The government is considering issuing new guidance to single-sex schools in England saying that they aren’t legally obliged to admit transgender pupils.
New advice is being drawn up by Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch.
It will cover the legal position of single-sex schools in relation to admission decisions, as well as how teachers should respond to children who are questioning their gender identity.
The guidance, first reported on by The Telegraph, is expected to say schools will not be breaching the Equality Act if they refuse to admit transgender pupils.
This will mean an all-girls’ school could reject applications from pupils who identify as female but whose legal sex is male, and vice versa for boys’ schools.
School leaders will also be told they will be allowed to refuse to use a pupils’ preferred pronoun, reports suggest.
There is no suggestion that a child who is questioning their gender identity would be forced to leave a single-sex school however.
A Department for Education source told The Telegraph: “Single-sex schools can refuse to admit pupils of the other legal sex regardless of whether the child is questioning their gender.”
It comes after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised new guidance for schools on gender issues before the summer term in the wake of a “concerning” report.
A recent paper by a centre-right thinktank Policy Exchange found some schools were not informing parents when children expressed a wish to change gender, and that some schools do not maintain single-sex toilets or changing rooms.
The report said safeguarding norms “are being compromised across the country”.
The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) said schools are being “caught in the crossfire between opposing views and beliefs” and new guidance is “clearly needed”.
Last year, a row broke out when The Girls’ Day School Trust, which runs 25 schools in England and Wales, said it will only be admitting pupils based on their “legal sex” rather than their gender identity.
Labour MP Nadia Whittome said at the time that the move was wrong and potentially unlawful.
Schools say a lack of advice has left them in a minefield.
The new guidance comes as the government also deliberates changing the Equality Act to allow transgender women to be barred from some single sex-spaces.
Ms Badenoch is considering changing the legal definition of sex to “biological”, in a move that has been backed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) but condemned by LGBT+ charity Stonewall.
