Gender Questioning Children guidance
What is gender questioning?
Gender questioning is when someone is unsure about their gender or feels that the gender they were assigned at birth doesn’t fully match who they are. It’s a personal and often evolving experience and can be fully recognised at any age.
What is the legal context for children under 18?
In England, the law defines a young person’s gender as their biological sex assigned at birth. Under the Equality Act 2010, “sex” refers to biological sex for legal purposes. Children under 18 cannot obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) to legally change their gender. However, they can still be protected under the 2010 Equality Act’s characteristic of gender reassignment. Legal definitions aside, questioning or exploring gender can be a very real experience for some young people.
What is the guidance for gender questioning children?
The law is in place to protect, but as society, we also have a responsibility to support and uplift people.
The Gender Questioning Children guidance offers practical advice for schools on how to respond to young people who are questioning their gender. It focuses on how a school should respond to a young person who is questioning their gender, including guidance on how to engage with parents, interaction with safeguarding duties, data requirements and access to single-sex spaces. The guidance explains how schools should handle requests for changes to a young person’s name, pronouns and uniform.
Does the Gender Questioning Children guidance form part of the RHSE guidance?
No. The Gender Questioning Children guidance is separate from the RHSE guidance, though both are published by the Department for Education.
The statutory RHSE guidance focuses on age-appropriate teaching of relationships, health and sex.
The Gender Questioning Children guidance is part of the broader statutory Keeping Children Safe in Education guidance and provides specific advice for schools on supporting gender questioning students.
The Guidance Timeline:
December 2023 – The Department for Education (DfE) published draft non-statutory Gender Questioning Children guidance for the first time. This draft offered practical advice for schools on how to support gender questioning young people, including:
The draft guidance received heavy criticism from across the Education and LGBTQ+ sector. The charities Barnardo’s, NSPCC, and The Children’s Society highlighted in their response that there had been no engagement with young people during the development of the guidance.
It was also reported that government lawyers raised significant concerns that some parts of the guidance were “misleading or inaccurate” around equality laws and that certain aspects could put the Government and schools at “high risk of a successful legal challenge”. The charities urged the government to create guidance that better protects young people’s rights, safety and inclusion.
Spring 2025 – Minister for Women and Equalities Bridget Phillipson confirmed in Parliament that the government intended to publish revised guidance.
July 2025 – The Department for Education updated the safeguarding guidance Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE 2025).
The update included a note stating that the revised guidance on gender questioning children would be published soon.
February 2026 – The government published updated draft guidance on supporting gender questioning children. The new draft guidance forms part of statutory safeguarding guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education, and is now open for a 10-week public consultation. The consultation enables stakeholders, including schools, parents, and advocacy organisations, to provide feedback before the guidance is finalised. The Stonewall team is reviewing the 2026 guidance carefully and will update this page once the consultation concludes.
If you would like to respond to the consultation, you can do so here.
Stonewall continues to advocate for a final version of the gender questioning children guidance in school’s that reflects best practice and puts the needs of gender questioning young people at the heart, as the government reviews responses submitted during the 2026 consultation.
