Teachers Will Have to Notify Parents if ‘Children Want to Change Their Gender’

Thousands of people take part in a London Trans+ Pride march on 8 July 2023 in London, Uni
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Oliver JJ Lane

Parents “can be reassured” that the UK government is going to bring clarity to transgender in schools, with the equalities secretary Kemi Badenoch saying ” it is important that parents are aware of what’s going on with their children”.

Kemi Badenoch, the UK Minister for Women and Equalities who last year was a serious contender to become Prime Minister with support from the conservative right of the Conservative Party before the globalist-centrist wing of the party took back control, has trailered forthcoming changes to guidance for UK schools on transgender issues. Speaking to BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg Badenoch said she wouldn’t be drawn on specifics, but nevertheless appeared to answer “yes” when asked whether “teachers [should] have to tell parents if children want to change their gender”.

Dancing around the point, Badenoch said the government was producing new guidance for schools “to know how to deal with children who are experiencing gender distress” and to reduce confusion which, it is reported, may be published this week. Further, she said while she wouldn’t give details, “what you can let your viewers know, what they can be reassured of, is that we are doing everything we can to bring clarity”.

Delivering the key point — which prompted Kuenssberg to challenge Badenoch to accept the government would be directing schools to “out” transgender children to their parents — the minister said: “it is important that parents are aware of what’s going on with their children, and what’s happening to them at school.”

Responding to the BBC presenter’s accusation, Badenoch said it was important not to trivialise the parent-child relationship, remarking: “The fact is that this is not a trivial thing, this is very different from sexual orientation, and what is right is that parents know what is going on with their children at school. It is not for teachers to parent, it is for parents to parent”.

Pink News also took up the BBC’s interpretation, reporting the interview was a “chilling hint that UK government will force teachers to out trans kids to parents”, and amplified the concerns of “many social media users” to underline the view that “parents don’t always know best”.

These remarks follow reports earlier this year on the new guidance as it was being developed, including in April when parents having a right to know what is happening to their children at school was made public, as well as a block on transgender pupils being blocked from participation in contact sports.

The call for clarity in schools by Badenoch may be a response to the wildly divergent standards employed in different schools across the country, perhaps reflecting a response by institutions to a lack of official guidance and trying to find their own way. Per a report this year based on freedom of information requests to hundreds of secondary schools, nearly half of schools allow children to ‘self-declare’ their gender without parents’ consent.

Despite children as young as 11 years old being able to decide their gender in the government-run and funded schools, less than a third had a policy of informing parents, and even informing their own internal designated safeguarding officer — a professional employed to protect children at school — when young people say they want to change their gender. Around a quarter of schools said they didn’t provide boys’ and girls’ toilets for pupils, and a quarter taught children that it is possible to “be born in the wrong body”.

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