Prime Highlights:
- New DfE guidance allows primary school pupils who question their gender to use different pronouns, while emphasizing caution and wellbeing.
- Schools must work with parents and seek clinical advice for social transition requests, ensuring children are safe and supported.
Key Facts:
- Guidance is statutory, meaning schools are required to follow it, and it will be reviewed every year.
- Mixed-sex spaces and activities, including toilets, changing rooms, school trips, and sports, remain separate after age eight to keep children safe.
Background:
The Department for Education (DfE) has released long-awaited guidance allowing primary school pupils who question their gender to use different pronouns, while stressing that social transitions should be handled with caution. The guidance, which is now open for consultation, will be statutory, meaning schools must follow it.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said the guidance aims to give practical support for teachers, reassure parents, and ensure the safety and well-being of children. “Parents send their children to school trusting they’ll be protected. That’s not negotiable,” she said.
The guidance advises that schools should not make unilateral changes to a child’s name or pronouns. Any social transition must involve parental input and clinical advice. It also notes that social transitions in primary schools are expected to happen very rarely. Teachers should act carefully and always put the child’s well-being first.
Schools must tell parents if a child requests a social transition, unless there is a safety risk. They should also consider any health or learning needs. Mixed-sex spaces and activities, like toilets, changing rooms, school trips, and sports, should stay separate after age eight, and every child must feel safe.
The recommendations draw on the 2024 Cass review into gender transitioning in children and follow last year’s Supreme Court ruling on single-sex spaces. Education unions welcomed the guidance. Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said clear guidance was needed amid a polarized debate. Paul Whiteman, general secretary of NAHT, called it a “long-overdue” clarification.
Some critics, including the Conservative shadow education secretary Laura Trott, said the guidance weakens parental control and could lead to very young children being referred to in ways that do not match their biological sex.
The DfE plans to review the guidance annually to ensure schools can continue supporting gender-questioning pupils safely and appropriately.
