Teacher Kevin Lister's court case starts today on Tribunal Tweets

[Imnobody4]

Kevin Lister, a maths teacher of 20 years, is taking New College Swindon to an employment tribunal alleging he was fired for not affirming a student's preferred pronouns.

https://twitter.com/tribunaltweets/status/1770010705019711637?t=46yG9nCCclvIz5b4-iq4cg&s=19

My one question is should it really have resulted in dismissal and the fact now ( because the college registered him with DBS ) he will never teach again .should he not have been offered retraining and support ?

All of this “ dead names “ pronouns , not telling parents etc is an absolute nightmare to navigate .

Exactly . There are teachers confirming multiple multiple genders ? What is going on .

I am so sorry and dispirited about the result. Mr Lister was not the “ideal” participant, he was a fully-paid up member of the awkward squad! But these are the people on whom are freedoms depends. I admire him very very much

Interesting that people are just focusing on the surrogacy point and not that he actually said that gay relationships are inherently less valid which is the very definition of homophobia.

The pupil was 17 so safeguarding doesn’t apply here and on Twitter Sarah Phillimore said she’s given him free legal advice to point this out to him but he ignored her. He was a bully and humiliated a teenager - there’s no reason at all to use a name someone doesn’t want to use and which the school has said should not be used. Absolutely none. Imagine if a child changed their name for other reasons and a teacher refused to acknowledge it.

And of course that being gay is a choice, like choosing to play golf. What the living fuck. Good riddance and if you support this dinosaur you need to take a hard look at yourself.

And yet we are discussing a case which demonstrates you can’t misgender people because of your gender critical beliefs.

You think only nice people deserve legal representation from their union when they are sacked?

There is a reason people are saying he should appeal and that his lack 9f representation meant justice was not served. That is one. The tribunal judge was wrong on that.

Just to be clear, the Asher case was from the Supreme Court

The point about self representation is a good one, and does the barriers to legal support mean justice is automatically limited?

It makes me glad to know organisations like maternity action and pregnant then screwed exist.

Reading the judgement, I think there were some obvious gaps in his defence and approach to the tribunal, which I think legal representation would certainly have patched over. I don’t know how much of a difference it would have made to the case itself though, as the respondent based their case on his behaviour over his belief.

I also thought it was interesting how little weight was put on his social media posts, in comparison to Rachel, especially when you compare what was posted by each.

All of the above ^.

In the classroom I wonder if he'd decided that he was going to see how far he could push this and had decide to be "awkward". In doing so I think he might have overstepped the mark between holding a belief (which is OK) and expressing it in an unacceptable way (which is not).

I also think he either misunderstood the purpose of the tribunal or had decided to use it as a soap-box for his views. I don't necessarily disagree with this views, but the tribunal was not the place to air them. It was painful and embarrassing to hear the tribunal judge reminding him that he was meant to be asking the witnesses questions and not trying to engage them in debate.

I haven't read the judgement but unless the tribunal obviously got the law wrong I don't see how he could appeal.

He needed proper and effective legal representation. I wonder if he'd been advised he didn't have winnable case?

I haven't read the judgment yet but this is something that really confused me during the tribunal and led me to ask a question about it upthread.

I couldn't understand why the student wanted to enter a girls only competition if she identified as a boy. I can see now it was more complicated than that.

Unfortunately it was very badly explained in the livestream of the hearing. Possibly because the claimant didn't have the advocacy skills to cover it adequately. Presumably it was more clear in the written evidence before the tribunal and in the written submissions.

Just googled his name and he’s raised nearly £10k on his fundraiser, not sure how much of that was raised pre tribunal. He said he had been consulting with a barrister re his DBS, not clear how much legal advice he paid for ahead of his tribunal.

Hes also involved in separate legal action led by the bad law project, if anyone knows much about that?

It’s not any clearer in the written judgement (imo), it seems to be suggested that the student didn’t want to enter, and had deliberately done badly to prove this point. But also says the student registered for it with the exam officer. It seems to go back and forth with quite vague statements.

Not sure if it’s a slight red herring or not, you’d hope if it was instrumental to the case they’d have been clearer

Yes I don’t believe unions have a duty to take on hopeless cases which this one was (not only due to blatant homophobia in breach of EA 2010). but because his safeguarding excuse didn’t apply to an over 16. Unions don’t have to take your case on if they don’t think it will win. Not controversial.

You can’t appeal on the basis that you chose to represent yourself and didn’t come across well 😂
honestly you really can’t. He didn’t have a good case and he wouldn’t have won with a lawyer either.

I wonder if he'd been advised he didn't have winnable case?

Sarah Phillimore on Twitter said she advised him he didn’t. He chose to go ahead anyway. Turned out she was right.

And he has quite a nerve to talk about safeguarding given that he was making comments like this about a 28 year old teacher having sex with a 13 year old boy. “Time of his life” - really? This is not someone who gives a toss about safeguarding. Also his method of safeguarding was to tell the child’s friend to talk sense into them. He shouldn’t be anywhere near a school or college.

This.
He sounds like a loose cannon and it was a young person who he treated horribly.
He didn't merely use the name and pronouns she disliked, he aggravated the situation: he talked to her about her relative's suicide attempt in the context where he was saying gender affirmative surgery was a waste of NHS money. Have I read that right?

The Maths Olympiad thing it seems he was trying to say her low score was due to her being preoccupied with gender. And she responded by saying it was just that she didn't want to do it - maybe she chose to spend her time on a different supercurricular but whatever, she doesn't have to explain herself.

Not sure he sounds very open to training, and if he was he might have negotiated it before going to tribunal?

his safeguarding excuse didn’t apply to an over 16

Can you clarify what you mean by this? This is from the NSPCC:

In England, a child is defined as anyone who has not yet reached their 18th birthday. Child protection guidance points out that even if a child has reached 16 years of age and is:

• living independently
• in further education
• a member of the armed forces
• in hospital; or
• in custody in the secure estate

they are still legally children and should be given the same protection and entitlements as any other child (Department for Education, 2023).

https://learning.nspcc.org.uk/child-protection-system/children-the-law#article-top

So this 17 year old was still legally a child. Why does safeguarding not apply?

Because he was arguing that it was in relation to medical treatment and that the child was doomed to go down a route of cross sex hormones (of which there was no evidence anyway) and under the law, 16 and 17 year olds are presumed to have the same capacity as adults with regards medical treatment. So even if she had been taking cross sex hormones that would have been her choice and not one where a school should interfere.

I saw his interview on GBNews, it’s shocking that he has lost his career over this, he can never teach again. Gender identity ideology has no place in schools.

Are you arguing that parents should not be told about social transition? This is the safeguarding issue.

Are you saying that no one should step in to protect 17-year-old girls who are buying testosterone without any medical supervision?

Regarding the maths olympiad, there are two different olympiads and as I read it, the point of the case revolved around that.

There is the UK maths olympiad paper aimed at A-level students, which is an open category, and there is also a specific girls' only competition. It's a measure to increase and improve female participation in mathematics, just like female-only sport. The student was eligible to sit the female-only paper and would have had a higher chance of getting a medal on that, so he wanted to enter the student for the female-only.

You will immediately grasp how this conflicted with the student's feelings around gender identity.

Note however, that it's been a long time since I sat an Olympiad paper or thought about one. I didn't do as well as I wanted on it!

Children' safeguarding doesn't end at 16

"Treating a person who is under 18 years as a child, is in keeping with Article 1 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child which states that “a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier”."