Learning that one of her young students was a transgender person was a “whole new ballgame” for Kate Smith, a Canberra school principal.

The head of Hughes primary school sought out information on how to ease the child’s transition and help the school as it navigated new territory.

“I didn’t know where to look,” Smith told Guardian Australia. “I didn’t know how to work through it so there was dignity for all involved.”

She remembers the bullying and abuse meted out to a gender-diverse teenager she had taught in the past, and was adamant this student would not meet the same fate.

Eventually, Smith found Safe Schools, the anti-bullying program at the centre of a Coalition backbench controversy that prompted an extensive review last month.

Elements of the program have been running in the school for a year now.

The resources helped Smith and other teachers use inclusive language and resolve tough issues around segregated bathrooms and school uniforms. It also helped them talk through the issues with parents and students.

“It just puts your mind at ease,” she said. “We were empowered with this information.”

But primary schools such as the one she runs might soon be prohibited from accessing Safe Schools resources, after the federal government recommended big changes to the program, including limiting it to secondary schools.

At present, the bulk of the Safe Schools program is targeted at year 7 and 8 students, but primary schools can use the resources they believe are necessary.

About 14%, or 74, of the 515 schools that take part in the voluntary program are primary schools. If the changes in the government’s response to the independent review are retrospective, these schools could lose access to the resources.



A spokesman for the education minister, Simon Birmingham, would not confirm if the changes would be applied to schools already in the program. He said specific details would be made available once the actions identified by the government “had been thoroughly worked through with the contracted providers”.

The Safe Schools Coalition, which runs the program, said it would work through the proposed changes with the education department and the minister.

Labor has urged the government to clarify exactly how participating schools will be affected.

The opposition education spokeswoman, Kate Ellis, said it would be “shortsighted” to dictate which schools were eligible to be part of Safe Schools.



“Many schools have joined the program as a way of actively supporting students who are managing issues of their identity and sexuality, and I’d be concerned about the impact of effectively banning the program in schools where it has been introduced for this specific reason,” Ellis said.

The president of the Australian Education Union, Correna Haythorpe, said removing the program from participating primary schools was “clearly an issue of concern” for teachers, too.

“[Gender confusion] can start at a very, very young age so it’s not just an issue for secondary schools,” Haythorpe said. “This program should not be restricted to secondary schools.”

Smith agreed.

“To have a resource like this ... ripped away is incredibly ignorant and shortsighted,” she said. “This program is reliable, it’s Australian and it’s not biased.”

Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) have vowed to fund the program in their jurisdictions if federal money dried up or came with caveats.

“[Our promise] was to roll it out into every secondary school and that’s exactly what we are doing and we will continue that until we’ve got every school running this program,” the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, told ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night. “It works. Why would you do this [review]? Why would you tamper with something that actually saves lives?”

The ACT education minister, Shane Rattenbury, said: “The ACT government has already indicated that it would fund the program if the federal Liberal government withdrew support. Given the changes proposed, we’d consider funding the program ourselves as it is, so that ACT students can get the full benefit from the support it provides.



“The decision to review the program was never about money, rather the ideology of the hard right wing of the Liberal party. We estimate the ongoing costs of the program in the ACT are likely to be in the tens of thousands [of dollars].”

New South Wales, the state with the most participating schools, is unlikely to follow suit.

The premier, Mike Baird, told ABC Radio the changes proposed by the federal government were “sensible and reasonable”.

He said counsellors should be able to work with children who were confused about their gender, rather than applying the “generic approach” of Safe Schools.

“We are rolling out a significant number of counsellors in our schools,” Baird said. “We will continue to do that.”

The federal government has pledged $8m over four years to the Safe Schools program. The Coalition has said it will not provide money for the program after its funding expires in July 2017.