Church in trans row after boy, 4, joins primary school as girl

A CHURCH OF ENGLAND primary school allowed a four-year-old boy to join as a girl, can reveal.

The child’s sex was hidden from classmates, who were described by parents as traumatised when they found out.

One of the parents of a child who was friends with the “trans” girl, said that the school had “robbed” her daughter of her childhood, as she struggles to come to terms with her friend not being a girl and teachers “lying” to her.

Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, and Kemi Badenoch, the women and equalities minister, are understood to be concerned by the situation and have pledged to intervene.

Mrs Badenoch said she was “very concerned”, and suggested that the school’s actions would be in breach of new government guidance.

She said: “Government guidance is clear that social transitioning is not a neutral act and is certainly unsuitable for primary school aged children. I will be making sure that the school is aware of government policy and the law when it comes to gender-questioning children.”

The primary school in the south east of England allowed the boy to join the school as a girl three years ago, when he was four years old. He is now in Year 3, which is for children aged between seven and eight.

A parent at the school has told

that the trans-identifying child formed a friendship group with her daughter and some other girls in the same class, and she welcomed him to playdates. The mother, who was formerly a non-teaching staff member, had been told by the school not to disclose the child’s biological sex to anyone.

The parent said her daughter started behaving strangely last term, including by refusing to talk or listen to the radio on the way home, hiding under the table, and suffering from stress-induced insomnia and constipation. She said that after repeatedly asking her child if something was wrong, her child told her this month that she knew “the secret” that her classmate was really a boy.

The mother said the trans-identifying child had been “flashing their willy” at the girls. He is believed to have told them in the toilets about “dark spirits that will suck their souls out” and said it is a “deep secret” that “she” is actually a boy, but they must not tell anybody.

The mother and other members of her family have repeatedly raised concerns about the safeguarding of children at the school in the past two months. However, they say that after correspondence and meetings with the school and its governors, they believe they have been “stonewalled”.

The parent said: “The fact that a boy was being enrolled as a girl aged four, that alone for me is a massive red flag. Because I don’t see how a child of that age can make that decision… to actually go through a social transition.”

She said: “I just want my daughter to be a child. The school’s actions have robbed her of this.”

The mother said she had withdrawn

her daughter from the school after it refused to allow her to learn from home while her mental health recovered.

The Church of England’s guidance for schools on bullying, titled “Valuing All God’s Children”, which includes a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, states: “Schools can make adjustments to meet the needs of a trans pupil without being accused of discriminating against nontrans pupils.” When asked the Church about the case of the fouryear-old, it said that this was still its advice to their schools, pending an update in the wake of the Government’s guidance on handling gender in schools.

The draft guidance states that “primary school aged children should not have different pronouns to their sexbased pronouns used about them”. A spokesman for the school said: “We are aware of the concerns raised and are already looking into them. The safety and wellbeing of all of our pupils is our utmost priority and we take any reports of bullying and safeguarding concerns extremely seriously.”

A Department for Education spokesman said: “The protection and safeguarding of children should always be the absolute first priority of any school and its teachers. It is a legal requirement to accurately record a child’s sex in the admissions register.”