‘Child identifying as cat’ debate: from TikTok video to media craze | Schools

An instructor is heard informing the trainee that their views were “despicable”, threatening to report them to a senior associate and stating: “If you don’t like it, you need to go to a different school.”

The audio was plainly reported by the Sun, and the Daily Mail started cautioning of break outs of so-called “furries” in schools.

The prime minister’s representative got included, informing reporters: “Teachers … should also not be teaching contested opinions as fact or shutting down valid discussions and debates.”

Asked whether a kid might determine as a cat, a representative for Keir Starmer said: “I think children should be told to identify as children.”

By midweek the Department for Education had actually dispatched a civil servant to Rye college, while Katharine Birbalsingh, the headteacher of Michaela neighborhood school, was informing the Daily Telegraph she understood of a school where a student determined as “a gay male hologram” and an independent school where “a bunch of girls identify as cats”.

“It starts from when they are babies or toddlers and we give them a choice of food, rather than showing them to eat what’s in front of them,” Birbalsingh said.

But the school has actually said that “no children at Rye college identifies as a cat or any other animal” and apologised to moms and dads for the handling of the initial conversation.

Natasha Devon, an advocate and broadcaster who was the DfE’s very first “mental health champion”, said the debate ran the risk of producing a hazardous environment in schools for both students and instructors.

“I feel like it’s been blown totally out proportion. To be clear, I’m in three schools a week all over the UK. I’ve never met a pupil, I’ve never met a teacher or a parent, who has ever talked about anybody identifying as a cat. And if they did, I would assume it was a teenager messing about.

“So it’s definitely not a trend in the way that it has been presented. And this is very much about trying to delegitimise those young people who are trans,” Devon said.

Devon concurred that the team member included “could have handled it better” however said it highlighted the pressure numerous instructors had actually been positioned under. “There’s a lot of fear now around what you can and can’t say in a classroom and not being able to answer young people’s inquiries honestly.

“What teachers should do is provide a factual counterpoint to a lot of what students are seeing on social media around sex and relationships education. And teachers are not able to do that effectively, because they’re so worried about the consequences of something being taken out of context and then a parent writing on Facebook and it being picked up by the tabloids,” Devon said.

Geoff Barton, the basic secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and a previous headteacher, said: “There is a need for a sense of proportion here. This involves an incident at one school in which the trust has already met with the DfE to share an update on the events that took place, and the school has said that no pupils identify as a cat or any other animal.

“Now we have politicians, including the minister for women and equalities, weighing in over this matter in a manner that is unnecessary, unhelpful and smacks of grandstanding.

“To be clear, we have never heard of any issues arising at any schools over children identifying as animals. However, there are 9 million children in England’s schools so all sorts of discussions are bound to crop up in classrooms. Teachers and leaders are very good at dealing with whatever situation arises.”

Barton said it highlighted the requirement for the federal government to release its guaranteed assistance on transgender students in England, which ASCL initially looked for 5 years earlier. “It is of the utmost importance that this guidance – which we believe to be imminent – is genuinely helpful and supportive to schools and pupils, and that it is not intolerant and burdensome,” he said.

Ofsted examined Rye college in January this year and ranked it as good, with inspectors applauding the school’s “robust” protecting and its “high quality” staff training. Asked about Badenoch’s ask for a brand-new evaluation, a representative for Ofsted said: “We are considering the letter but we don’t have anything further to add at this point.”