Teacher sacked for copying trans child's safeguarding info

[Nameychangington]

Now clearly this teacher was wrong to copy a child's safeguarding info.

But this from the judge is pretty concerning:

Judge McTigue also ruled that transitioning children should have anonymity over their true biological sex "for life" to respect their privacy and ensure their future safety.

Are we ever going to get past the idea that hiding transpeople's sex a) is possible or b) has no impact on others? How is this school going to meet the needs of other children if they do that? And again with the 'transpeople are unsafe' rhetoric. It's like 2021 all over again.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gre53drqvo

It's well worth reading the lengthy judgement to see why the teacher was dismissed. She had considerable concerns about having an 8 year old boy thinking he was a girl in her class and the implications of this for the child and his peers. This went on for a long time with her absences, suspensions and numerous meetings. Most of us would share concerns about primary children caught up in socially transitioning.

But what she was dismissed for were serious GDPR breaches - she breached clear school policies and repeatedly accessed the child's online safeguarding records (and another child's records). She had no safeguarding reason to access them and she copied some of the contents - she wanted (and actually used) confidential information about the child and family as part of her case against the school.

You can't breach confidentiality as a teacher as she did and expect to keep your job. It's a very lengthy judgment and I've not read all of it. But it's clear that she was dismissed for gross misconduct.

I completely agree that the issue of Year 4 kids thinking they're the opposite sex is a major safeguarding issue and the lack of guidelines for schools about this (after the draft guidelines issued by the last government) is shameful. But I suspect the judge's comments are taken out of context.

Although safeguarding can be a reason to disclose confidential information in the right circumstances, it sounds like this individual accessed the information repeatedly and transcribed some of it to her own device. Although I may share gender critical views with this person, it sounds to me as if it is right that she has lost her employment.

No idea how stealth works for trans identifying children, but my son had a friend at the school nursery who was a year older than him.
When he caught up with him again( they move to a different building from Reception upwards) his friend now in yr 1 was a girl with a feminine version of his old name.
As far as I can see, everyone knew he was a boy, but nobody was allowed to mention it.
He did go all through Primary education identifying as the opposite sex, then fell off the radar. He didn't attend the local Senior School.

https://sarahphillimore.substack.com/p/how-not-to-challenge-gender-identity

'...in my view the teacher was rightfully sacked. She had made the mistake of allowing a general challenge to a dangerous ideology to lead her into harmful conduct where the welfare of the actual child was subsumed into evidence gathering for a legal action. '
...
'But there is part of the judgment which is very concerning, where the Tribunal dealt with the anonymity issue (para 235 onward). To protect the identity of Child X being discovered the Tribunal made an anonymity order that covered the teacher and the school, to prevent jigsaw identification of the child. The teacher wished to vary the anonymity order to reveal her name but the Tribunal held that her rights under article 10 to speak publicly about the case did not outweigh the child’s right to privacy under article 8.
...
With not much respect to the Tribunal, this is insane. Child X had already disclosed her sex to some of her class mates. The assumption that it would be possible for Child X to keep her sex a secret from even her ‘partners’ in the future is surely magical thinking at its most dangerous. Not only would it be impossible to achieve this, with regard to a sexual partner it is a potential criminal offence.'

... to claim that a trans person has a right to lie to their partner about what sex they are or to their own child about whether or not they are a mother or a father, should not need a court decision to be revealed as yet more ideologically programmed and unjustifiable primacy being given to one minority group against all others. '

She broke the terms of her contract she should have been sacked

Thanks for this Arabella. Good to get a legal view.
Having taught for decades it's disappointing to see a number of these cases where individual teachers centre their objections to social transitioning around an individual child. I understand the difficulties and challenges and how this can impact on the classroom, a peer group and the school, as well as challenging our personal beliefs.
But making it personal about an individual child is plain wrong. Apart from anything else, most of these children are exceptionally vulnerable and don't need public disapproval from their teachers.

Horrifying, atrocious behaviour on the part of this teacher. Catastrophic safeguarding failure!

Good call from the judge, protecting this child's future chances of escaping a lifetime of transphobia.

Hyperbole from the usual quarter.

... by which I mean that horrifying, atrocious and catastrophic are hyperbole. It does appear that this teacher has made a mistake and is suffering the consequences.

Bit confused as there are so many threads about this case (dating back some years) or maybe there is more than one?

So think is a further update.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn7zn077nd4o

This is a different case. This is Kristie Higgs v Farmor's School in Glos, which has been going on for something like seven years. Higgs raised concerns on her Facebook page about what she saw as extreme trans ideology being taught in her son's C of E junior school. She won her case at the Court of Appeal. The school is not allowed to appeal to the SC.

There are so many cases...

This is a different case.

Thanks. In fact I had so many threads open trying to find the right one, I thought based on the name I posted on the right one.

There are so many parents and teachers caught up in all this, trying to walk tightropes to protect children in the face of captured institutions. Some get it wrong in the process, unfortunately.

Of course partners need to know, that’s a given but there is no need for other to know except where the person is taking part in an activity or situation that is segregated by biological sex.

i don’t think I need to know if my cleaner at work is trans for instance. You would never guess my dh’s nephew is trans

As this is about children and schools, then anonymity doesn't apply. Schools need to know the sex of adults and children so that teachers and pupils are not put in compromising positions - eg supervising changing rooms and toilets, ensuring only single sex changing, toilets and sleeping on school trips etc. The needs of children and safeguarding should always come first rather than the demands from activists.