Mother raises concerns after transgender pupil admitted to girls’ school

A mother has accused a girls’ school of failing to inform parents that a transgender pupil had been admitted.

The unnamed parent said she discovered the situation after overhearing her 14-year-old daughter discussing a classmate who had previously been known as a boy. When she asked her older daughter about it, she was shown social media accounts belonging to a pupil who had “transitioned” in Year Six.

She said the discovery prompted “a raft of questions”, including whether the pupil had used the same toilets and changing rooms as other girls, whether a risk assessment had been carried out, and what safeguards were in place.

After contacting the school and local authority, the mother said she received what she described as a “chilling” silence. The headteacher responded by stating that the school remained a “single-sex school” and that it could not discuss individual pupils because of the Equality Act.

In April last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Equality Act’s definition of gender refers to biological sex when protecting single-sex spaces.

The mother says her daughter is now "completely indoctrinated" into transgender ideology, claiming the school had encouraged pupils, through its curriculum and practices, to accept that a boy who identifies as a girl should be regarded as a girl.

Last month, the Department for Education published draft guidance stating that schools should support primary-age pupils who wish to change gender. The guidance, open for consultation until 22 April, says the issue should be approached with care and confirms that single-sex spaces should be protected and schools must record a pupil’s biological sex.

Reform UK’s education spokeswoman, Suella Braverman, said the proposals “amount to a betrayal of children”.