Mick Hartley

St Paul's Girls' school is following the trend:

The alma mater of a long list of distinguished women, from Rosalind Franklin and Dame Kate Bingham to Emily Mortimer and Rachel Weisz, is to rename the role of head girl because it is too “binary”.

The head girl of St Paul’s Girls’ School, one of the country’s leading private schools, will be known as head of school after calls from pupils to make the role more inclusive.

More inclusive? But…it's a girls' school ffs. It's in the school name. Or will that soon be changed?

The school confirmed that the change would take effect from the next academic year, prompting outrage from some staff who claimed that it sent a “damaging message that girls now have to be ashamed to be seen as girls”.

“Why do the girls have to change their name?” a source said. “They should be teaching young women to be proud of their sex, not ashamed of it. It’s very contradictory. How can you be a single-sex school that exists to empower girls to do well and at the same time support girls to identify out of being a girl?

“The school is trying to do the right thing but the problem is they are being badly advised. Why would parents want to send their daughters to a school where girls are not happy to be girls?”

Why indeed. But what fun they've been having:

Further details have also emerged of a training session in which staff at the school, where fees are £26,000 a year, were told there were at least “150 gender identities”.

The webinar — Beyond the Binary: Understanding How to Be Inclusive for All Gender Identities — was hosted in April by Helen Semple, the deputy head, in her capacity as founder of the Schools Inclusion Alliance, a group that aims to “put inclusion at the heart of every school”. It featured as guest speaker Emma Cusdin, founder of Global Butterflies, who spoke about her own transition from male to female. “The LGBTQI world is an amazing rainbow of positivity and labels. We love labels. We love terminology, we love flags, we love parties,” Cusdin told staff.

“Young people are finding amazing ways to self-identify. At the last count, we stopped counting at 150 gender identities that people are self-identifying. We did a little quiz in terms of what are the 150. I know about 30, in terms of what the definitions are. Don’t be afraid to ask, ‘That’s a new term to me. What does it mean to you?’ ”

Asked how teachers should deal with “non- accepting parents”, Semple said: “I think a lot of the time when we’re working with parents they haven’t had access to the same material and training and education that we as teachers have had. So I think there’s an element of supporting parents with education.”

How very patronising. Those stupid parents – not up to speed with the latest gender ideology.

A source said: “I think it’s outrageous they gave us this training and that we should be OK with it. Staff are scared to speak out because the conversation is so toxic, and parents don’t want to criticise the school because they want to protect its reputation and their investment.”

Stonewall aren't mentioned in the article, but this move has the Stonewall stamp all over it. Especially given this latest revelation, from the Telegraph yesterday:

Teachers should drop the terms boys and girls in favour of “learners”, and mix up the sexes in PE classes, Stonewall has told schools.

The controversial LGBT charity is urging teachers to ditch all gendered language and gendered uniforms and suggests that children should compete against the opposite sex in sport.

A series of guidance documents state that uniform policies should "give the option to wear a skirt as well as the option to wear trousers". One of Stonewall’s guides said that its work in primary schools was funded by the Government Equalities Office.

Stonewall advises school staff that they should: “Avoid dividing learners by gender, whether in the classroom (you could divide them by their favourite colour, month of birth or something else) or through uniform, sports activities or other aspects of school life.”

Trans pupils can use the lavatories, changing rooms and dorms on school trips that they feel most comfortable in, another booklet states.

To be a member of the Stonewall School & College Champion schools, establishments have to pay a yearly fee, starting at £150 plus VAT for those with less than 100 pupils, and rising to £800 plus VAT for those with more than 2,000 learners.

St Paul’s, the prestigious private school in London, is reportedly among the hundreds of primary and secondary schools that are members.