UK schools told to stop calling pupils boys and girls to promote gender diversity

Schools across Britain have been told to stop using the terms ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ to describe pupils as part of a major diversity drive.

The government-funded ‘Educate and Celebrate’ organisation – that is backed by Ofsted – have sent out a book to 120 ‘best practice’ schools that suggests new terms to address young children.

The book, called ‘Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity?’, features a fictional story about a 12-year-old boy transitioning from male to female.

It encourages teachers, parents and pupils as young as SEVEN to address children who identify with the gender they were born as ‘cisgender’.

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The book’s publishers describe it as “the first book to explain medical transitioning for children aged seven and above”.

Terms such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, should be scrapped, according to the book, and should be replaced with “classes, or houses, or pupils”.

It also suggests terms such as ‘genderqueer’ and ‘panromantic’ – used to describe someone who is attracted to people of all gender identities.

Educate and Celebrate founder Elly Barnes welcomed the book, to be released next month, describing it as “much-needed”.

She said: “Not everyone identifies as male or female – that is fact.”

However, former Conservative Party chairman Lord Tebbit, told the Mail on Sunday: “I think it is damaging to children to introduce uncertainty into their minds.”

Top pic: Rex/posed by models