Trans guidance for schools can’t come soon enough

The Department for Education has delayed yet further its long-awaited transgender guidance for schools. Rishi Sunak had pledged that the document would be in our hands ‘for the summer term’, but that looks increasingly like another broken promise.

I’m a teacher who also happens to be trans, so I have more than a passing interest. In schools across the country, my colleagues have been grappling with the thorny issue of what to do when a pupil announces that they are transgender.

The problems we face were highlighted by Policy Exchange earlier this year. The policies adopted by some schools are very worrying indeed. The think tank’s report, Asleep at the Wheel, An examination of Gender and Safeguarding in Schools, uncovered some shocking findings. Most notably they say that only 28 per cent of the secondary schools surveyed were ‘reliably informing parents as soon as a child discloses feelings of gender distress.’