Updated school model policy: send to your child’s school

The updated version of Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE), which comes into force across England at the start of the autumn term, is a big step forward, even though it is not perfect. 

It says that “schools and colleges should consider whether pupils would be best supported by a policy on social transition which explains the steps that a school or college will go through when a child requests support.” School governors and leadership teams will therefore be thinking about what policy to adopt, in line with the guidance, over the summer holidays and at the start of the autumn term. 

But the most important aspect of the new guidance is extremely positive: it places significant constraints on what a school can accommodate in response to a family’s or child’s idea of “social transition”. It does this by placing for the first time, three vital principles within the statutory safeguarding framework:

1. All children’s sex must be recorded accurately in every situation throughout their school career.
2. All relevant staff must be aware of every child’s sex.
3. Schools must never allow any child to use toilets or changing rooms for the opposite sex. 

Taken together, these three principles mean that schools will need to refer to all children by their sex routinely. Since KCSIE constitutes part of the statutory framework within which Ofsted operates, any policy that contradicts these principles is likely to come up during school inspections, either because the inspector spots the infraction or because parents bring it to the inspector’s attention.

However, the guidance still suggests schools respond to requests to accommodate “social transition” by working through complex legal justification exercises on a case-by-case basis. Its biggest flaw is that it suggests “full social transition” (which it doesn’t define) may be undertaken by a school, albeit “very rarely”. 

The model policy is designed to help schools set clear expectations for all pupils, families and staff, and to explain the legal constraints which mean they cannot accommodate requests to be treated as the opposite sex. School and college leaders who follow it can feel confident that their policies are in line with KCSIE and do not subject any children to unlawful direct or indirect discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.

If you are a school governor, work in a school or have a child in school in England, you can send our model policy to the senior leadership team and share it with the governing body. It is published under a creative commons licence, which means that they are free to adopt it and adapt it as they wish.