The Christian Institute's head of education, John Denning, responds to the publication of the government's draft transgender guidance for schools.
This long-awaited draft guidance for schools on gender-questioning children is a significant step in the right direction.
No child is born in the wrong body. Schools should not teach them they can be, or treat them as if they are. Just as medical professionals must 'first do no harm', so education professionals must 'first tell no lies'.
When girls think they are really boys, or boys think they are really girls, the only kind response is to help them to be reconciled to the truth about their bodies.
To affirm their confusion is to encourage them to reject their bodies and embark on what can be a deeply harmful course of action, leading in some cases to permanent and profound damage to their bodies and their future lives and relationships. It affects not only them as individuals but also other pupils.
We are regularly contacted by teachers under huge pressure to affirm a falsehood and insist to other children, sometimes as young as four, that another child is a girl when they are really a boy.
This guidance finally dispels the dangerous myth that schools must always accommodate social transition, should hide a child's gender confusion from their parents, or allow girls' changing rooms to be accessible to boys, or vice-versa.
Teachers and pupils alike will welcome the protections against compelled speech. But while the guidance is welcome, its effectiveness will only be seen in how robustly it is implemented.
Ofsted, which has in the past championed transgender ideology, now needs to ensure activists no longer get away with encouraging gender confusion.
Support from the DfE has been notably absent for those who have tried to push back against gender ideology in the past.
Legal action was needed to restore a parent governor to her role after she was dismissed for raising concerns with the trans-affirming sex ed policy at her children's primary school. She is still awaiting the DfE's response to her complaint submitted in June 2022.
