A group of the UK's leading girls' schools, Girls' Day School Trust (GDST), has updated its guidance to ensure that the schools it represents stay single-sex.

GDST has stated that having an admissions policy based on "gender identity rather than the legal sex recorded on a student’s birth certificate would jeopardise the status" of single-sex schools.

While male pupils who identify as girls will be excluded, females who identify as boys will be supported to remain at the school for as long as they wish to do so.

School leaders have complained that at present there is no official guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission or the Department for Education, and that as a result, schools are forced to turn to lobby groups for advice.

Women prisoners in Scotland have reported that male inmates who identify as trans ditch their cross-sex identities on release. Their experiences were published in a paper for the British Journal of Criminology by Dr Matthew Maycock of Dundee University and reported in The Times. 

One inmate explained that she was put on work duty with a trans-identified prisoner who she says just "wanted to have sex with loads of lassies". 

The research has raised fresh concerns about gender self-identification posing a risk to women’s safety as first minister Nicola Sturgeon prepares to press ahead with gender recognition legislation this year.

A Freedom of Information request revealed that 12 trans-identified prisoners convicted of violence or sexual crimes have been accommodated in Scottish women’s jails within the past 18 months. Only one had transitioned fully; the others had simply identified as women.

Wednesday saw the release of Stonewall's accounts. They cover an 18-month period, but on an annualised basis they show that individual donations are down from over £1million to £0.9m. Overall income is down by 7% and the organisation is continuing to make a loss, as it has every year since 2017. 

The figures show that much of Stonewall's funding comes not from individual supporters but from the UK government and multinational corporations. Fee income (which largely comes from the Diversity Champions Scheme) was stable and provides over 40% of the charity's income. 

Stonewall was awarded some hefty UK Government grants: £765,061 from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office over the 18 months (this will have included international aid grants under the old Department for International Development). The Welsh Government gave £236,529 and the Scottish Government £150,000. The Department for Education, which gave a grant of £299,612 in 2019, has dropped off the donors list, but the Government Equalities Office has stepped in with £50,393.