Trans hype is gripping schools – it’s time we learnt what our children are taught

At a London girls’ secondary school, a new teacher was given a printed form to help him navigate parents’ evening. The form had three columns. In the first was the student’s name. In the second was the pupil’s preferred non-binary (invariably male) name, if she (they/them) had one, which a lot did. The third column was the one that made the teacher sweat. It indicated whether the parents of the girl knew she had adopted a new name and gender at school which, it turned out, many mums and dads did not. Under no circumstances was he to tell them.

The teacher didn’t stay long in his job. He tells me it felt deeply wrong and uncomfortable to be talking to parents who had no idea their beloved child had adopted a whole new identity at school and was, in some cases, taking the first steps to casting off their girlhood altogether. 

It’s chilling. We send our daughters to school to be educated and helped to grow into capable, happy, confident young women who can compete on an equal footing with any male. What we don’t expect is for schools to secretly facilitate their pupils to make major, life-altering decisions while keeping parents in the dark because they might be “transphobic” bigots.