Teacher vows to ‘pursue justice’ amid trans row as tribunal halted
A TEACHER making claims of victimisation for whistleblowing and unfair dismissal after she was sacked amid a row over a transgender child says she’s “determined to pursue justice” after the panel stepped down in the case.
The issue arose on the sixth day of the employment trial of the teacher, who brought the case against Nottinghamshire County Council and a primary school where she had worked for several years.
The teacher had alleged that the school dismissed her, and reported her to regulators, for blowing the whistle on the school’s “trans affirming” policy practice which she believed endangered a child and their peers. But on Wednesday the panel in the case being heard at the Tribunal Hearing Centre stepped down after the lawyer acting on behalf of the teacher made an application for recusal, amid allegations centring on impartiality in the case.
The teacher, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had made claims of victimisation for whistleblowing, unfair dismissal, and discrimination on the grounds of her
Christian beliefs. And she said the situation now “means a further delay to me receiving justice”, with a new panel due to preside over the case later this year.
“I am determined to pursue justice over how I have been treated because my number one concern and motivation is to protect Child X and other children in this country from harmful transgender ideology in our schools,” the teacher said.
“I was informed by my conscience as a Christian to live right before my God and also by the body evidence I had researched which informed me clearly that social transitioning young children is harmful.”
The tribunal was previously told the anonymous teacher felt she had been victimised while opposing the “affirmation” of an eight-year-old, who had been born as a boy but wanted to identify as a girl.
The teacher was dismissed around nine months after she was first told that a child, who had been born a boy but wanted to be identified as a girl, would join the school at the start of the next academic year. The tribunal was told she raised concerns with the head teacher of the school about “affirming” the child as a girl at such a young age, and keeping the news of the child’s “social transition” secret from parents and teachers.
Earlier in the hearing, the panel had been told the teacher had been suspended and reinstated amid an ongoing row, with the school and the child’s parents both on the child’s side. But it is claimed that, after hiring lawyers and divulging information to them which was deemed confidential by the school, she was shown the door.
During the second day of the tribunal, the barrister representing the school focused on the teacher’s claims that she did not feel comfortable keeping information secret from parents and children.
The teacher denied that she “had a desire to break confidentiality” when it was suggested she actively wanted to tell people of the child’s history. She explained that, even if parents and other children were not allowed to know of the child’s history, the child – at such a young age – may end up revealing their identity themselves to peers.
The tribunal is expected to start again before a different panel later this year.