School lets teenage girls sleep in boys’ boarding house

A teenage schoolgirl who is unsure about her gender is being allowed to sleep in a teenager boys dormitory at a ‘progressive’ private boarding school in Surrey.

The young girls case is just the latest in a string of cases where children are questioning their own identity, sparking divisions among leading boardings school, who are scheduled to meet in Belfast this week. 

Andrew Fisher, the headteacher of Frensham Heights in Farnham, said he agreed to the request of the teenager and her parents.

He told the Sunday Times: ‘Our boarding houses are co-educational in the day – but boys and girl separate at night into single-sex wings.

‘One of our students, however, has a single room in a boys’ boarding house wing this year.’

The head of the Surrey school added that other pupils were not ‘frightened or intimidated’ by the move. 

Mr Fisher’s Twitter biography claims that he leads a ‘ liberal school… coming from the original progressive movement’ and boasts that no children receive detentions.

There has been a surge of private schools trying to accommodate ‘gender fluid’ children, which could be dangerous in the long term, one head teacher claimed. He added that the internet was encouraging unhappy children to question their identity.

Andrew Halls, The headmaster of King’s College School, Wimbledon, told the Sunday Times: ‘I am not being a backwoodsman but we might be creating a hysteria in which boys think: “Oh my God, perhaps I should be a girl?” and find support online for such ideas.

‘We have to be careful. There is evidence (if you look at the suicide rates) that some people who have done the full transgendering have regretted it.’ 

A number of school have adopted gender-neutral bathrooms, including the Bishop of Llandaff Church in Wales High School, and are concerned they may be sued if they do not accommodate pupils.