The hopes

Another woman punished.

A teacher has been sacked after attempting to scupper the election hopes of a transgender candidate who wanted to be head girl. 

Susan Field told her tutor group she felt the pupil was not “representative” of the student body and that it was not an “appropriate” role for her, the teaching watchdog found.

Ms Field, a French teacher who was said to have previously enjoyed an “unblemished 35-year career”, was dismissed from Ash Manor School, in Surrey, for gross misconduct after a disciplinary hearing into her remarks and subsequently lost her appeal.

I don’t know what being representative of the student body is supposed to mean, but as for a boy who calls himself a girl being head girl, I think that should be off the table. I don’t think boys should take girls’ prizes or jobs or offices or any other scarce commodity of that kind, no matter how they identify.

The student, referred to by the Teaching Regulation Agency as “Pupil I”, had publicly identified as a female student to the school since the start of the academic year.

Whatever. That doesn’t entitle him to take the head girl position away from a girl.

The disciplinary hearing in Coventry was told that, during the 10 to 15-minute conversation in May 2019, various pupils described Pupil I as “disgusting”. Other “hostile and derogatory language” was also used – which Ms Field failed to challenge, the panel said.

During the investigation, she admitted telling her tutor group that it is “not appropriate for a member of the LGBTQI to represent Ash Manor School”.

That complicates the picture, because it shouldn’t be the issue. A lesbian head girl would be a fine thing, it’s the boy as head girl that’s the problem.

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