Schools should mark the transitioning of a transgender pupil with “celebratory” events such as marking the announcement of their new name with a cake, an expert has said.

Terry Reed, an activist for transsexual rights, said schools should make any gender change announcement “upbeat” to send a message from the outset that they fully support the transitioning pupil.

Ms Reed is the co-founder of the Gender Identity Research and Education Society, which she started with her husband Bernard after fighting a landmark legal battle for their transsexual daughter.

Both Mr and Ms Reed were speaking on Tuesday in a session on ‘trans people in education’ at the ATL union’s conference in Liverpool.

According to Mr Reed, changing attitudes have resulted in a “a huge explosion” in the number of transgender and non-binary people coming forward.

“Five years ago, hardly anyone in school or in university would come across a young trans person, but it’s changed substantially,” he said.

Disclosure

Ms Reed gave teachers tips on how they could make their schools more accommodating for these pupils. 

She used the hypothetical example of a child at primary school, ‘Mark’, who has agreed with his parents that he can start living as a girl, ‘Lisa’, and wants to start transitioning at school.

The first thing the school should do, she said, was to “follow Lisa and her family’s lead… do what the person concerned thinks is important.”

If Lisa and her family wanted her classmates to be informed about the decision and the name and gender pronoun change, Ms Reed said the announcement should be “upbeat”.

“If possible, if they are going to have a ‘disclosure session’ if you like, try to make it celebratory - I’ve suggested cake,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be cake, it’s just making it an upbeat, ‘we’re absolutely behind you and with you’ message immediately, so that it doesn’t get downbeat.”

Ms Reed said schools should agree a “named person” who the child is comfortable with and can go to if they have any difficulties.

‘The kids are okay’

In schools which do not have unisex toilets, she said the transitioning pupil should be introduced to their new toilet facilities.

“If there are still boys’ and girls’ toilets and she’s going to be using the girls’ toilets, it’s quite helpful just to familiarise her before that actually happens. Take her in when there’s nobody else there and let her look around so that she feels familiar with the surrounding.”

Ms Reed said the parents of other children are far more likely to cause difficulties than the pupils themselves.

“If other parents are going to be told, this is a much trickier issue - parents are always the worry aren’t they? The kids are okay.”

“If they’re going to be told again it needs to be done in a positive, well informed way.”

She said that teachers should “dissuade parents that this is not catching”. 

“It is true that sometimes the children will copy the other [trans] children for fun, just to experiment a bit, but if they’re not trans it’s not going to stick,” she said.

Ms Reed said that while it is “so unnecessary” for schools to have different uniforms for boys and girls, in those that do, trans pupils should be “accommodated appropriately”.

She called on schools to avoid separating boys and girls where possible to achieve “gender blurring”. In sport, she said “no distinctions are necessary” before puberty, and schools should take a “common sense” approach after this stage based on “fairness and risk”.

Ms Reed also advised schools to “think about how to put transgender” on the curriculum, and make clear there is “zero tolerance for transphobic behaviour”.

Read a recent Tes article about transgender pupils at single-sex schools, How can society square the circle on single-sex schools? Subscribers can read the full story here. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here. Tes magazine is available at all good newsagents.