Schools are using boys’ names for girls as young as 13 and recording them on official documents, a newspaper investigation has revealed.
The Mail on Sunday found that at least three mothers were not informed that their schools had started to refer to their daughters as boys after they began to identify as male.
Responding to the investigation, public law barrister Amanda Jones blasted the schools for “acting outside their powers” and warned that parental responsibility could not be overruled by “school diktat”.
One mother from the South of England was told over the phone that her 13-year-old daughter’s name had already been changed.
She recalls being told: “Just to let you know I’ve had your daughter contact their tutor and they’ve identified as being male. So they’ve asked for a new name and pronouns and I just thought I’d let you know that’s going ahead.”
Christian teachers, parents and pupils are increasingly facing difficulties as the education system becomes more secular. Pressure groups with their own agendas are approaching schools offering advice, training and resources. Often this is backed up with vague appeals to the ‘Equality Act’ to make schools feel they have no alternative but to follow the advice given.
Her daughter told her: “I’ll get bullied for being a girl but I won’t get bullied for being trans.”
The woman said how, even after a meeting with the school, two teachers insisted on still referring to her daughter as a boy before she personally called them to stop.
Another from Scotland told how the school “only phoned us to tell us it was happening and we had no say. They just said it’s the child’s right and you have to follow that.”
The school initially refused to change the 13-year-old’s name back – even changing her name on its internal IT system – before finally reverting to her original name over a year later.
Transgender Trend Director Stephanie Davies-Arai warned that the increase of such cases was due to “transgender school toolkits”, pushed in an attempt to avoid accusations of “transphobia”.
Last year, Oxfordshire Council withdrew its controversial ‘Trans Toolkit’ – which said that the view that there are only two genders was ‘transphobic bullying’ – after pressure from parents and an impending court case.
The Christian Institute’s Education Officer John Denning welcomed the climbdown as demonstrating the “positive effect parents can have when they engage with schools and the council over these controversial issues”.
Oxford Council drops controversial ‘trans toolkit’ after legal threat
QC: Scottish trans guidance for schools ‘contrary to human rights law’