Education Minister Michelle McIlveen to review guidance for schools which says staff can facilitate children adopting transgender identities without parental knowledge

The Education Authority (EA) has been publishing guidance for several years for supporting young people who identify with the gender opposite to their birth gender.

The guidance advises in part: “Staff should not disclose a pupils preferred name, pronoun, or other confidential information relating to their transgender status to another parent or third party without the pupil’s permission and where appropriate, the agreement of their parents.”

Minister McIlveen has now said she is going to review the EA guidance, in response to an Assembly question by TUV leader Jim Allister.

Mr Allister highlighted to the minister the interim report by Dr Hilary Cass, who is leading an independent review of NHS gender identity services for children. She said that “binding breasts” for girls who identify as transgender can be “painful and potentially harmful”. The NHS recently announced it was shutting down its Tavistock clinic in north London which assisted children in changing their gender.

In a statement on the EA guidance, Mr Allister said: “The most troubling aspect of the guidance as it stands is that it advises teachers, for example, to treat biological males as females, including using their preferred names and pronouns, without advising the child’s parents, if that is the wish of the student.

“In a situation where the parents have expressly advised the school that they not to use anything other than the child’s birth name and referring to him or her by their biological gender, schools are advised to keep using the child’s preferred name and pronouns regardless of the wishes of the parents. Such a situation is perverse and should not be tolerated.”

He said there were other “worrying” recommendations in the document including the suggestion that gendered toilets and changing rooms should be abolished.

Minister McIlveen responded to him: “It is my intention to review the guidance and I have asked my officials to draft the Terms of Reference.”

The News Letter invited the Education Authority, the Department of Education and the LGBT support group, the Rainbow Project, as well as Transgender NI, to comment.

In 2020 Gavin Boyd of the Rainbow Project defended EA guidance, saying it was “extensively consulted on”.

He added: “They are drafted to ensure a child has the right to be educated in dignity and safety.Those guidelines don’t negatively affect anyone. Transgender young people have the right to education, they have the right to be known as who they are, and if we want to ensure that all young people have access to a good quality of education that means protecting the rights of all young people.”