2023-12-19 14:26:33
The British Conservative government published a guide on transidentity on Tuesday to “bring clarity” to schools in the face of “the significant increase” in the number of children wondering regarding their gender, insisting on the involvement of parents.
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Transidentity is regularly at the center of heated controversies in the United Kingdom and the subject is becoming increasingly hotter as the legislative elections scheduled for 2024 approach.
“In recent years, we have seen a significant increase in the number of children questioning their feelings of being a boy or a girl,” explains the Ministry of Education in the introduction to this guide, announced years ago. month.
This “has left schools and colleges in a position where they must navigate an extremely sensitive and complex issue,” it says. The guide aims to “bring clarity” to schools and colleges and “reassure parents”.
Among the recommendations, intended for English schools, is that of “never making a decision without the involvement of parents”, concerning a “social transition” requested by a child.
Social transition refers, underlines the guide, to the process by which people change names, pronouns, clothes or use equipment different from that which is biologically intended for them.
According to the guide, there is “no obligation” for schools to “enable a child to make a social transition.”
But following consulting parents, schools and colleges “may allow a child to change their first name.”
They “should only accept a change of first names if they are certain that the benefits for the child outweigh the consequences for the school,” according to the guide. This change will only happen on “very rare occasions.”
“All children must use the toilets, showers and changing rooms reserved for their biological sex, unless it makes them uncomfortable,” it is still written.
The guide will be subject to a twelve-week consultation.
School leaders will always be in a difficult position because the guide leaves many “unanswered questions”, reacted Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the NAHT union.
Former Prime Minister Liz Truss, on the right of the Conservative Party, said he “did not go far enough”.
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