A former maths teacher was dismissed from New College Swindon for gross misconduct after refusing to use a trans student's name and writing their deadname on a whiteboard in front of the class. He was subsequently barred from working with children by the DBS, and has raised over £46,000 to fund appeals against both decisions. The student at the centre of this story has largely disappeared from the headlines, but the harm done to them has not.

What actually happened in that classroom

Let me start with what the tribunal record says, because it tends to get lost in the noise of the fundraising campaign and the culture-war framing that surrounds it.

In 2021, Kevin Lister refused to use a student's preferred name in a lesson. He then wrote that student's deadname on a whiteboard, in front of a full classroom. The student was 17. The complaints that followed alleged he had not treated them with respect or dignity, and the college agreed. He was dismissed for gross misconduct in September 2022.

That is the act at the centre of all of this. A teacher, in a position of authority, chose to publicly humiliate a teenager by announcing to the room the name that teenager had moved away from. Whatever else is argued in tribunals and on GoFundMe pages, that is what happened.

The framing Lister chose, and what it reveals

At his original hearing, the tribunal panel summarised his position in terms that are worth reading carefully. He had compared the social transitioning of a child to the illegal act of female genital mutilation. He had invoked Dr Josef Mengele and cited the Nuremberg Code on human experimentation. He had described students who had "been persuaded to take wrong sex hormones". He described using a student's chosen name as "compelled speech".

These are not the views of someone gently wrestling with a theological or philosophical question about gender. They are the views of someone who had decided, in advance and with considerable conviction, that a 17-year-old's sense of self was a form of harm being done to them, and that the appropriate response was to override it publicly and in front of their peers.

The then-principal, Carole Kitching, put it well. It was not Lister's gender-critical beliefs that led to his dismissal. It was the way those beliefs were expressed: by harassing and discriminating against a student. The college, she said, was not encouraging transgenderism. It was supporting students who have a protected characteristic. That is a distinction that keeps getting buried.

The DBS bar, and what it means

Following his dismissal, the Disclosure and Barring Service barred Lister from participating in regulated activities with children. He is appealing that decision separately, arguing that the DBS may have based its decision on evidence that did not amount to relevant conduct. His Employment Appeal Tribunal hearing began on 20 October.

The DBS does not bar people lightly. A bar of this kind reflects a determination that someone poses a risk to children in a regulated setting. That is a serious finding, made through a separate process from the employment tribunal, and it sits alongside rather than flowing simply from the dismissal.

Forty-six thousand pounds, and what it is funding

The GoFundMe campaign was set up to fight what Lister describes as "transgender madness in the education system". It has raised £46,645 at the time of writing, with a single anonymous donation of £10,000. The goal is £50,000.

People donating to campaigns they believe in is not unusual. But this money is funding a series of legal challenges aimed at establishing that a teacher had the right to refuse a student's name and to display their deadname to a room full of their classmates, and that the consequences of doing so were unfair.

The trans student at the centre of this is 17 in the original incident, which means they are now an adult. There is no update on how they are. Nobody is running a fundraiser for them.

What this costs the students who are watching

Cases like this receive enormous coverage, and that coverage has an effect. Every trans young person in a school somewhere in the country reads about this and draws a conclusion about how safe their classroom is. Every teacher who is on the fence about whether to use a student's name watches the GoFundMe total rise and draws their own conclusion.

Being addressed correctly at school is not a luxury. It is not an ideological imposition. For many trans young people, it is the difference between a day that is survivable and one that is not. When a teacher refuses to do it, and then writes the discarded name on a board for everyone to see, that is not a principled stand but a choice to make a student's life harder, in public, in a space where the student has no choice but to be.

The tribunal that heard this case found that Lister was fairly dismissed. The appeal tribunal will reach its own conclusion. Whatever happens legally, the facts of what happened in that classroom do not change, and neither does the cost to the person who was in it.

If there is a news story you would like me to cover then just let Sammy know.

Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives at the centre of both.