Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of school uniforms being gender neutral.

The Government wants children to be able to attend a school of their parents’ choice wherever possible. No school uniform should leave pupils or their families feeling unable to apply to, or attend, a school of their choice.

The Department publishes guidance to help schools understand how the Equality Act affects them and how to fulfil their duties under the Act. This includes a duty on schools not to discriminate unlawfully due to the protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment. As part of the government’s LGBT Action Plan, the Department has committed to updating this guidance and this will be published in due course. The LGBT Action Plan also contains a commitment that Government Equalities Office will work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to publish comprehensive guidance for schools on how to support transgender pupils. The Equality Act guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/equality-act-2010-advice-for-schools.

The Department already publishes guidance for schools on setting school uniform policies. The guidance sets out that a school should ensure that its school uniform policy is fair and reasonable for all its students and that policies should be flexible enough to accommodate the different needs of pupils.

In making decisions about its school uniform policy, and all other school policies, a school must have regard to its obligations under the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010 and the Public Sector Equality Duty. The school uniform guidance is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-uniform.