Teacher suspended for praising pupil using wrong gender

[jnelsoninjax]

A teacher has been suspended and could face the sack after he ‘accidentally’ called a transgender pupil a ‘girl’ in class when the student identifies as a boy.

Joshua Sutcliffe, 27, who teaches maths at a state secondary school in Oxfordshire, said ‘Well done girls’ to the teenager and a friend when he spotted them working hard.

He apologised when corrected by the pupil, but six weeks later he was suspended from teaching after the pupil’s mother lodged a complaint.

Following an investigation, he has been summoned to a formal disciplinary hearing this week to face misconduct charges for ‘misgendering’.

Joshua Sutcliffe, 27, said ‘Well done girls’ to the teenager and a friend when he spotted them working hard. But their parent complained to the school and now the maths teacher faces a formal disciplinary hearing this week to face misconduct charges for ‘misgendering’

According to documents seen by The Mail on Sunday, he also faces claims that he is breaching equality policies by referring to the pupil by name rather than as ‘he’ or ‘him’.

The £30,000-a-year teacher said he was ‘distraught’ and had been reduced to tears as teaching was his life, and he branded the actions of the school as ‘political correctness gone mad’.

Mr Sutcliffe, a maths graduate who gained his teaching qualifications at Exeter University, said he had no official instructions about how to address the student, but along with other staff decided to use the pupil’s chosen first name.

However, he has admitted that, as a Christian, he avoided using male pronouns such as ‘he’ and ‘him’.

He believed this was consistent with the school’s code of conduct and equality policies to show respect and tolerance, and he said he had encountered no problems with this.
I am shocked and saddened by the actions of the school

He said he thought no more about the incident until the week before last when, after a parents’ evening, he was unexpectedly called to the head’s office to be told there had been a ‘transgender complaint’ against him and that he was suspended from teaching while it was investigated.

He was told to come to the school and sit in the staff room preparing work, but he was not allowed to discuss the situation with colleagues.

He later discovered that the pupil’s family had claimed he had not only ‘misgendered’ the pupil but had unfairly given the pupil a disproportionate number of detentions for poor behaviour, though this later claim was not upheld during the investigation.

It is understood that the family’s main concern was that Mr Sutcliffe was picking on their child and they would not have complained about misgendering on its own as they are supporters of free speech.

Mr Sutcliffe said: ‘I was absolutely shocked to be told by the head that I was under investigation. I didn’t know what was happening. It was surreal, Kafkaesque.

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[Daedroth]

The school are being stupid, it's a simple mistake. I work in a school and sometimes staff or students may accidentally refer to me as 'miss'. I don't take offence from it, it's an honest mistake.

[Tuskd]

Thank God the words like "What the F" are genderless so I can use them here without offending anybody.

[dipsylalapo Supervisor]

Ridiculous!

 

At least from the article this sounds like an honest mistake. I don't agree with the notion of being gender fluid, but it's not as if the teacher called the teenager, girl or whatever multiple times. It sounded like a mistake that did not need to lead to a teacher losing his job.

[Dick Montage]

Source: Daily Mail

 

[techbeck]

Start labeling and needing to call everyone by what they prefer, just causes way to many problems.  Getting to the point where you cannot talk to anyone without someone being offended.