Irish schools should allow children identifying as transgender to wear the uniform of choice, new guidelines state.

According to The Irish Independent, the Department of Education has issued the ‘Being LGBT in School’ guidance for all schools under which schools will have to operate to better accommodate the gender preference of a given pupil.

This includes allowing students to access the toilets and changing rooms of their choice, in addition to sports activities, and addressing a student by a preferred gender pronoun. In addition, schools are advised that a student should be allowed to wear the clothing of their preferred gender.

While the new guidance seeks to offer a compromise by also advising that access to facilities could be on a unisex – gender neutral – basis, the new guidelines note: “While some transgender students will want this arrangement, others will not be comfortable with it and consequently these students should be provided with a safe and adequate alternative, such as a single ‘unisex’ toilet facility where this is possible. This should not be a staff toilet facility.”

However, in dealing with the discomfort of non-transgender students and their parents, the guidelines are less accommodating.

“Other students and their families may feel uncomfortable with a transgender student using the same gender-specific facilities. This discomfort may be rooted in an unfounded assumption of inappropriate behaviour on the part of the student who is transgender and consequently it is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.”

The guidelines insist that the best way to address concerns is “to foster understanding of gender identity in order to create a school culture that respects and values all students and prevents transphobic bullying”.

Meanwhile, a government-sponsored survey in Britain in gender issues has been withdrawn after it emerged that participating schoolchildren were offered 25 gender types with the advice to choose as many as they preferred.

According to The Christian Institute, the survey, which had been issued to all schools in Brighton and Hove met with a furious media backlash amid accusations that it was “unnecessarily making all teenagers question their basic identity”.

Criticising the survey, Simon Calvert, Deputy Director of The Christian Institute, said its wording could only lead to confusion among children at a vulnerable age.

“For some children it will be profoundly confusing to find out that there are adults who don’t seem to know that boys are boys and girls are girls,” he said.

“We feel for people who struggle with gender dysphoria but we must not let our sympathy for them outweigh our sympathy for the great mass of children who need to feel safe and protected in school.

“To feel safe, children need to know there are some simple boundaries in life. The basic biological categories of male and female are amongst the most simple and fundamental boundaries of all.”