Education Minister urged to reveal legal advice on removing transgender guidance

Northern Ireland’s Education Minister has been pressed to reveal the legal advice he received which led to him ordering the removal of transgender guidance for schools.

Earlier this week Paul Givan said the Education Authority guidance was “unlawful and flawed” following the ruling by the Supreme Court in April that the words “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.

On Wednesday the minister was urged to reinstate the guidance in a joint statement issued by a number of youth organisations, LGBT+ charities and education unions representing teaching and non-teaching staff.

Alexa Moore from The Rainbow Project, said: “The minister’s removal of this guidance at the very start of the school term hasn’t been good for pupils, for teachers or for parents.

“We urge him to reinstate the guidance and meaningfully engage with the young people affected by his decisions.”

Stormont’s Education Committee, which scrutinises the work of the minister, is set to write to the minister to raise concern about the “absence of clarity for schools and pupils”.

Committee chairman Nick Mathison added that this was not an issue he had expected to be speaking about at the start of the first committee meeting of the new term, but said the minister was “very clear this was top priority number one item on his agenda”.

He also said he felt as if it was a “distraction from the real issues”.

“I would like to propose at this stage given the concerns that have been raised, the committee may want to give some consideration to writing to the minister,” he told MLAs.

“My main issue is really around the vacuum that has been created with this, it is a very sudden intervention and it potentially leaves schools in a position where they have no framework to support pupils who identify as transgender, and it will undoubtedly leave transgender pupils feeling very fearful about the impact of this on what support that they may have relied upon in school may now look like.

“I think we need some clarity from the minister around that … what interim guidance is going to be provided? How soon can we expect clear final guidance to be provided?

“And I would like to know if the minister will share his legal advice on this in terms of why this intervention was necessary because I do note that we haven’t had similar interventions from other departments.”

There were mixed views from other members on the committee.

Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan queried why the Department of Education acted when all the other departments are awaiting guidance from the Equality Commission to give its interpretation of the Supreme Court ruling.

“The Supreme Court ruling itself didn’t reference how children should be treated in school. I think the minister is jumping the gun, I think this is ideological rather than anything else,” he said.

However, DUP MLA Peter Martin said he would expect guidance in the Equality Commission “in about 2028”, given it is writing out to bodies and the High Court.

“The Supreme Court ruling came through on April 18, I think the minister is absolutely right to act on it,” he said.

He also told the committee that he had spoken to principals during visits to schools over the summer, who raised issues following the Supreme Court ruling, and the guidance that had been in place.

“When you have a boy who is identifying as a girl and wants to use girls’ toilets or wants to change with the girls, that’s a real issue because no rights should trump other rights, and I think the minister was completely right in what he outlined around both changing facilities and toilets because ultimately that’s an issue about privacy and safety and that’s what we want to see in our schools,” he said.

UUP MLA Jon Burrows said he felt the minister had acted appropriately.

“An absence of guidance is better than guidance that is plainly and likely to be legally indefensible,” he said.

“I think it would have been remiss of the minister not to have taken this action, and actually put this on the agenda, because otherwise we would have had an Education Authority with official advice which was highly likely to be unlawful.”