New guidelines are being drawn up by the UK Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan, and Equalities Minister, Kemi Badenoch, and it means headteachers of all-girls schools are likely to be told that they can reject pupils who are born male but now identify as female, without fear of legal action.
The same rules will apply for all-boys schools receiving applications from those born female who now identify as male.
It’s also expected that UK school leaders can refuse to use a pupil’s preferred pronoun.
“Well, this is really contentious topic isn’t it?” said the President of Education, Sport and Culture, Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen, when the issue came up during a recent interview with Express.
“It’s starting to be spoken about more widely and I think that these are the type of things that come in from the UK that we obviously have to pay heed to and have a look and see whether they’re fit for our unique system of education.
“You can’t just pick up something from another jurisdiction. [We] have one same sex school in Guernsey and we’ve got an Education Law, and… that area hasn’t been considered in terms of policy development. But absolutely, we look at what comes out of the UK, and we always need to challenge that and explore it to see whether it’s a right fit for Guernsey.”