CSIE believes that hidden discrimination in access to compulsory education is an issue in the UK. We take access to compulsory education to mean inclusive provision for children of all genders, at all levels of their school life. This includes children and young people who may challenge ‘conventional’ ideas of gender (including children who may identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, genderqueer, gender questioning, gender variant and transsexual, as well as supposedly masculine girls and supposedly feminine boys). We believe that these groups of young people suffer not only direct discrimination and abuse within school but also indirect discrimination through being invisibilised. CSIE recognises that enforcing equalities legislation can prove challenging and recognise that many young people themselves, as well as some teachers, have deeply entrenched ideas of acceptable behaviour and aspirations that differ depending on gender identity. CSIE suggests that schools speak about gender broadly, and in depth, at all levels of school life in order that young people may become what could be called ‘gender aware,’ and thus capable of recognising, responding to and preventing gender based discrimination in all of its forms (for example, biphobia, homophobia, transphobia, sexism and misogyny). We believe that sex discrimination legislation needs to be understood more broadly as concerning the rights of people of all genders and see the consistent reduction of anti-sex discrimination initiatives into male/female binaries as failing to protect young people who may identify their gender in different ways. Until this wider remit is fully grasped sex-discrimination legislation is ostensibly unfit for purpose. We are delighted that the 2010 Single Equality Act, for the first time, offers legal protection to students who identify as transsexual but are keen that this narrow definition is also broadened.
Consultation Document – Response from CSIE (Word, 34 Kb)
