The Importance of Special Educational Needs Assessment Concerning Trans-Identifying Children in UK Schools:
The Role of Educational & Child Psychologists By Dr David Buck
The (linked) article basically suggests that schools do not need to buy-in (often expensive) so-called “expert” advice from the ‘gender ideology’ charitable sector. Instead it suggests that Educational Psychologists (EPs) can give schools the confidence to use existing, up-to-date, guidance on safeguarding and anti-bullying policies at whole-school level and EHCP assessments at individual level for those few trans-identifying children experiencing levels of “distress” that interfere with their learning.
There is no need for building new toilet blocks, disrupting single-sex spaces & sports or having whole school realignment of the Biology syllabus or pronoun use. Deliberate face to face mis-gendering can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis as yet another of the myriad ways children and young people will bully each other.
Using the EHCP assessments under the arrangements of Part 3 Child and Families Act 2014 is the quickest and most pragmatic way to satisfy the call for more ‘comprehensive multi-disciplinary assessments’ that the Cass Review and the DfE “Gender Questioning Children” (GQC) guidance both recommend.
Unfortunately The Association of Educational Psychologists' (AEP - the professional representative body of EPs) feedback to the draft DfE guidance “Gender Questioning Children” consultation let parents and all children down, as it formulates irresponsible recommendations NOT to follow the Cass Review or DfE GQC guidance! Hence it puts Educational Psychologists in a position where they may well be liable for providing advice which is later found to be a safeguarding breach.
This AEP feedback represents intellectually indolent and uncritical support for ‘gender-affirmation’ using the unaccountable advice of ‘Gender-Ideology’ charities such as ‘Just for Us’ and ‘Stonewall’ that threaten child safe-guarding.
E.g. “We recommend schools do not implement this draft, non-statutory guidance. We encourage teachers to stand for inclusion, not exclusion” … from the aptly named GI charity - ‘Just for Us’. The implication that gender-critical commentary would ‘stand for exclusion’ is disingenuous or faux-naïf at best.
AEP feedback also refers to the previously unimpeachable ‘Stonewall’ charity whose advice on transgender issues has been soundly rejected by several of its founders (e.g. Matthew Parris, Simon Fanshawe and others loathed by the LGBT lobby because they declare the biological foundation of same-sex attraction). The AEP appears completely unaware of this and the significant movement away from ‘Stonewall’s’ ‘Diversity Champions Programme’ that has recently been seen in high-profile organisations e.g. BBC, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and even OfSted. But it is still unclear how far this has happened in educational settings.
‘Stonewall’ like many othe ‘gender-ideology’ charities rejects women’s rights to define their own single-sex places (e.g. hospital wards, DV hostels, toilets and prisons etc.) on the basis that such “biological determinism” is regressive. The intellectual ground on which they do this is rife with social, political and philosophical contradictions. ‘Stonewall’, while promoting self-identification of the gender a child may choose, have been accused of attempting to stifle free speech on the issue. Nevertheless their influence in educational settings is potentially significant, since their approach remains dependent on the dissociation of gender from biological sex.
That the AEP uses these reactionary and authoritarian charities as a source for advice for their Educational Psychologist members is an abrogation of any reasonable sense of duty to professional representation.
Further, since these issues are fundamentally psychological schools will naturally turn to their named Educational Psychologist for further advice. EPs are therefore in a key position for the effective ‘roll-out’ of the Cass Review and DfE “Gender Questioning Children” guidance, by following the advice of their professional representative body they will, in practice, render such guidance redundant.