Since December 2023, trans schoolchildren have been in a strange limbo. The government has published but not formally adopted guidance mandating policies that are ostensibly intended to uphold child safety, but appear designed to compound the many issues children already face in schools across the UK.
Three documents (two of which will have statutory weight if adopted) pushing for a rollback of the rights of trans children sit on the government’s website alongside current statutory guidance that contradicts their recommendations in the strongest terms.
Bridget Phillipson has been asked if the Labour government intends to adopt these pieces of guidance on sex education, child safety, and “gender questioning children” several times, but has always dodged these questions, saying she is waiting for the results of the consultations around the guidance on sex education and accommodating trans children.
Further complicating matters, the broader statutory child safety guidance is already in force, but the section recommending schools out trans children to their parents remains in draft form in the same document, pending the publication of the consultation on accommodating trans children, which alongside the consultation on relationships, sex and health education should be published this year (though originally was set to be published last year).
While the year of uncertainty has no-doubt been interminable for trans pupils and their supportive families, it has not been long enough for academic literature to emerge on the effects of the presence of these documents on the government website. While I have heard isolated cases of schools insisting they need to follow the guidance – either mistakenly or disingenuously – I am also aware of schools that continue to make efforts to accommodate trans pupils in line with the previous guidance.
It is impossible to know how widespread adoption of the proposed guidance across schools has been and the impacts this has had on trans kids around the country, but by examining its recommendations and the existing literature on what interventions are beneficial to trans schoolchildren, we can understand its potential to do harm if formally adopted, as well as the harm it is already doing in schools that have chosen to follow it.
Schools have long been, and remain, a space in which anti-trans and anti-queer bullying is extremely common. 2017 research from Stonewall found that two thirds of trans pupils were bullied for being LGBTQ+ at school, with one in eight being physically bullied and one in ten receiving death threats.
At the same time, trans schoolchildren often felt invisible in the curriculum. At the time of Stonewall’s research, less than a quarter of LGBTQ+ pupils said they had been taught about gender identity at school, and almost two in five had never been taught anything about LGBTQ+ people or identities.
Most trans pupils did not have access to their preferred toilets or PE changing facilities – which was also still the case for some cisgender LGB children.
This kind of environment has a profound effect on the mental health of all LGBTQ+ pupils, but trans pupils most of all. Five out of every six trans pupils had self-harmed, and forty-five per cent had attempted suicide.
Since the publication of the Stonewall report, it has become compulsory to teach about LGBTQ+ identities in relationships, sex and health education. However, that doesn’t mean all schools provide comprehensive and well-integrated instruction about LGBTQ+ people, and in particular it seems possible for primary schools to exempt themselves from this requirement entirely if they have consulted with parents.
Studies indicate that trans pupils continue to face a range of challenges at school, with many of them caused by school policies as well as their treatment by other children.
Schools are often willing to let transphobic bullying slide, and trans children notice a difference in how it is handled relative to bullying based on other protected characteristics. Misgendering and deadnaming are common, and at times teachers engage in these practices, which pupils find particularly threatening as they do not feel equipped to stand up for themselves, and it models bullying behaviour to their classmates.
Trans children, especially those in primary school who are unlikely to have out cisgender LGB peers, often feel both isolated and singled out by their school environments. Even in the absence of verbal bullying, trans children face social exclusion, with some parents of trans kids speculating that other parents have warned their children to stay away. The loneliness that naturally results from this is poorly addressed by existing LGBTQ+ infrastructure, where most youth groups begin from age thirteen.
The effects of this overall climate are profound. One study of thirty families with trans kids found that a third of the children had missed over a year of school, moved schools or dropped out of mainstream education altogether because school was not a physically or emotionally safe environment for them.
While this is not a representative sample, a larger 2022 study of Scottish LGBTQ+ youth found that 13% of respondants had left education as a result of anti-LGBT bigotry, up from 9% in 2017. A specific figure for trans young people is not mentioned, but it is reasonable to assume it would be higher.
Teachers on the whole appear keen to tackle anti-LGBT bullying, and to teach required information, but may not be proactive about going above the bare minimum.
Studies suggest that isolated interventions have limited benefit and creating a trans-inclusive education environment requires a “whole school approach”. This means that school leadership is united in promoting inclusion throughout the curriculum, tackling bullying and exclusion, and accommodating the needs of trans pupils.
In the absence of that, interventions can read as performative – like LGBTQ+ themed posters – or have unintended consequences, for example an LGBTQ+ club that pupils do not feel safe to attend because bullying has not been adequately addressed.
Many teachers still have not had any training on LGBTQ+ identities, and many schools lack resources to initiate this training, or choose to allocate limited resources elsewhere.
There is also active pushback against LGBTQ+ inclusion. Some school leaders, who are often older, may still hold ingrained attitudes from teaching under Section 28 – e.g. questioning whether it is appropriate for a lesbian teacher to mention her wife to pupils, or believing that LGBTQ+ identities are inherently sexual and thus inappropriate to teach about at primary school.
There is also evidence that adults sometimes use the idea of “age-appropriateness”, to cover for their own prejudice or discomfort. The real or perceived threat of parent backlash is also a barrier to implementing inclusive policies, as is teacher ignorance about the degree of mistreatment some of their queer and trans pupils may be facing.
Teachers who work in schools that have implemented a whole-school approach view collaboration and steadfastness as key to their successes. A study of teachers in these environments reported parental objections were the most common form of pushback, followed by objections from other staff members who insisted there was no problem and thus no need to address it, and the local diocese.
One primary school teacher reported that parental objections abated once it became clear the school was transparent about what children were learning, and could not cave to threats.
I only found one qualitative study conducted recently enough for subjects to make comments about the new school guidance, and no studies on the effects of the guidance itself, but their comments were concerning. Teachers reported that interventions from the Department for Education and Equality and Human Rights Commission heightened fears of parental backlash and made school leaders more reluctant to be seen as publicly supporting trans-inclusive initiatives.
Given the factors known to protect LGBTQ+ youth from bullying, mistreatment and associated mental ill health, it is reasonable to be concerned that the guidance will remove access to these things.
Several studies discuss the benefits of LGBTQ+ clubs, particularly if they are student led, but the RSHE guidance, if adopted, could easily be used to monitor, censor and shut down these clubs if they try to share information about trans lives.
Additionally, if the trans section of the statutory guidance on keeping children safe in school is formally adopted, teachers would be required to out trans children to their parents in all circumstances unless they can demonstrate significant risks of doing so; the guidance does not define these risks, and stresses these circumstances will be “exceptionally rare”, despite over forty per cent of trans people experiencing abuse from relatives.
This is likely to make trans children wary of coming out to teachers, even those who are sympathetic, and may also make queer, and especially trans, teachers more wary of openly displaying their authentic selves to pupils.
Though the guidance on “gender-questioning children” does not have legal weight, it is nonetheless likely to influence how many schools treat their trans pupils with potentially disastrous consequences.
It recommends that pronoun and (gender-based) name changes should not be permitted in primary schools and should only be allowed with parental and clinical input, meaning that in schools that adopt it teachers may be forced to continually misgender and deadname their pupils, which we know they find even more distressing than misgendering and deadnaming from fellow pupils.
It also allows for strict gender enforcement in uniforms (in schools where uniforms are gendered), which can in some schools include regulations about haircuts. The provision of toilets and P.E. changing rooms – common sites of bullying for trans pupils – is also expected to be based on assigned sex; alternative provision is at the school’s discretion, but a trans boy would not – in a school that adopts this guidance – be allowed to change with his male peers.
All these interventions, if adopted, will signal to other pupils that they do not have to respect the identities of their trans classmates, and studies suggest that cultures of bullying thrive in environments where teachers engage in, ignore or dismiss homophobic, biphobic and transphobic behaviour.
Currently, even in environments where a whole-school approach is not possible, individual teachers, particularly out LGBTQ+ teachers, are able offer support that trans pupils find invaluable. Being a visibly queer – or especially trans – teacher at school gives trans pupils a person they know they can go to for advice and support, as does individual teachers actively incorporating trans stories into the subjects they teach: not just in RSHE, but also in History, English, Biology, and others.
Yet the statutory guidance will significantly impede both of these interventions, and the non-statutory guidance will – in schools that adopt it – functionally promote bullying.
In summary, the guidance reads as if its authors were not simply unaware of the academic literature about anti-trans school environments, but chose to promote interventions that would cut off access to mitigating interventions. Bridget Phillipson must be continually pushed to answer for her silence and lack of intervention on this issue before the guidance can be quietly implemented some time this year.