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

Gillick competence is generally around age 13 - not 16 or 17. Children's safeguarding doesn't end at 16.

If those comments about a 13 yr old are real, I'm glad this man is not able to go back to teaching. Ditto if he thinks gay relationships are not valid - that's the comment I wanted to see in context, as I thought possible it may be related to fertility treatment points e.g. gay sex not being valid to qualify you for infertility treatment as it wouldn't be expected to lead to conception in the first place.

That doesn't make his safeguarding concerns about gender stuff wrong. With regard to the Olympiad stuff, I'm wondering if the student or one of their friends was deliberately baiting him. It sounds like just not putting your name forward would have been perfectly possible.

They're surely meaning that at the age of 16 and over, you're treated to the same confidence an adult has when it comes to medical care.
At 16 you can go to the doctor's by yourself with it being nothing to do with your parents.

Edited to say that was in reply to @northtower 's post.

I really hope Lister doesn’t appeal. This clearly isn’t a good pronoun test case. I get the impression that this guy thinks he can say whatever he thinks out loud in any situation and rely on being “GC” to avoid any repercussions. That isn’t how any of this works.

The mum knew about it. She emailed and complained about how her child was being treated by KL.

Agreed. Sarah Phillimore has been commenting on Twitter. She gave him
an hour of free advice & said that in her opinion he didn’t have a case because (paraphrasing) while he could hold his beliefs, the way he’d gone about expressing them did breach what was acceptable.

The safeguarding point he raised was not in relation to telling the parents - it was his attempts to try to talk the child out of transitioning. That wasn’t a safeguarding issue because the child could decide for themselves and would be deemed competent. gillick competence applies to under 16s.

Safeguarding doesn’t apply to 17 years olds?

Thank fuck alone doesn’t work with teenagers eh?

Remember the case was about whether his employee was right to dismiss him for his behaviour.

This case was NOT just about his concerns about gender identity but his all round behaviour.

The case could fail on ANY SINGULAR part of his behaviour as a reason for dismissal.

In theory he could be completely in the right about gender identity, but the way he has handled it and his behaviour elsewhere would still mean he would lose.

This judgment does not set a precident, but it will deter others from perhaps challenging when they should - even in clear cut safeguarding cases - which isn't good.

However that does not mean that this guy should have won. There are plenty of problems with his case, not just the fact that he choose to represent himself.

It was fairly evident when he was defending himself that there was an issue and he was unlikely to win.

If he had legal representation, would it have helped him? Possibly. But if he had then lost the situation would be even worse. And it doesn't stop the issue with his homophobic comments.

I get the impression, it isn't just about what he believed though. Its also about the degree to which he seems to have pressured this kid almost to the point of harassment 'out of concern'. That concern might have been very genuine and honest but you can't force a child to change their mind either. He sounds like he was clumsy and very heavy handed in his manner and approach. Coming from a male teacher this is also not ideal to say the least. There is a total lack of sensitivitiy going on in pretty much everything he has said.

It doesn't surprise me to learn that there were GC lawyers who have said that they did speak to him before the case and that he didn't have a winnable case.

Isn’t the whole point that teachers shouldn’t be sharing their personal political or ideological views with students? This includes if they are advocating for LGBTQIA+++ rights or for Labour to win the next general election or campaigning against giving hormones to children with “gender” issues.

If Lister took issue with school policy or training or pronouns or he had safeguarding concerns about a student he should have taken it up with the school. But he took it into the classroom which is where he crossed the line.

If Lister had avoided sharing his views on this topic with students he probably wouldn’t be where he is now. He could quite easily have avoided using pronouns for this child and simply used the child’s name.

We are not going to win this fight by teachers taking it into the classroom. This is what TRAs are doing and it is wrong. The classroom cannot become a political battleground.

I do work with teens actually and I explained the over 16 point which is the same as Sarah Phillimore made to him. Sorry if you don’t want to accept that and think he’s a brilliant teacher who goes round saying that 13 year old sex abuse victims were having the time of their lives.

Spot on.
It's appalling that so many schools have signed up to Stonewall and countless other political activist groups openly campaigning for the removal of the rights of women and girls and aspects of child safeguarding. But that doesn't mean that individual adults in schools can mirror that and involve students in their own political debates.
It also makes it impossible to challenge the apparent DBS overreach in getting involved and barring him as a threat to children. I suspect he was referred for refusing to follow management instructions involving a vulnerable student and they decided that warrants banning him. I'm not agreeing with that - would need to see the details but, refusing to comply with management directions not to engage in discussions about an issue with a mentally vulnerable student is a disciplinary issue.
Although he's an outlier, we can see how desperate transactivists are to misrepresent the issues - he's not done children or schools any favours in pursuing this.

I quite agree. He seemed massively out of line from what I've read.

and also someone who I'd avoid in real life (I know enough massive reactionary pub bores, don't have any vacancies sorry)

I assume that’s genuine. If so, I have lost all sympathy for him. He clearly has no understanding of the effect sexual abuse by an older woman has on a sensitive boy. Unfortunately I have. It was very confusing and disturbing, and I think it skewed my relationships for many years. I very much regret the effect that had on one young woman who I behaved poorly towards.

That applies when a child is Gillick competent. usually 13.

The poster is claiming children's safeguarding doesn't apply to over 16s.

It does.

I didn’t say that. I said his safeguarding argument doesn’t hold up for over 16s as it had nothing to do with the family knowing about the child’s transition.

not sure why you’re defending this idiot tbf.

Really useful extra information Red. It does sound as if he was overtly and inappropriately political. What is a shame is that the same standards don't apply the other way around to the TRA teachers - they should lose their jobs too.

Their political advocacy can lead to sterilisation and lifelong ill health which is becoming abundantly clear and yet they do not lose their jobs. This is the problem in schools.

I do think in general there is a chilling effect on safeguarding of gender ideology in schools. Clearly good, decent teachers are scared to raise safeguarding concerns. KL is not the only one.

Gillik competence depends on procedure. There is no set age and a child could be Gillik competent for one procedure but not for another at the same age. Also it would not be for a teacher to assess.

At 16 you can go to the doctor's by yourself with it being nothing to do with your parents.

In England, parents can in some circumstances overrule refusal to consent of an otherwise competent child up until 18.

I hope your employer sends you for retraining then, because you are very wrong re: safeguarding.

Really useful extra information Red. It does sound as if he was overtly and inappropriately political. What is a shame is that the same standards don't apply the other way around to the TRA teachers - they should lose their jobs

If a teacher behaved like he has, their job would be on the line, whatever political issue he was pushing. He made it personal. I have seen kids ordered to take part in Pride activities as a group, and disciplined for refusing, but only in exact same way as if they were refusing to play football.
If a TRA target an individual child in the way he did - the equivalent would be if a kid didn't want to use cross-sex name and pronouns and if a teacher constructed a situation to spotlight them, and if the teacher then mentioned suicide to theGC child.... am I being unreasonable in my comparison?

It seems important to me that we are very clear why this tribunal should not discourage anyone from challenging social transitions in education.

The more I read about the case, the more I think Lister was inappropriate. Also if Sarah Phillimore took the time to talk to him and thinks the case was unwinnable, I have a lot of respect for that opinion as being both a legal expert and very plain spoken herself on gender issues.

I have seen kids ordered to take part in Pride activities as a group, and disciplined for refusing, but only in exact same way as if they were refusing to play football.
I'm not sure what point you are making here, but I'm really shocked kids should be ordered to take part in political activities, and don't think that's at all the same as being told to play football. Pride has /always/ been political. It was the whole point of it. And while I strongly agreed with its original aims, and strongly disagree with its current transactivist agenda, I don't think it would ever have been appropriate to enforce it on school children. Unless in a purely learning-about way, as you might learn about alternative religions in an RE lesson or different political parties in a Politics class, or different historical movements in History.

Here's your post where you said The pupil was 17 so safeguarding doesn’t apply here

From the judgment:

5.19 The following day, 3 September, the Claimant raised queries by using the
‘My Concern’ safeguarding portal [260]; with reference to Student A’s email,
he asked whether the student’s parents were in agreement with the “college
complying with her wishes”. He asked whether the student had received the
“requisite counselling to allow her to make a decision of this magnitude” and
whether the College had considered the impact of the student self-
medicating and its drug policy. In evidence he accepted that he did not
know whether the student had had parental support for their transition at
that time.

5.22 The Claimant said that he and Ms Murphy were involved in a ‘heated
debate’. He denied that he had been referred to the Gender Reassignment
Policy. He said that all he was told was that it was ‘College policy not to tell
the parents’.

He raised a safeguarding concern because he didn't know whether the parents were aware. He was told it was college policy not to tell them.

It also makes it impossible to challenge the apparent DBS overreach in getting involved and barring him as a threat to children. I suspect he was referred for refusing to follow management instructions involving a vulnerable student and they decided that warrants banning him.

This is from the judgment re the DBS barring.

5.133 The Respondent referred the Claimant to the Disclosure and Barring
Service (‘DBS’) on 13 January on the advice of the LADO [802-11]. He
was subsequently barred from participating in regulated activities with
children [836-9]. Within its reasoning, the DBS referred to the views that
he had expressed to it, which included that transgenderism was a ‘cult’
and that parents of children who transitioned ought to have been
“investigated for Munchausen by proxy - thus enforcing their beliefs.”

5.134 In relation to Student A, the DBS concluded that the Claimant’s conduct
had “caused emotional harm to a child”. It was concerned that, in the
future, “you would…impose your views onto a child, irrespective of their
choice, or whether your contributions… or invited by them. You would
likely have a serious lack of regard for how this would impact children in
your care.”

The second point could equally be applied to TRA teachers.