Who’s running the show on trans and gender? Elected ministers? Or an activist civil service? A publication put out by the Department for Education (DfE) – Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) – suggests it may be the latter.

Schools and colleges rely on this document to keep children safe. But, while the 2023 version contains a few updates, there are none regarding the safeguarding issue everyone has been talking about: children who want to change their gender. So why has the department chosen to turn a blind eye to the concerned parents, teachers and schools desperate for guidance?

Education Secretary Gillian Keegan must answer some difficult questions. Why did she sign off on this guidance? What was in the submission presented to her? Did officials even consider whether gender, trans and RSHE (relationships, sex and health education) issues should be addressed? If not, it cannot be because they were unaware of the issues, for the evidence has been covered over and again by every media outlet – and by Parliament – in recent months.

The show trundles on, as if nothing has changed

Over 60 per cent of schools are failing to inform parents when a child discloses that they want to change their gender, according to a survey conducted in March by Policy Exchange. A third do not inform the Designated Safeguarding Lead, the standard procedure for all safeguarding issues within a school. Nearly three quarters of the schools we asked teach that everybody has a gender identity – and a quarter that some children may be ‘born in the wrong body’. Such ideas have no basis in scientific reality – and can cause serious harm to vulnerable children.

There are numerous other examples of harmful material being presented to children in RSHE lessons, not least the normalisation of harmful sexual practices such as choking or the false suggestions that puberty blockers are a harmless and safe intervention, many of which have been extensively documented in dossiers compiled by various organisations. 

The Education Secretary has said this is unacceptable. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has said that this is unacceptable. Even Labour leader Keir Starmer has said that parents should be involved in these matters. And yet the show trundles on, as if nothing has changed.

Every year, KCSIE is updated to reflect new safeguarding risks. This year, revisions focused on online safety. After the Everyone’s Invited scandal two years ago – when students shared their horror stories of sexual abuse and harassment at schools – there was a renewed focus on children assaulting other children. So why has the latest update done nothing to address the widespread safeguarding failings around gender dysphoria, single-sex spaces and RSHE?

The deliberate refusal – once again – to include these matters within the statutory safeguarding guidance demonstrates that the DfE remains gripped by an unscientific and harmful ideology, to the severe detriment of tens of thousands of children across the country.

Nor is the DfE alone in this matter. The NHS Confederation has published a document saying that staff feelings come above patients’ rights, that women have no general right to same sex intimate care, and that dementia sufferers should be ‘challenged’ if they don’t recognise someone’s self-declared gender.

Senior officials in the NHS and civil service actively promote politically contentious views on gender, such as last November when the chief of Health Education England committed the organisation ‘to become active trans and non-binary allies’. Hundreds of public sector bodies are still members of Stonewall’s controversial ‘Diversity Champions’ scheme, which encourages organisations to adopt its own radical stance on gender issues.

The Government need to get a grip. The occasional well-meaning platitude from a minister is worthless while public services remain in the grip of activist groups promoting unscientific ideologies. Heads must roll at the DfE – of every civil servant who has allowed the fear of challenging gender ideology to overcome their duty to safeguard the nation’s children.

Lottie Moore is head of Biology Matters at Policy Exchange