Telegraph - Activist teachers’ questioned pupils every term about their gender, parents claim

What about this story. Is it also made up?

No, see that one is believable because there is a precedent for schools to be able to keep confidential medical information from parents, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/may/13/education.health

In the absence of guidance from the government, there are a lot of schools muddling their way through tricky legal issues. That the government has failed time and again to produce their trans guidance for schools, and the EHRC have admitted that their legal guidance for schools has been wrong for years, the expectation that schools should always make perfect decisions here is totally unreasonable.

But this story about a teacher being allowed to just bleed around the school is nothing like believable. There's no basis for a school to be required to allow it. There's no potential discrimination lawsuit because it's not discrimination.

The problem is that trust is fast evaporating. Teachers are lying and then gaslighting parents about their own children. It’s no wonder that when stories like the one in the telegraph emerge nobody knows what to believe.

What about this story. Is it also made up?

https://www.brightonandhovenews.org/2023/10/28/parents-seek-apology-from-council-leader-for-calling-their-concerns-baseless-smears/

Schools in the U.K. get rid of teachers they don’t want pretty quickly. They just do it with lesson observations at short notice with your worst class, or weekly book scrutinies, or other impossible performance management targets.

Yes. It can take an irritatingly long time to go through processes but schools make sure students are protected in the meantime.
I have been on my school's governing body and had cause to research into it. Now that most schools are in MATs the HR system tends to be more qualified and experienced as well.
I have a variety of reasons to not believe this story. Knowledge of schools and their HR work is the most important though.
The total inappropriateness of this scenario is actually something I think we could all agree on as it happens.

I didn’t think a teacher with size zz fake breasts would be left for months teaching in a school.

I wonder if, and for how long, this would be tolerated in the UK? I remember there were a load of people saying it couldn’t possibly be true when this case emerged. I was very skeptical of it being real myself and I kept expecting an update that the guy had been a prankster. But his motivation ended up being irrelevant because the real story was that the school was entirely incapable of dealing with this man. Are schools in the UK any more likely to be act in the best interests of children when faced with such absurdity?

But teachers are telling you it IS implausible.

I hope it's not true, but with all the other bonkers things which actually have happened, it doesn't seem implausible.

I didn’t believe they’d put rapists into women’s prisons. I didn’t believe they’d put 6ft 5 ‘people’ into women’s rugby. I didn’t believe they’d remove healthy body parts of suicidal teenagers on the advice of a non medical community. I didn’t think a teacher with size zz fake breasts would be left for months teaching in a school. But here we are.

I don’t think people have to make things up - there is an abundance of proven cases.

It might be Dorothy stringer school. There is something strange going on in that school it is extremely woke and honestly I wouldn’t put money on this being untrue. I believe foster are inspecting due to parents complaints.

That reads like you're happy to make things up to get what you want?

No it doesn't.

It means it could easily be true. Which is the point.

I'll reiterate that my point is that this ideology has resulted in people absolutely believing it, whether it's true or not.

Not that it doesn't matter if it's true. It's that people could believe it anyway because it's so plausible.

What I wasn't particularly interested in was pursuing a discussion about why some people think it's impossible, and some people (like me), believe it isn't impossible. Which was the way it was shaping up to go.

My other point is that so many things have happened which a few months or years before would have been deemed unthinkable, that the criteria one would normally use to judge, no longer feels reliable.

And in case I'm still not clear, none of that means I 'want to make things up to get what I want.'

You don't care if this story is true? That reads like you're happy to make things up to get what you want?
Teaching is difficult enough without made up nonsense being brought into it.

i'm glad that teachers think it's unbelievable.

I want it to be unbelievable. I want it to be given absolutely no house room, whatsoever.

It's just that I've been here before.

When the press weren't picking any of this up, I kept thinking, this will do it.

And now the press are thinking, this'll do it.

It doesn't.

It's not really about whether or not this story is true, for me. It's about how fucking far do we have to go to make the authorities stop it.

Exactly. It is beyond unbelievable.

No.

What conversation? The Telegraph says the supposed teacher was saying that because they were non-binary they weren't required to use sanitary protection. The only possible response to that is 'who cares what you are, you're bleeding on the furniture, sort it out'.

There is nothing about being non-binary that suggests that you shouldn't deal with your periods appropriately.

Even that transman upthread was trying to make a point that 'men have periods too', not that they should be allowed to drip on the floor.

It wasn't an actual gender identity. The girls in question were being deliberately mean. No one has provided any evidence of students identifying as cats in school (wearing cute hair bands and purring to wind up grown ups isn't identifying as a cat).
Regardless of that, a teacher 'free bleeding' would be swiftly dealt with by HR I imagine/hope.
A student would be more likely to be handled by the welfare/safeguarding/pastoral team. Lots of girls struggle with the idea of periods. Also, lots of people on the internet share poorly researched stories on 'free bleeding' that were usually made up on 4Chan.

If a kid was deliberately bleeding around the school this would be a mental health/SEN issue and dealt with firmly but sensitively. No one would simply let it happen.

Good, it's what one would hope would happen.

What if they said they were non-binary and trying to provoke a conversation? Would that be given any credence at all?

I think someone at or to the Telegraph has (dishonestly) misreported a child as a teacher. I can’t see on twitter anyone else reporting the teacher story before the Telegraph, and given the outrage the Telegraph story has provoked, it would have had the same response if it had been said at the conference. It didn’t, therefore I think it wasn’t.

If a kid was deliberately bleeding around the school this would be a mental health/SEN issue and dealt with firmly but sensitively. No one would simply let it happen. We can’t afford the cleaners, it’s unhygienic (blood has to be cleaned properly), kids would go batshit etc etc.

From memory, no, it was an actual gender identity.

I work in a school sparking conversation is never an issue. Getting everyone to stop talking is an issue.

😁

What a bizarre story, if true it would be all over every media outlet with photos like the weird fact boobs story. Most kids have phones now from Junior school to sixth form. They would have sneaked a photo. Else their parents would have managed to get one.

I work in a school sparking conversation is never an issue. Getting everyone to stop talking is an issue.

Sixth form? Lots of schools have home clothes in sixth form.
It wouldn't surprise me at this point if a pupil both did it and got away with it because 'mental health'.
A teacher repeatedly doing it seems nigh on impossible but then so did baby drag parties so what do I know!
The 'locked up' sounds an over dramatic way of describing isolation. Although thinking about it, there are buildings in our school where the kids can't get out without a staff fob unless the fire alarm goes off and deactivates the door locks, so maybe they are literally locked in.

I assumed the "identify as a cat" conversation was more like a philosophical debate, and the point the teacher was making was "we can't tell other people how they should identify".

Thank you. Fuck me. Is that meant to be the same one? Or a different one?

I can't remember, giraffe, but I think you're a teacher?

I know you said if a teacher did this, they would be fast tracked out. What if a pupil did it?

Would it be regarded as a mental health issue? Or what?

Here you go.

I’m sure I read a thread on here a while back about an autistic DD who was refusing to deal with her periods. Maybe it’s that sort of issue.

Given that kids wear uniform to school, the idea that even a pupil would be rocking up to school in tight white linen is bizarre. Where did that nonsense come from?

I can't see that, I've exceeded my rate limit apparently.

Can you describe?