A mother has spoken out after allegedly being kept in the dark by her daughter’s single-sex school over the presence of a transgender pupil, raising concerns about changing room access, risk assessments and the school’s approach to gender identity in the classroom.
The woman, who has not been named, said she only became aware of the situation after overhearing her 14-year-old daughter and a friend discussing a classmate’s previous male identity. After raising the matter with her older daughter, she was shown the social media accounts of a transgender pupil who had transitioned during Year Six.
The mother told The Telegraph she immediately had “a raft of questions” about how the pupil had been admitted, whether shared toilets and changing rooms were being used, what safeguards had been put in place and whether any risk assessment had been carried out. “Why had this been kept a secret from parents?” she said.
When she approached both the school and the local authority, she said she was met with what she described as a “chilling” silence. The headteacher responded by stating the school remained a “single-sex school” and that it was unable to discuss individual pupils under the Equality Act — despite the Supreme Court ruling last April that the Equality Act’s definition of gender refers to biological sex when protecting single-sex spaces.
The mother also alleged the school had instructed staff to stop referring to pupils as “girls” on the grounds that the term was not inclusive, and that the curriculum and school culture had effectively taught pupils to accept that a boy who identifies as a girl is a girl. She said her own daughter was now “completely indoctrinated” into transgender ideology, adding that her sense of what she was “entitled to in terms of privacy and dignity” had become “completely skewed.”
She further questioned whether it was appropriate for a biological male to be awarded a place at an all-girls school, receive prizes at a girls’ awards evening and take part in girls’ netball competitions.
The controversy comes as the Department for Education’s proposed new transgender guidance for schools remains under consultation until 22 April. The guidance, put forward by Bridget Phillipson’s department, states that schools must accept primary-age pupils who choose to change gender, while also reinforcing protections for single-sex spaces and requiring schools to maintain records of pupils’ biological sex.
Reform UK’s education spokeswoman Suella Braverman criticised the guidance, saying it “amounts to a betrayal of children” and arguing that many of those involved “require a mental health intervention not a surgical intervention.” The consultation period closes on 22 April, after which the government is expected to publish its finalised guidance.
