Education Secretary Gillian Keegan appeared before the Education Select Committee (James Manning/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)Government guidance to help teachers deal with the growing number of children identifying as transgender has been delayed.
The Department for Education had been due to publish draft guidance before the end of this year to help schools that are grappling with questions over which toilets, changing facilities, uniforms and sports teams transgender students use.
But education Secretary Gillian Keegan said it will not be published until “early next year” and admitted “I haven’t seen any of it yet.”
Ms Keegan, who became the fifth education secretary in the past year after being appointed in October, told MPs on the education committee: “We completely understand the issue, the urgency, the sensitivity, the concern from parents and the concern that some teachers are also raising.” But she refused to give a date for when the guidance will be published.
The Department for Education has come under fire for allowing what critics have claimed is a “free for all” in schools with some children being taught that “sex is a spectrum” and fearing being called bigots if they disagree.
There have been calls for clear guidance on the issue amid concerns that schools are making ad hoc decisions leaving some girls without single sex toilets, changing rooms and sports teams.
Susan Acland-Hood, permanent secretary at the Department for Education, told MPs that a consultation on the draft guidance could begin “early next year” but she added she is “acutely conscious that we have a new set of ministers” and she wants to give them “a little bit of space to make sure they really have time to look at it and think about it.”
Conservative MP Anna Firth pushed for the guidance to be published urgently, saying it is “clearly critical and needed.”
Conservative MP Caroline Ansell warned that said some teachers are so concerned at what they are being asked to teach that they are calling in sick to avoid having to “deliver curriculum materials that they think are quite damaging.”
She added she spoke to one grandad who was “utterly dismayed” when his five year old grandson came home and said “today we were learning if we are in the wrong body.”
Ms Ansell said: “The grandad said he wouldn’t dare raise this as a concern because otherwise he would be deemed to be transphobic.”
Speaking about the forthcoming guidance, Ms Ansell said: “I understand there is new guidance coming to help schools in this, but all the while, week by week, term by term, schools are still trying to navigate this terrain.”
Former education secretary Nadhim Zahawi had been working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to produce guidance to help teachers and a draft had been expected to be published this autumn. That date was then pushed back to the end of this year.
Officials are believed to be considering telling schools to allow trans children to wear the uniform of their choice, provide gender neutral lavatories but stick to single-sex sport.
Ms Keegan said she will step her way through the issue with a “big dose of common sense and transparency.”
She admitted that people are “frightened to go on Twitter” to discuss it “because we have seen very, very public, very high profile people become targeted because of their views on either side of that debate.”
She added: “The most important thing is we retain the ability to have a sensible debate. That’s really important.”
Conservative MP Nick Fletcher said parents “need to know they can ask what is being taught at school and where they can go if they don’t get any help from school.”
Ms Keegan added: “It’s very important parents should know what their children are being taught in school. There was no need for transgender guidance when we went to school. We have to deal with the world as it is.”
