Education Schools Anti-Bullying Guidance for Wales

                                                                                  educationalaction@gmail.com

The Welsh Government’s revised statutory Anti-Bullying Guidance “Rights, Respect, Equality” targeted at governing bodies for maintained schools, local authorities, parents, carers, children and young people across Wales was republished in May 2026. 

EACH is proud to once again to have been part of its consultation and revision process.

Rights, Respect, Equality: assists school governors, staff and relevant professionals working within a school environment to develop and implement anti-bullying policies and strategies.   

1. The revised Rights, Respect, Equality guidance addresses transgender and non-binary children primarily through its anti-bullying and inclusion framework rather than setting out detailed guidance on social transition in schools. It is about preventing and responding to bullying not about determining how schools should manage issues such as names, pronouns or access to facilities.

Schools are expected to take a whole-school approach to preventing this bullying. The guidance says anti-bullying work should be embedded within equality, social justice and respectful relationships, including LGBTQ+ inclusive Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE), which is mandatory in maintained schools in Wales.

Confidentiality is emphasised. The guidance warns that practitioners should not automatically share information with parents simply because a child reports homophobic, biphobic or transphobic bullying. It notes that some young people may fear being “outed” or may be worried about how their parents will react, so information sharing should be handled sensitively and on a case-by-case basis.

What it does not do

The revised Welsh guidance does not contain detailed operational policies on issues such as:

• whether a pupil should socially transition at school
• which pronouns or names staff should use
• access to toilets or changing rooms
• participation in sport
• or parental consent for social transition.

Those topics are largely outside the scope of this anti-bullying guidance. Its focus is on ensuring that all pupils—including trans and gender non-conforming pupils—are protected from bullying and that schools respond in a rights-based, trauma-informed and inclusive way.

This is a notable distinction from recent guidance in England and Scotland, which contains much more detailed provisions about schools’ responses to requests for social transition or use of single-sex spaces. The Welsh Rights, Respect, Equality guidance remains principally an anti-bullying framework rather than a comprehensive policy on the wider management of gender identity in schools.