A private girls’ school is the latest transgender battleground

The ugly nature of the transgender debate – and the viciousness of those who seek to silence others who disagree with them – has arrived in the playground. At a private girls’ school, a sixth form student was surrounded by a mob of dozens of fellow pupils who spat and screamed at her. Her ‘crime’? Questioning a visiting politician’s views about trans rights during a debate and making the point that ‘sex exists’. That girl has now left school and is studying at home. Schools should be places where children can develop their own ideas and debate them. So what has gone so badly wrong?

Only a few years ago, there was an A-Level, which I used to teach, in critical thinking. I taught my students to analyse arguments, identify flaws, assess the credibility of sources and develop arguments of their own. But inexplicably the government binned the course in 2016. That decision could not have come too soon for the purveyors of transgender ideology.

The argument that we all have an innate gender identity that determines whether we are men or women – or perhaps something else – irrespective of our biological sex has taken root in society.