The Supreme Court Judgment and Child Safeguarding

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court confirmed that “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex, and “women” refers to biological women.

The five Supreme Court Justices have been careful to say that they are not making any comment on the use of these words outside of the Equality Act 2010, but for many people this is seen as a victory of common sense, of confirming that the law means what we already knew it meant. We at Safe Schools Alliance know that we are female, we know that males cannot become female, and we know that to pretend otherwise is a safeguarding issue. And we wholeheartedly thank the women of For Women Scotland for their persistence and determination in gaining this judgment.

The situation in schools

But do our children see this ruling as a victory of common sense? Or have they been so indoctrinated by activists in schools that they will see this recognition that sex is binary as a win for the “bigots”? Will our girls be relieved that they now have a right to assert their boundaries, or will their immediate reaction be concern about the feelings of male classmates?

For the past 10 years the DfE, the NEU, the NASUWT, the NAHT, the ASCL, the PSHE Association and others have allowed – and indeed encouraged – schools to bring in activist organisations to deliver PSHE to children. These organisations have told children that sex is on a spectrum, that there is a “pink brain” and a “blue brain”, and that certain personality types or interests mean a person is male or female. Previously reputable charities such as the NSPCC and Girlguiding have repeated this message. Local Authorities have promoted trans toolkits that tell children that once a boy identifies as a girl, he must be allowed to share their toilets and changing rooms, and to object to this is wrong because if he says he is a girl, he is a girl. 

Many of our children now believe this. Of course they do. It is all over their social media, and the place where they should have received an alternative view, a challenge, and a grounding in facts – their school – has almost universally failed to provide this. This has been a safeguarding failure of extremely significant proportions. Girls have been sexually assaulted in their school toilets and encouraged to self harm by breast binding, the boundaries between adult sexuality and children’s identity have been blurred, and vulnerable children have been made to think that the only way out of feelings of discomfort with their bodies or with their role in society has been transition or suicide. 

Schools have wholeheartedly embraced an ideology that says it is possible to change “gender” and that sex doesn’t matter, and as a direct result of that have enabled the social transitioning of children which, as the Cass Review showed, is the first step on a pathway that can lead to irreversible medical intervention.

Safeguarding

Discussion has already begun about what this judgment means for schools, and about the interpretation of the single sex exceptions in the Equality Act. This is missing the point.

Girls toilets are for girls. This is a safeguarding issue. Gender neutral toilets that have no gap under the door are not as safe as toilets that do not have to be completely closed off to prevent voyeurism, because the lack of a gap means that collapse, self-harm or assault goes undetected. This is a safeguarding issue. Girls should not have to compete against boys in secondary school sports. This is a safeguarding issue. 

Organisations are saying they need time to reflect on the Supreme Court ruling and review their policies. In the case of schools they should not need to. Regardless of what it said in the Equality Act, schools should have been reviewing all guidance from a safeguarding point of view and resisting changes that put children at risk. There is no justification for NASUWT to say that they are “scratching their heads”, and still need the government to provide clarity. There is no justification for the NEU to be demonstrating in London in protest at this ruling.

This reaction demonstrates that the fact that the Equality Act has been clarified by the Supreme Court will not be enough to protect children. ‘Equality’ legislation should not be the primary means of protecting children; safeguarding should. Safeguarding is a culture, not legislation, and the fact that so many school leaders have forgotten that their primary responsibility is to safeguard the children in their care is deeply concerning.

The very real and large scale problem remains that school and union leaders with certain ideological beliefs will not or cannot make appropriate and rational safeguarding decisions.

What should happen immediately?

The Supreme Court ruling is a tool that should not be needed in schools, but can help to effect change. The ruling states clearly that replacing biological sex with “certified sex” (gender identity) makes it impossible to protect lesbians, to provide single-sex services, to ensure equal access to sport and to carry out the Public Sector Equality Duty. Schools are bound by the PSED as are all public bodies and must implement it properly. 

Local Authorities must withdraw all guidance and “Trans Toolkits” that misrepresent the law and mis-state biological reality, and immediately advise schools to cease using them. 

Unions must step up and rein in their activist members and support those who wish to challenge gender ideology from a safeguarding point of view.

Headteachers and Safeguarding Leads should ensure that their school does not create, distribute or signpost to resources that tell children it is possible to change sex, or that sex is on a spectrum, or that gender identity supersedes biological sex. They must immediately review their PSHE guidance and ensure that all single sex provision in schools is based on biological sex. And they must stop socially transitioning pupils without their parents’ knowledge. If they do not, we predict that some parents, who have already spent months if not years trying every other avenue of complaint, will take legal action. 

The DfE should urgently issue a statement clarifying that schools must prioritise safeguarding over inclusion and must review their Safeguarding and Trans Inclusion policies accordingly. 

Time to reflect

Over the past 10 years the concept of ‘gender identity’ has been used to remove a cohort of children from effective safeguarding. These are the children who are most vulnerable; children who have previously been sexually abused, children who have been in care, autistic children, teenagers who are same-sex attracted.

Stonewall have played a major role in this and have had a pernicious effect on child safeguarding in the UK as a result. They were allowed to influence government policy, to make changes to the statutory guidance ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ and to write resources for or alongside local councils that were then promulgated to all schools. They were able to make councils tell their schools that they must not read or use alternative materials that stated that sex is real. 

We should be asking why Stonewall were allowed such a strong influence on the policies of the DfE, local authorities and schools, despite the fact that their guidance posed so many safeguarding risks. Why have the DfE been silent for so many years on the safeguarding implications of this ideology, pushing all the questions about the practical implementations of it onto schools?

We should be asking why education unions have so stridently supported ‘trans rights’ at the expense of safeguarding. The NASUWT should not need to read the Equality Act to recognise that allowing a male who states that dressing as a woman fulfils his sexual fetish to write their trans equality policy, a policy that says that pupils must enable this by calling him “Miss”, is a complete failure of safeguarding.

We have been raising these issues for the past 6 years with local authorities, schools, unions and the DfE, and they have been largely ignored.

We now call for a Public Inquiry into how this ideology has been allowed to undermine child safeguarding so comprehensively. This is the only way to force organisations, and the individuals who work in them, to reflect and to do better.