A Yorkshire mother is suing an all-girls school for “secretly” admitting a male student. She discovered that a boy was a member of the school when she overheard a conversation between her teenage daughter and a friend who noted that she had known a student “when she was a boy.”
Joanne Donoghue, 46, attended the all-girls Beverley High School in East Yorkshire herself; she enjoyed her experience so much that she taught at the school for a time and enrolled her three daughters there.
According to an exclusive report in The Times, she attempted to get both the school administration and the council of the East Riding of Yorkshire (which supervises admissions to the school) to answer questions about the admission of a trans-identifying male for a year to no avail, stating that her requests were “shut down.”
In fact, when she first approached the school, the administration simply insisted that the school remained single sex.
“This month, she instructed lawyers to send a pre-action letter threatening to lodge a High Court claim for a judicial review against the local authority,” the Times reported.
“The correspondence, seen by The Times, alleges that the council has unlawfully adopted a ‘secret’ policy to admit biological boys who identified as transgender girls to at least Beverley High School. It argues that the effect of this alleged policy means that parents in the local area ‘cannot make an informed decision about whether to send their children to the school.’”
Donoghue’s letter states that the policy of permitting any male “who identifies as a girl” to enroll in the school constitutes discrimination against girls, especially because the school is not set up to provide private spaces (changerooms or bathrooms) for trans-identifying males.
The U.K. has seen multiple incidents of sexual assaults in “gender-neutral” bathrooms, and there have been reports of girls being “traumatized” and skipping school after being forced to share private facilities with males.
“Teenage girls have particularly acute needs for privacy and dignity,” Donoghue’s letter states. “During the secondary school years, as they begin to menstruate and their bodies change, it is vital that girls can trust that they are in environments that safeguard their privacy and dignity.”
Thus far, Donoghue’s letter has received no response. The Times noted that John Dunning, the chair of governors of the school, has “declined to comment” and a spokeswoman for the East Riding of Yorkshire council merely said that they “are working to understand the issues, and we will respond in due course.” That is code for “we’re talking to our lawyers to find out if we’re screwed or you are.”
“I loved being at that school as I’d had an awful experience with boys when I was at primary school with behaviour that turned quite nasty at times,” Donoghue told the Times. “I just absolutely flourished there. I learnt how to be myself, how to be independent, how to be confident. I was free to be myself without worrying about what boys were doing.”
“The fact it is single sex is important to me,” she said. “We know that there’s evidence that girls do better academically in Stem subjects, for example, when they’re in an all-female environment. The questions I wanted answering were how many biological boys are there at the school and what risk assessments have been done to protect the dignity, privacy and safety of my daughter and other girls in the school.”
“At every opportunity I was shut down. We’re an all-girls school, we can’t discuss pupils with you for GDPR reasons and we have obligations under the Equality Act. That’s all they kept saying. It felt like there was a complete disregard for parents and parental rights.”
The U.K. Supreme Court ruled last year that “sex” under the Equality Act 2010 means “biological sex” rather than gender identity. The ruling has resulted is a massive course correction across the U.K., including Girl Guides announcing that all trans-identifying males must leave the organization by fall.