A top London girls's school has been applauded by campaigners for allowing its students to be known as boys or gender-neutral.
St Paul's school - whose former pupils included MP Harriet Harman and actress Rachel Weisz - have revealed they will now let its pupils use boys' names and wear boys' clothes if they so wish under its new 'gender identity protocol'.
It will open and consider requests from students from the age of 16 who are deliberating over their gender identity and/or fluidity, prompted by students debating and questioning gender identity.
The top school's head mistress, Clarissa Farr, told The Sunday Times that such measures would be put in place for the wellbeing of her pupils who 'don't want to identify as one gender or another'.
'We are moving to the point where your gender is a choice,' she told the newspaper. 'I see this as a social phenomenon, especially in London, which is much talked-about among school leaders.
'We have had an LGBT society for a long time. The school is very relaxed about sexual orientation but this is a different issue. This is about gender reassignment. That is a new thing for us.
'We consulted the pupils to find out what the issues were. Their main preoccupation has been to look after people who don't want to identify as one gender or another,' she added.
Sue Sanders, the chair of charity Schools Out - which aims to promote equality for transgender and LBGT students in schools - praised the school's protocol as 'smart and sensible', saying (via The Guardian): 'The gender fluidity of young people has become more pronounced in the last three to four years; there is a growing confidence in young people to challenge binary constraints.
'This is really about organisations keeping up with how people are perceiving themselves – this is part of the whole process of exploding those gender boxes,' she continued.
Meanwhile, the school's protocol states: '[The school] takes a neutral stance, neither encouraging nor discouraging students' and that pupils 'can have discussions at any time to explore their gender identity at the right time'.
It's believed that the school has 10 pupils in its sixth form who wish to be known as boys or gender neutral.
Naomi Gordon is news writer mainly covering entertainment news with a focus on celebrity interviews and television.
