The UK government’s latest relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) guidance calls on schools to be “mindful” that there is “significant debate” about transgender identities, and staff “should be careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”.
The Department for Education (DfE) finally published its long-awaited, updated statutory guidance on RSHE on Tuesday (15 July), as well as its response to the consultation held on proposed changes to it.
A statutory review of RSHE guidance was announced by the former Conservative government under Rishi Sunak in March 2023, after the DfE said it had received “disturbing” reports of “inappropriate material” being taught in some schools. Education secretary Gillian Keegan, who supported outing trans pupils to parents, said the review was needed to “make sure all children are protected from inappropriate content”.
The revised guidelines will come into force from 1 September 2026, replacing the previous guidance, and sets out the legal duties schools must comply with when teaching RSHE.
Within the 42-page document, points 67 to 72 – equal to around a page in length – outline guidance in relation to “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender content”.
The word “transgender” does not appear anywhere else in the document.
[…]
Pupils should be taught “the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment”, the updated guidance says, and they should “recognise that people have legal rights by virtue of their biological sex which are different from the rights of those of the opposite sex with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment”.They should also learn to recognise that people with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment, as with the other protected characteristics, have protection from discrimination and should be treated with respect and dignity.”
State schools should be “mindful” that “beyond the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment there is significant debate” and “should be careful not to endorse any particular view or teach it as fact”. The guidance goes on to give a specific example that schools should not “teach as fact that all people have a gender identity”.
It is also important to be “mindful to avoid any suggestion that social transition is a simple solution to feelings of distress or discomfort”, the guidance goes on to warn, and materials that could “encourage pupils to question their gender” should be avoided.
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Labour really went from repealing Section 28 to introducing a whole new one. How we've let this childish and anti-science notion that 'biological sex' is static become so pervasive is seriously depressing. Claiming someone's 'biological sex' is only ever the same as the one they had at birth is like insisting an adult only weighs 4 KG.
The Guardian in typical fashion quoted two trans hate groups who of course prefers the Tories even more anti-trans guidance.
Then there's this part, from section 68:
So a kid can't be trans, only gender questioning. Thanks Labour, really committing to your manifesto pledge to 'protecting the freedom for people to explore their sexual orientation and gender identity".
So your take on Labour moving away from a ban on teaching gender identity that we would have had and replacing it with a requirement not to "teach as fact that all people have a gender identity" which would be incorrect is that Labour is introducing a "Section 28"?
Children will now learn about how people experience gender and will be better able to understand what is going on if their, or their friends' experiences don't match their biology. Things are improving. Couching this guidance in terms of "facts" opens the policy up to evolution as research establishes more of the facts, and where this contradicts what a school is teaching, or what the guidance says in other areas, to challenge in court.
I don't know what you're getting at here. Do your chromosomes change as you get older? If you don't call it biological sex, what do you call the aspect of sex which does not change through life?
The classic Labour "we're not as bad as the others, so stop criticising us". These guidelines literally state that schools shouldn't teach kids facts because they're politically controversial.
These guidelines are step back, but I can't be arsed to type out an explanation so I'm just going to link the Katy Montgomerie video on this.
Biological sex is a really complicated and not at all like it's been made out to be, any definition of biological sex will have numerous exceptions that prevent it from being the simple end-of-debate definition anti-trans types want it to be. There's a reason the Supreme Court didn't bother to define it, just stating it's whatever was recorded on your birth certificate originally.
That's not what the linked article nor anything you have said says. What facts, or what is an example of a fact that can no longer be taught under the guidance? The claim that "everyone has a gender identity" is not a fact.
But it's not being used as an "end of debate definition" it's something that is mentioned as being part of the teaching requirements. And it being "complicated" (it's not actually that complicated - it's a simple binary with some rare exceptions. This kind of situation arises all over the place in life, especially in school, and can be dealt with in the same way) doesn't mean it changes through life - and you were objecting to it being seen as something static not something simple.
This part:
Imagine if the government held this view for any other issue where's there's a public debate, like the view that vaccines are a public health benefit is controversial these days, should schools avoid 'endorsing any particular view' on vaccines to avoid offending anti-vaxxers?
I'm curious what you think gender identity means here. You state that sex is binary 'with exceptions' and should be taught as such, but I imagine the number of people without a gender identity to be fairly small (I can't image there's that many agender people). Do you think cis people don't have a gender identity?
So not a binary. Male, female and exceptions makes three, not two. Intersex people make up an estimated 1.7% of the population, they deserve more than just to be a footnote. What harm does teaching kids that sex isn't binary, but bimodal, actually do?
There's more to biological sex than chromosomes, things like hormone levels, muscle mass, other secondary sexual characteristics play a part and aren't static. A trans woman who has taken oestrogen for a while will have a muscle mass akin to a cis woman's.
The government also hasn't actually said what it means by 'biological sex' anywhere, you're just assuming chromosomes because that's what you believe.
Is there significant public debate, in the absence of established facts, in the area of vaccine benefits?
No, and I don't know the numbers, but I do know it's not everyone. If the numbers are similar to the number of intersex people, then the way it is taught should be the same.
That figure includes men who have a urethral opening somewhere other than at the tip of the penis, and women with a mild overabundance of sex hormones which can cause hirsutism and male pattern baldness. It is beyond the realm of credibility to call such people exceptions to sexual dimorphism in humans; the actual figure is much less. It is promoted by intersex campaign groups who understandably want more recognition, but it's not reasonable.
Animals that are categorised as different species can mate and produce fertile offspring; what is stored in computers is an analogue quantity not a platonic binary; some substances display properties of both solids and liquids and the interface between substances can't be categorised as either. This doesn't mean the categorisations are useless or wrong, only that they have limitations.
I don't think anyone proposes that muscle mass be part of the concept of biological sex.
You started off by saying that referring to sex as static was ridiculous, but as far as I can tell, it's not ridiculous (in response you brought up something that no-one thinks is part of sex, and something which is not related to sex being static or changing) and not really part of this topic, so let's leave that part.