Speaker: Alice de Coverley (3 Paper Buildings)
Chair: Duncan Toole (Office for Students)
The webinar will provide an analysis of gender reassignment-related issues in the education sector. This is a fast-moving area of law and policy, with schools often facing difficulty in managing the competing rights of all members of the school community, including transgender pupils, in the absence of statutory guidance. The seminar will focus those representing individuals who may wish to bring claims, institutions being challenged either by regulators or individuals, and the regulators themselves.
Alice de Coverley is a specialist education, equality, and public law barrister and regularly acts on behalf of children and young people, vulnerable adults, parents and carers, schools, local authorities, charities and NGOs, government departments, students, and universities. She has worked on a range of Equality Act 2010 matters. This includes discrimination claims for disability, sex, race, religious, sexual orientation, and gender reassignment discrimination, as well as sexual harassment and victimisation. She has also advised Ofsted on issues such as segregation and sex education and acted as Junior Counsel for Ofsted across multiple strands of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA).
Duncan Toole is a principal legal adviser for enforcement at the Office for Students, specialising in the regulation of higher education providers. He previously worked as a senior regulatory enforcement lawyer at Ofsted. Duncan also sits as a Legally Qualified Chair at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.