Schools minister says ‘we do need to talk about world as it is’ on trans rights

Schools Minister Robin Walker has said schools must teach LGBT content and that there are no plans to “rule out” teaching about trans issues.

He told the Commons’ Education Committee: “We do need to talk about the world as it is”, adding that trans people were a protected group under the Equality Act who needed support.

Conservative MP Miriam Cates asked why worked examples around the teaching of gender ideology had not been included in recent guidance to schools on political impartiality.

“I very much welcome the new political guidance that’s been put out to schools. I completely agree – we should let children be children; we shouldn’t be pushing adult political agendas in schools,” she said.

She added that in the guidance there were 19 worked examples of issues around impartiality that could occur in schools about racism, different political systems, environmentalism and other topical issues.

But she added that what was “conspicuous by its absence” was any example relating to the teaching of gender ideology, “by which I mean schools teaching against guidance that there are more than two sexes, that you can change sex, that if you are gender non-conforming it might mean that you are the opposite sex to what you are biologically”.

She said that anecdotally, parents had written to her expressing concern that “schools are transitioning pupils without their parents’ knowledge” and that this included pupils who might be gay and lesbian, or on the autism spectrum.

She asked if the guidance could be updated to reflect this, and whether the Department for Education would investigate these reports.

Schools minister Robin Walker said: “The first thing I’d say is that schools should not be teaching ideology, regardless of in what space that is, and I think we’re pretty clear about that in the political impartiality guidance.

“We want schools to be able to support pupils, including the small number of pupils who may have gender identity issues and may need support in that respect, and it’s important that if they approach members of staff they can be signposted to the right advice and support,” he added.

He said that issues around sex and gender had to be taught in an “age-appropriate way” and that there were some “really complex legal issues to do with the Equality Act in this space”.

The Government was working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) to explore this, he said.

“I think it’s important that we balance responsibility to protected characteristics of sex with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, which is also protected under the Equality Act, and we make sure that we address the concerns that parents may have in this space,” he said.

Responding to Ms Cates’ view that DfE guidance was clear “you can’t tell children you can change sex”, he said: “You said you’re not supposed to tell pupils that they can change sex – of course, you can do that, because you are supposed to teach LGBT content. You should not teach them that they should change sex.”

He later clarified that he had used “sex” and “gender” interchangeably but added: “We do need to talk about the world as it is.”

“We need to talk about the fact that people do transition and that there are trans people, and we should support them as a protected group under the Equality Act. We’re not going to rule out people teaching about that,” he said.

He added that the DfE should be “making sure it’s taught in an appropriate way and making sure it’s not encouraging something which would be medically difficult and could have implications for people’s mental health”.

MP Tom Hunt said that it appeared that the guidance may not have “sufficient teeth” to make a difference, referring to the recent downgrading by Ofsted of the American School in London for its focus on “social justice” in its teaching.

He asked whether Ofsted would make similar judgments when it came to state schools.

Mr Walker said Ofsted was a separate entity but that the Government had published the guidance “for a reason” and that he believed most schools did not want to tell their pupils what to think or go into “politically contentious territory”.

Labour MP Kim Johnson described the new guidance as “unnecessary” as schools had already been aware of their responsibility to be impartial.

Elsewhere in the session, Mr Walker said that the low uptake of the National Tutoring Programme through the tuition partners route could be due to staff absence.

“I recognise that particularly during the first half of this term, many schools were probably under too much pressure from staff absence in order to be able to engage with a programme like this to the extent we might like them to have done.”

Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons’ Education Committee, said that the high levels of satisfaction with the programme reported by schools was akin to “truck production in the Soviet Union” given how unevenly spread tuition uptake was across the country.