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A mother is taking legal action against a local authority (LA) after finding out that a boy has been attending her daughter’s all-girls school for several years, as a “girl”. The mother only discovered that her 15 year-old daughter has been studying alongside a boy all this time when she overheard a conversation between her daughter and a friend.

The mother wrote her account anonymously for the Telegraph here.  

The mother is now pursuing a significant complaint against the local authority after having been fobbed off for months by the school and the LA (the admissions authority for the school). The local MP tried to assist in getting to the truth but was also dismissed by the school and the LA, which is hiding behind the Equality Act and data protection policies to excuse a school policy of lies and deception and a serious breach of safeguarding duties.

The school did not announce a change of policy to parents, who are sending their daughters to the school on the understanding that it is an all-girls school, unaware that boys may also attend “as girls”. The school is admitting girls under false pretences, mis-selling the school to both girls and their parents as a girls school which offers a girls-only educational environment.

Demand is high and the school is over-subscribed, yet the school has chosen to deny a girl a place and give away her opportunities to a boy. Not only that, but by pretending the boy is a girl the school is gaslighting all the girls in the school along with their parents.

It is obvious what will happen when a school tries to keep such a secret from the girls it is supposed to be educating, along with their parents who have chosen the school in good faith. Some girls and their parents will inevitably know the truth because they know the child from primary school “when he was a boy.” Others will not know.

Parents in the know will feel pressured to keep the secret and collude in the school’s deception, out of fear – maybe you would risk your daughter’s place if you complained. Maybe you would be accused of “transphobia.” Some parents will have made the decision to believe that this boy is really a girl and feel pleased with themselves for their progressive open-mindedness. Some parents will have convinced themselves it doesn’t really matter, it’s only one boy and he’s nice, so it’s harmless. After all, everyone else seems fine with it, things have just moved on haven’t they? And who would want to be seen to be picking on one child in the school?

Other parents at some point will inevitably find out that they have been duped by not only the school but by other parents, all of whom they trusted. Without realising it, they have been secretly denied their right to bring up their own child according to their beliefs and their understanding of what is in the best interests of their child’s welfare, protection and wellbeing.

Parents who understand the deception, the safeguarding implications, the boundary violation and the basic fact that boys aren’t girls suddenly find that on the question of facts and reality it is they who are on trial. It is the mother in this case who is in the position of having to prove that a boy is not a girl, does not have the right to be admitted to a girls’ school, and that admitting him in secret violates the rights of all girls in the school and their parents.

The mother must prove the legitimacy of the grievance, while the school continues to repeat the mantra “we’re an all-girls school” and “we can’t discuss other pupils” in answer to the simple question “does the school admit biological boys?” This is Stonewall’s mantra “Trans women are women. Get over it” in action, in the real world, carried out experimentally on children and their parents.

The girls in the school will have picked up very quickly that this is not a subject you can discuss. Some will have already been trained to believe that boys can be girls and it’s no big deal. A girl who can see that this is a boy, and feels uncomfortable about it, has the dilemma of whether to admit this and risk ridicule or worse, and begins to doubt herself. Nobody else is saying anything, it’s obviously not a big issue even if he is a boy.

Teenagers look to social cues from their peers to inform their own beliefs and behaviour and these are the new social rules. Girls learn to push down instinctive feelings of discomfort until they no longer recognise them when they do emerge, because they are immediately overridden by the “correct” feelings of acceptance and kindness, or just being cool. For both parents and girls who know the truth, an acceptable story must be concocted to ease the cognitive dissonance which would otherwise be too difficult to live with.

The whole school has been silenced. Whether out of the reasonable but misplaced idea of ‘protecting’ the boy or fear of being accused of bigotry, the whole school community is pulled into acting as if this is completely normal, and not saying a word about it. The school has imposed their policy of secrecy and deception onto everyone in the school community. Everyone is forced to believe, or pretend to believe, in the concept of “gender identity” and to deny biological reality. Everyone is coerced into saying “2 + 2 = 5” under threat of social punishment and shame.

This is what socially transitioning a child in school “in stealth” means. It is the most insidious form of indoctrination because it is unspoken. It is assumed as normal and unremarkable that a male adolescent is really a teenage girl; it “goes without saying.” This is the new normal for girls.

Meanwhile, presumably at least some of the girls have been sharing toilets and changing-rooms with a boy without their knowledge or consent, or with their knowledge but they know they’re not allowed to talk about it. Girls have been coerced into sharing intimate spaces with members of the opposite sex at a time of adolescent development when privacy and boundaries become critically important and need to be respected and consolidated through single-sex policies.

Instead girls learn that they have no right to their own boundaries and no right to privacy from the opposite sex. The subject is so insignificant that the school policy can be changed without consultation. What impact will this have on girls as they grow into young women? The school and the local authority don’t seem to care.

The boy at the centre of this case is also a victim of the adults’ inability to exercise their duty and say no. It is not his fault, and not his responsibility to understand the safeguarding and boundary violations; that is the adults’ job. What he is learning is that he has the right to access female-only spaces because his feelings are more important than girls’ privacy, dignity and rights.

Did anybody consider their safeguarding responsibilities towards this child? At what age did he begin to “feel like a girl” and for how long did the adults tell him that this means he is a girl, and has the right to go to a girls’ school and be treated in every respect as a girl? Did he “transition” between primary and secondary schools, as advised by some trans activist organisations, or did he “become a girl” in primary school?

Without puberty blockers it would be obvious to everyone that this child is a boy, so the collusion of the school, and forced collusion of all other adults in the school community, is potentially even more serious. Apart from the question of how blockers were accessed, this is an ethical question that no-one is given the choice of considering according to their own conscience. Parents are put in the position where they may be indirectly supporting a practice – the medical prevention of a child’s puberty – that they fundamentally oppose on ethical grounds.

The case raises serious questions about guidance and process. The school claims to have followed “operational guidance” at all times so where did this “guidance” come from? The Technical Guidance for Schools in England published by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has always stated that single-sex schools are allowed to restrict admission to pupils of only one sex, and that this is not discrimination.

However, before Kishwer Falkner took over as Chair in 2020, the EHRC was ideologically in thrall to transgender activists. During the time that David Isaac was Chair (2016–2020) the EHRC was a Stonewall Champion (Isaac was a former Chair of Stonewall). The EHRC guidance Public Sector Equality Duty Guidance for Schools in England (last revised in 2014 and still available online) includes a section “How do we set about addressing newer areas, like sexual orientation and gender reassignment?” Here it states “Further guidance is available from the GIRES website” and provides a link to the GIRES information sheet Assisting Schools to Combat Transphobic Bullying.

In 2017 the EHRC gathered together only trans activist groups to advise on their planned schools guidance (until we asked to be included as stakeholders). The resulting draft guidance (which we viewed) was scrapped in 2021. It included the advice that excluding male pupils from girls schools with an admissions policy based on sex at birth may be “indirectly discriminatory”, contradicting their own technical guidance for schools.

What guidance was the EHRC giving privately during this time, to schools and local authorities who turned to them for advice?

The fallout from the ideological capture of institutions by the trans lobby continues to be exposed, sometimes, as in this case, years after a policy was changed. As with Girlguiding, the resulting harm is caused to girls in the very institutions specifically set up to protect their best interests and foster their academic, personal, and social development. The betrayal is absolute.