Why schools must teach kids about gender identity

Schools in England will no longer be allowed to tell children about gender identity. There will be two sexes: male and female. That is if the government gets its way, following a consultation on the teaching of relationships and sex education launched yesterday. Gillian Keegan said that the draft guidance ‘specifies that the contested topic of gender identity should not be taught’.

However, while the Secretary of State for Education might be able to specify what is taught in schools – this will be statutory guidance applicable to all schools in England – Keegan has no hold over what social media influencers upload to their channels. Misinformation proliferates on the internet, and gender identity is no exception.

The draft statutory guidance mentions gender identity only four more times, after the introductory remarks by Keegan:

• ‘Schools should not teach about the broader concept of gender identity. Gender identity is a highly contested and complex subject… Many people do not consider that they or others have a separate gender identity.’
• ‘If asked about the topic of gender identity, schools should teach the facts about biological sex and not use any materials that present contested views as fact, including the view that gender is a spectrum.’

Let me be clear: I don’t think I have a gender identity and I am transsexual. I therefore agree with the line taken in this document – the idea is contested, and it is complex and sex is certainly not a spectrum. But if teachers are only allowed to respond to specific questions, we are poorly placed to counter that misinformation churned out on TikTok and elsewhere.

I can understand the sentiment behind the new proposals. In the previous iteration of Sex Education Guidance, published as recently as 2020, teachers were given very different instructions. Then we were told that that ‘Sexual orientation and gender identity should be explored at a timely point… When teaching about these topics, it must be recognised that young people may be discovering or understanding their sexual orientation or gender identity.’

As a result, teachers who may have known very little about this new idea scrabbled around for resources. Schools brought in Gender Unicorns and Genderbread Persons to convey the idea that gender identity was as real as sex, and teachers believed it. After all, the Department of Education itself was specifying that gender identity should be taught. Maybe Keegan hopes that if schools just forget about gender identity, then it will all go away. Hence the complete reversal of policy.

But formal education does not exist in a vacuum. We might separate children from their smartphones during lessons but, beyond the school gate, the world wide web is at their fingertips. While teachers will be forced to wait for questions, children may well just take their cues from online influencers.

That would be a mistake and it would let down young people who need to be warned away from danger. We teach teenagers about such things as illegal drugs and drunk driving. It would be a dereliction of our duty of care not to teach them about gender identity. Elsewhere in these draft proposals – the scope is far wider than gender identity – teachers are instructed to warn children about the dangers of circulating sexualised images. We need to teach children about these things because we need to prepare them for world. The draft guidance is open for public consultation until 11 July.