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.
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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.
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.