Kevin Lister has lost his case at an employment tribunal in Bristol. I am not surprised. The former maths teacher was dismissed by New College Swindon for gross misconduct in September 2022 after he failed to refer to one of his students by their preferred name or pronoun.

There was a clash of beliefs. The student identified as the other sex, while Lister believes that human beings cannot change sex, and that – in his words – ‘taking testosterone is likely to cause long-term medical problems and [his student] would be reliant on the NHS, and the services could not be guaranteed for the future’.

Let’s be clear, I am also deeply concerned about the impact of gender identity ideology on children. That is more than a belief. My arguments are rooted in biological reality – sex matters and denying that truth to children leaves them at the mercy of social media influencers who peddle all sorts of quackery. But I am also a teacher, and our classrooms are not ad hoc platforms for us to discuss these issues with the children in our care. Had Lister stuck to teaching maths like I stick to teaching physics then he might still be in a job.

Two excerpts from the judgment rang alarm bells for me, and they both came from Lister’s own evidence. Firstly, Lister had enrolled the student into a maths competition for girls. Not only that, he had written the student’s ‘previous female’ name on a list of entrants on the white board in front of the class. When the student asked about their eligibility to participate, Lister told her that, ‘she could because she was a girl’.

That might have been factually correct – as Lister subsequently claimed – but was it appropriate to draw such attention to it so publicly and in front of the whole class? I think not. As teachers we are in a position of trust, and we set the agenda for each lesson. We should aim to teach our subjects and create an environment in which every member of our class can flourish. Lister seemed oblivious that his actions might have caused upset.

Secondly, the judgment then recounted what happened when the student stayed back after class. Lister said that he explained that their decision to transition was ‘irreversible’, and then relayed a personal story of a family member who attempted to take their own life through an incident of alcohol misuse. To quote directly from the judgment: ‘The context, [Lister] said, was that the individual had not appeared to address the root reason for their attempted suicide, which he considered was analogous to Student A’s inability to address what might have been the real reason for their desire to transition.’

Lister’s case to the tribunal was put on the basis that he considered the student to be ‘in serious and imminent danger from the risk of taking cross-sex hormones’, though it seems that there was no evidence that the student was in such a danger. But how would a maths teacher know that in any case? He is not a doctor. Maybe he feared that other teachers were cheerfully affirming the transition of children? That is perhaps one of the greatest scandals of our time. But two wrongs do not make a right.

Lister may well have won his case if he had challenged his employer’s policies in the appropriate manner – emails to the head teacher and chair of governors, perhaps – and then lost his job for asking awkward questions that the employer could not defend. Or he could have campaigned on social media, taking care not to identify individuals. But he chose to use his position in the classroom to make his point, pointing the finger at a young person under the age of 18.

That was wrong, and the employment tribunal judgment was right.