Teacher ‘sacked after refusing to treat eight-year-old as a boy’ over concerns for child’s welfare

Mar 18, 2024 by Jill

by Ian Gallagher, Mail on Sunday:

She was ordered by the headteacher to go along with the wishes of the pupil.

A teacher sacked for refusing to treat an eight-year-old girl as a boy will tell an employment tribunal this week of her serious concerns for the child’s welfare.

She was ordered by the headteacher before the start of term to go along with the wishes of the pupil to ‘socially transition’ under the guidance of controversial LGBT charity Stonewall.

It meant calling her by a boy’s name and using male pronouns, and also involved an ultimately futile attempt to keep her gender change a secret from classmates.

The child, backed by her parents, was allowed to wear a boy’s uniform and to use the boys’ lavatories and changing rooms. Troubled by the situation, the teacher, referred to as ‘Hannah’ for legal reasons, raised the matter as a safeguarding issue, believing it endangered the child and other pupils in the short and long-term.

‘We hear a lot about protected characteristics – what about the right of a child to grow up?’ Hannah told The Mail on Sunday. ‘It is heartbreaking.’

She added that children are being supported by teachers and schools to believe that they are in the ‘wrong body’. She is bringing a case against the primary school and Nottinghamshire County Council, claiming she was victimised for whistleblowing and unfairly dismissed in 2022.

The case begins in Nottingham on Tuesday. She said her sacking, for wanting to protect vulnerable children from harm, has torn her life apart and left her with the prospect of never being able to teach again. She had enjoyed five happy years at the school and her record was unblemished. But she noted with dismay how ‘education became increasingly politicised’.

In 2021 the school adopted training methods devised by Stonewall, which urges teachers to ‘remove any unnecessarily gendered language’ from the classroom.

Hannah believes the toxicity surrounding the transgender debate has created a climate of fear in schools. ‘Nobody is prepared to speak out or challenge decisions made without discussion,’ she said. She now works in a sandwich shop ‘where we are more freely able to discuss these issues’.

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