It has been revealed that children across a number of schools in the UK are being allowed to self-identify as animals, and another claiming to be a moon.

Reports have emerged of an ongoing Government investigation, ordered by Gillian Keegan at Rye College, a state secondary school in East Sussex, where a teacher was recorded telling a pupil it was "despicable" not to accept that her classmate was a cat.

The pupils were told that they would be reported to a more senior school leader for upsetting the "cat" by referring to them as a girl.

When the pupils responded by saying there are only two genders, the teacher likened their comments to homophobia.

A source close to Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, who ordered the investigation into Rye College, said: “Teachers should not be teaching contested ideology as fact. They must have due regard to safeguarding if a pupil identifies as an animal.”

This debate has sparked further conversation around child gender issues. Tory backbenchers have urged the Prime Minster to ban pupils from being allowed to change their pronouns at school.

Former Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said: “We need a bit of ‘take back control’ for parents.”

She continues: “Rishi needs to make good his pledge around relationships and sex education but this applies equally to issues on gender. I maintain that this issue is for parents, not schools, and that is what the Government’s position should be.”

Stella O’Malley, a psychotherapist and director of Genspect, who works with vulnerable children, said: “Teachers are working in a vacuum. They don’t know much about this and, in a bid to be kind, they are going to cause long-term distress.

“If you are going to enable a child to be dehumanised, if they are using any pronoun that isn’t ‘he’ or ‘she’, it’s literally dehumanising them. I think it is something that they [teachers] will regret in the long term, when it emerges that they have been led by an ideology and it has no evidence base.”

New guidance for schools is due to be released before the end of term on how to respond to pupils who identify as transgender.

Nick Hewlett, head of a co-educational independent school in Southeast London welcomes this guidance. He said teachers are forced to make individual judgments over children claiming different identities is a "recipe for disaster".