From September 2026, schools across England will be required to follow the revised Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) statutory safeguarding guidance. The updated document contains some welcome improvements, particularly regarding biological sex, single-sex spaces, and the recognition that social transition is not a neutral act.
Yet one of its mystifying messages to school staff remains deeply concerning: that schools may have “no reason” to inform parents when a child begins expressing concerns or beliefs about a perceived ‘gender identity’.
Common sense progress
Christian Concern welcomes several aspects of the new guidance.
Without our support for Nigel and Sally Rowe, and the success of their landmark schools case, these positive changes would have been far less likely.
The Rowes were the first parents to publicly and legally challenge guidance being held out by the Government that embedded trans ideology in schools.
The Department for Education has strengthened protections for single-sex toilets, changing rooms and accommodation, finally recognising the importance of safeguarding privacy, dignity and safety, especially for girls. Imagined ‘gender identity’ is no longer treated as decisive in school decision-making. Schools are also advised not to allow pupils to take part in sports designated for the opposite biological sex where safety concerns arise.
At long last, common sense has prevailed.
Our consultation response set out many of these key concerns, and alongside others who have raised their voices, we have seen some success.
Recognising created reality
These changes reflect an increasing recognition that biological reality matters and that safeguarding requires clear boundaries.
God has made us in His image, male and female.
The changes also move schools away from previous approaches that often treated a child’s confused, self-declared ‘gender identity’ as unquestionable fact.
There is further encouragement in the guidance’s recognition that social transition should not be automatically facilitated. Parents’ views are now said to carry “great weight” where a child requests changes to names, pronouns or social treatment. In most cases, ministers expect schools to involve parents in such decisions.
No reason to tell parents?
However, a serious weakness in the guidance is found in its approach to parental involvement, which will undoubtedly be used by some activist teachers to conceal from parents what is occurring in school.
The guidance states that where a child confides in a member of staff about confused gender-related feelings but does not request changes in school, “there is no reason” to break confidentiality unless there is a safeguarding concern.
But surely the opposite is true. There is every reason to involve the vast majority of parents when a child begins questioning something as fundamental as whether they are really a boy or a girl, even if the child does not go as far as to request changes to names, pronouns or other treatment in school.
Parents, not schools, are responsible to God for their children
As Christians we believe that parents are the primary carers of their children, a duty given to them by God.
They know their child’s developmental history, emotional struggles, friendship groups, family circumstances and mental wellbeing in a way that most schools cannot. A child expressing distress about their sex, body or identity may be experiencing anxiety, autism-related vulnerabilities, social pressures, trauma, online influences or wider mental health difficulties. Such matters are rarely isolated school issues, and may have been significantly caused by influences within the school itself.
They are therefore family issues, safeguarding issues and welfare issues which Christian parents especially would want to pray about with their children, with the ability to investigate the true sources of the confusion.
Excluding those best placed to offer support
Clearly to treat the emergence of gender questioning as something that can be confidentially managed between a child and a school, risks excluding those best placed to offer support and understanding, and provides the potential for concealing the source, which may be the teachers and the school environment itself.
Many LGBT clubs, library resources and the RSHE curriculum sow into children the seeds of gender confusion. Trans and non-binary identities often spread quickly within friendship groups as well.
Critics of the guidance rightly argue that it is very risky to assume there is ‘no reason’ for staff to involve parents when a child begins expressing gender confusion. Questions about gender can be linked to significant emotional, psychological and physical wellbeing issues, including potentially harmful practices such as breast binding and even the accessing of unregulated hormones bought online. Gender-related concerns should ordinarily be treated as a safeguarding matter in which parents play an essential role, unless there are very clear grounds for believing parental involvement would put the child at risk.
Christian parents may be seen by some teachers as a risk factor simply for wanting to affirm their child’s God-given sex, and this loophole is likely to be used where such activists in schools conflict with the parents’ beliefs regarding what is best for a confused child.
An important signal to pass on
Of course, the safeguarding promoted through KCSIE is not merely about responding to immediate danger. It should also be about identifying vulnerabilities early and ensuring that children receive appropriate support from the adults who love them and are responsible for their care.
A child who begins to believe they were “born in the wrong body” is signalling something important.
Schools should not assume that confidentiality is the safest response and that there is ‘no reason’ to tell a parent. These signals must be passed on to parents.
Progress?
The new guidance represents significant progress in restoring common sense around biological sex and protecting girls’ spaces.
It is also encouraging that schools are no longer expected automatically to affirm so-called ‘gender identities’ or facilitate social transition.
Yet until parental involvement becomes the default position, rather than the exception, safeguarding protections will surely remain incomplete. Importantly, parents must remain vigilant as the culture towards ‘child’s rights’, and the deliberate concealment of important safeguarding information from parents, remains of serious concern despite the progress made.