Trans toolkit withdrawn after pupil called girl’s name without parents’ knowledge

A Welsh council has temporarily withdrawn its transgender guidance for schools after teachers called a boy by a girl’s name without informing his parents.

Days after the boy told his parents that he believed he was a girl, the school phoned his parents to say that he had requested for his name to be changed on the register and asked to join girls’ PE classes.

At a meeting with the school, the parents said that their son, who was under 14 years old, should have therapy before any changes were made. But they were told that in line with Rhondda Cynon Taf’s council’s guidance, teachers had already started to call him by a female name.

‘Appalled’

The council’s transgender guidance has now been withdrawn, pending a review, after the parents threatened a legal challenge.

The toolkit had advised schools that “a pupil who identifies as a trans girl but was born biologically male is not a ‘boy dressed as a girl’ but is a girl who outwardly at this point resembles a ‘boy'”.

Tanya Carter of Safe Schools Alliance UK, which supported the family, said: “We are appalled that legal action has again had to be taken against a local authority’s dangerous guidance.

“Social transition is the first step on the path to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and irreversible surgery.”

Legal action

Last year, a series of councils ditched similar transgender guidance amid concerns over their legality.

In March 2020, lawyers representing Warwickshire County Council told The Christian Institute that it was dropping its misleading All About Me programme after the Institute threatened legal action.

Earlier this year, a newspaper investigation found that schools were using boys’ names for girls as young as 13 years old and recording them on official documents.

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.