A Western Cape teenager is set to become the first transgender pupil in SA to be admitted to an all-girls government school.
The 14-year-old, who has secretly identified as a girl from the time he started at a boys' school in Cape Town in grade 1, is expected to start at Wynberg Girls' High in July.
At the same time the Western Cape education department is developing a transgender policy for its schools, while basic education department spokesman Elijah Mhlanga this week confirmed that a working group, which included stakeholders from the LGBTQI community, was at present developing a transgender policy for schools.
A close family friend, who did not want to be named, said the pupil's mother approached Wynberg Girls' High in September last year to seek admission for her daughter.
The governing body unanimously decided to open the school's doors to transgender girls in November.The family friend said the pupil had met the social worker at Wynberg Girls' High in preparation for her move there.The pupil will apply to the home affairs department for an official change of name and gender.The family friend said only the principal and a few teachers and close friends of the pupil knew she was a transgender girl.Child and adolescent psychiatrist Simon Pickstone-Taylor said she was the first transgender girl in Cape Town to seek admission to a girls' school.
Commenting on the challenges faced by transgender pupils when they applied for admission, he said he had experienced a "lot of pushback" from the principals of schools which refused to admit them.
"Sadly, at least two of the children went into home schools because they didn't have a choice. That's a failure of the state system, because you want kids to stay in the biggest, normal environments," he said.
Shirley Harding, headmistress of Wynberg Girls' High, said: "The school governing body is happy to move in this direction, but the actual admission has to stick to any policy or legal issues. The school is seeking ways to make any transgender girl feel comfortable in our space."
After media inquiries were sent to Harding this week, she sent a circular to parents telling them the school will need to hold discussions with the provincial education department and experts to ensure it does the right thing "for any transgender girl who applies to the school".
Western Cape education department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond confirmed the Wynberg Girls' High governing body was considering a request "to admit" a transgender pupil.
"Various policies need to be addressed, as well as discussions with learners and staff, so that if and/or when a transgender learner is admitted, they are accepted naturally and warmly into their school," she said.
"This is the first [application for admission] we are aware of at a single-sex school."
Hammond said the department's primary concern was that transgender children were not receiving appropriate support in some schools, as the schools did not know how to manage transgender-related matters.
Meanwhile, some transgender children have either quit or are threatening to quit school because of lengthy delays in name and gender changes.
Cara Pearson has been waiting since January last year for home affairs to process her daughter's name-change application.
Last May, she was told her application had been denied and that she had to apply to have her California-born daughter's name changed in the US.
Her daughter has both US and South African citizenship. She has reapplied and is still waiting for a response.
Frustrated at the delay, her daughter, who was in grade 11 at Cedar House, a private co-ed school in Cape Town, dropped out of school last year.
"She did not want to start matric if her name wasn't changed. It was looking as if that wasn't going to happen so she kind of just gave up," said Pearson.
Her daughter started off at Cedar House last year as a transgender girl after revealing her new identity in August 2017, when she was a pupil at Wynberg Boys' High.The mother of a transgender boy, who is in matric at Westridge High in Mitchells Plain, said he was threatening to quit school because he did not want his matric certificate to reflect his old, female name."As far as he's concerned, that person doesn't exist any more," said the mother, who applied in January to have her son's name and gender changed.The department of home affairs asked the Sunday Times to provide the particulars of applicants who had been waiting a long time for their applications to be processed...