The government's women and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch has demanded that Ofsted conduct a snap inspection of a secondary school in East Sussex due to a gender row between a teacher and pupils, sparked by a conversation about identifying as a cat.
A teacher at Rye College, in East Sussex, was recorded saying that a pupil’s opinion on gender was “despicable”, after the student said there are only two genders and that anyone identifying as an animal is “crazy”.
The discussion, which was recorded and posted on social media, has been widely reported as prompted by the pupil’s refusal to accept that a fellow student identifies a cat, but a statement Aquinas Church of England Trust, which runs Rye College, said that “no children at Rye College identify as a cat or any other animal”.
In the recording, the teacher can be heard saying: “Gender is not linked to the parts you were born with – it’s about how you identify.”
