from ideology back to what the law actually says. The Government’s responsibility now is to take this guidance and apply it according to well-established principles of child safeguarding. It should be abundantly clear that allowing “gender affirmation” or social transition in schools would be a massive failure to fulfil this responsibility.