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(based on 7 Day Print Pack)Schools do not have to accommodate
children who want to change gender,
the attorney-general has declared.
Suella Braverman said that schools
were under no legal obligation to
address children by a new pronoun or
allow them to wear the school uniform
of a different gender. She reiterated that
girls’ lavatories and changing rooms
had special legal protections as safe
spaces.
In an interview with The Times,
Braverman said teachers needed to
take a “much firmer line” and suggested
that some schools were encouraging
gender dysphoria by an “unquestioning
approach”.
She said that JK Rowling, the Harry
Potter author who has campaigned
to protect female-only spaces, was a
“heroine” of hers. “Very brave, very
courageous. I’m on her side.”
Braverman’s comments represent
the most forthright intervention by a
minister on the issue and come as the
government is drawing up formal
guidance for schools.
Nadhim Zahawi, the education
secretary, has suggested that schools
should “accommodate” pupils with
gender dysphoria by allowing, for
example, pupils born male to use girls’
lavatories and changing facilities when
not in use by others. However, Braver-
man said the law was clear because
under-18s could not legally change
Steven Swinford Political Editor
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GARETH CATTERMOLE/GETTY IMAGEStheir gender, meaning schools were
entitled to treat all children by the
gender of their birth.
“Under-18s cannot get a gender re-
cognition certificate, under-18s cannot
legally change sex. So again in the con-
text of schools I think it’s even clearer,”
she said. “A male child who says in a
school that they are a trans girl, that they
want to be female, is legally still a boy or
a male. And schools have a right to treat
them as such under the law. They don’t
have to say OK, we’re going to let you
change your pronoun or let you wear a
skirt or call yourself a girl’s name.
“Equally if they say they’re non-
binary they still remain legally, and
physically, the sex they were born to.
The school doesn’t have to say, actually
OK, we’ll take what this child says and
we’ll change our systems and service to
accommodate this child. It doesn’t have
to do that.”
She said the equality act contained
“very important single-sex exemptions”
that protected spaces such as girls’ lava-
tories and changing rooms. Asked whe-
ther children who were born male
should be able to use girls’ lavatories or
changing facilities, she said: “I would
say to the school that they don’t have to
and that they shouldn’t. They shouldn’t
allow that child to go into girls’ toilets.
“From a safeguarding point of view
you can argue that there is a duty on
schools to preserve single-sex spaces,
and ensure spaces are for biological
Continued on page 2, col 3Giving their backing Helen Mirren and Andie MacDowell at the Cannes festival
yesterday for the film Mother and Son, about an Ivorian family emigrating to ParisTeachers
‘should not
pander to
trans pupils’
Attorney-general calls for firm line on gender
WEEKEND
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