Teacher sacked over eight-year-old's trans pronouns may have to remortgage house

[IwantToRetire]

Nottinghamshire county council has threatened to force a teacher to remortgage her house after she lost a legal dispute over using a pupil’s preferred pronouns.

The council has demanded that the teacher pays its £14,000 legal costs after her application for a judicial review was rejected by a High Court.

The teacher began a dispute with the council after the local authority-run school where she worked decided to facilitate the social transition of a girl who wanted to be treated as a boy two years ago.

The teacher said that she repeatedly raised concerns about the pupil’s welfare and followed the school’s whistleblowing procedure to raise safeguarding concerns. After bringing a claim for judicial review against the school, the teacher was sacked and is now working in a sandwich shop.

The application for a judicial review hearing was rejected on the grounds that she lacked “standing” to challenge safeguarding failures in relation to an individual child at the school, adding that the school had moved the child to a different class and she was no longer the child’s teacher. A High Court judge ordered the teacher to pay the council’s legal costs.

Teacher sacked over eight-year-old's trans pronouns may have to remortgage house (yahoo.com)

(Story from the Telegraph reproduced by Yahoo, and as they have done the Telegraph story about Shaaron Davies loosing work Sharron Davies: ‘I lost the vast majority of work the moment I put my head above the parapet’ (yahoo.com) - The Telegraph is in the process of being sold, so it may have a new owner who is less committed to publishing stories about women's sex based rights being lost, and their ability to keep jobs ... )

I was just reading about that story! I'm not religious, but that woman has been abominably treated. I'd call myself pretty secular, but if this is "the secular orthodoxy", count me out.

The application for a judicial review hearing was rejected on the grounds that she lacked “standing” to challenge safeguarding failures in relation to an individual child at the school

Yes the school treated her really badly and are now enforcing their right to dictate to teachers how they behave by going after her for costs.

But I am staggered that the court decided she had "no standing" to challenge safeguarding failures.

Surely this is a role all teachers should have.

They are often criticsed for not doing this.

Now a court is saying it is appropriate(?) for them to do this.

If they aren't, who is?

On that basis you would think the NUT or whoever would take this up.

I wouldn't be too optimistic about the unions. But we shall see. And of course, isn't 'pastoral care' exactly what teachers should be doing?

If push comes to shove she should crowd fund. I'd be up for a bit of digging.

She’s taking them to an employment tribunal. I’d dig for that. It seems fairly obvious that she was dismissed for whistle blowing

Bloody hell she deserves a medal. Our school socially transitioned DD before she was even ready causing immense stress. Now she's in the path to medicalization.
Well done that teacher, I'd definitely help support a crowd fund.

What do I need to type into google to do some digging? My favourite kind of digging, sitting on my arse, helping women who are being burnt at the stake - in modern terms - for caring about child safety.

I think the destruction of safeguarding is so concerning. I'm pretty sure KCSIE (Keeping children safe in education - supposedly statutory safeguarding guidance for schools which they must follow) says safeguarding is for everyone and everyone can raise concerns.

After reading about this, I as a parent will not raise safeguarding concerns because look what happens to you and I can't afford £14k.

I don't believe KCSIE is being followed by schools any more. For example it explicitly says that inappropriate sexualisation can include exposure to sexual images and yet apparently the School of Sexuality education getting children to draw dick pics is fine. They were quite clearly doing what KCSIE says you shouldn't do, as Safe Schools Alliance have repeatedly pointed out.

There are a number of judges who've made bad safeguarding decisions which seem - to my inexpert eyes - to directly contradict what is in law about safeguarding of children in KCSIE and the Children's Act.

It seems we're moving to a model where basically a child needs to have been individually horrendously physically/ sexually harmed before anyone can say anything at all and no-one can raise wider safeguarding concerns to try and keep all children safe.

She lost a case funded by christian groups who paid for her lawyers apparently but wont fund the costs.

The child's parents supported the transkid. There was no right for her to step in on someone else's child like she did.

The child was moved from her class and she still pursued it.

Sow what you reap. Nottingham should go after he house. If people want to help her out, well that's for you to decide how you spend your money.

Good on Nottingham Council for pursuing such bullying of a grade 4 child. It must have been horrendous for them.

It is chilling to know that whistleblowing on account of a child about a safeguarding issue , by a teacher at a child’s school, has no standing unless the teacher is that child’s class teacher. (In this case the whistleblower had even been the child’s teacher formerly.)

Do safeguarding rules really say this sort of thing? What is the judge doing here?

Why are schools allowed to do change the child’s pronouns and give her access to the boys’ lavatories? What about the Cass Report? Has this been done on the advice of a psychiatric and medical report?

What about the rights of all the children to lavatories based on their sex, and the privacy and safety of this little girl which could be compromised by using the boys’ lavatories?

What about the rights of young children not to be lied to by adults about another child’s sex? Or the child’s right to be kept safe by adults.

I wish this case were not complicating issues by including the teacher’s Christianity. If she was treated unfairly because of her Christianity that is one issue; and treating her unfairly because she complained about poor safeguarding of a child another.

I've working in schools in Nottingham and every single one I worked at had issues, in fact it was so bad I had to stop.

I reported several to safeguarding and nothing ever happened as a result.

I've been on in their safeguarding training, and the whole training session was about how bad people we all were for not seeing bad things or doing anything about it, and just one line at the end about what to do. One line! On the very last slide. We could not believe what we were seeing. 'heres a phone number thank you for your time today'.

And who the hell is anyone to say that she doesn't have standing?

This is fucking enraging.

Anyone should have standing to make a safeguarding referral. And those that celebrate people for potentially losing their house for making a safeguarding report can fuck off.

I would suggest there is much more to this story and it hasn't been reported fully as it would prejudice the upcoming tribunal.

She has clearly deliberately misnamed the child and this would be an ongoing discrimination issue.

Is there any consideration of the safeguarding of the other children who are having to share toilets with a child of the opposite sex? Even if the child was too young for single sex toilets to be required in law at the time of transition, as they move up the school, it will definitely be breaching that law if toilets are mixed sex.

So, Using your logic 🤔 it is fine for teachers to transition a child against the parents' wishes on one hand - but if parents support the transition, on the other hand, the teacher much follow suit even if that teacher knows the child is vulnerable due to the home life, and even if they themselves don't subscribe to gender theory.

You just support transition whatever the situation, whatever the cost .

i can only imagine you are in the U.S, because we don't refer to class years as grades here, we refer to them as 'years'?

And regardless of the details of the case, a judge saying a teacher doesn't have 'standing' to raise a safeguarding concern is extremely worrying.

Every safeguarding training course I've been on (4) says safeguarding is for everyone. But the judge is saying this isn't true. And people wonder why no-one speaks up when they see potential abuse and there is, eventually a catastrophic outcome and a serious case review. This is why.

This is clearly a massive failure of safeguarding - by the parents and the teacher tried to address that.

Imagine if the 8 year old wasn't thinking they were born in the wrong body, but that they felt their body was too fat and they had anorexia (another form of body dysmorphia) which was supported by the parents who actively aided the child in starving themselves.

Should the teacher have let the child starve to death just because the parents support and sanctioned their childs anorexia?

Yes

we need to get back to a place where parents messing with their kid’s head by telling them they were born in the wrong body is a safeguarding issue

because it is

Fucking hell. Child safeguarding is everyone's responsibility.

8 years old. Well in Stonewall world that's old enough to do anything. In the real world a lot of schools won't even let kids walk home alone at that age

Also a woman I know tried to get sterilized aged 30, she already had 3 DC's. The doctors said she was too young to make such a life changing decision

So an 8 year old is more mature than a 30 year old - FFS

Another day, another poor Times article.

The teacher brought the case, she clearly had bad legal advice from the Christian Legal Centre on her chances to win!

Some people regularly pop up on threads and are best ignored, than engaged with

Is this the same case where the teacher repeatedly tried to engage the child in conversation after being told not to have contact with them, repeatedly accessed confidential information about the child on the school system (or attempted to), and then shared said information with third parties? Or is it a different case?

If it is the same one then it's clear the teacher behaved very poorly even though she had legitimate concerns and I'm not sure she has a leg to stand on. I think the Christian legal group had a fairly thorough write up on their website if it is the same one.

The jusdge didn't say that though,. The ruling says that "she lacked “standing” to challenge safeguarding failures in relation to an individual child at the school". They are saying she is not an expert of sufficient standing to request a judicial review. That should be done by whichever organisation is the senior authority in the field.

They are not saying she shouldn't have raised concerns. She is perfectly entitled to bring concerns to the attention of the appropriate authority. She just cannot request a judicial review when she is not the expert in the field and when her opinion differs from that of the relevant authority.

I suspect her mistake was in going for a judicial review, and she should have gone to an ET straight off (IANAL).

Grade 4? This is the UK. Year 4 would be 8/9 years old.