A day after OpIndia reported that a school has introduced ‘non-binary’ as children’s gender, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has asked the education dept officials of the Uttar Pradesh and Haryana governments to ensure that schools don’t use non-approved terms for genders. As per NCPCR, the use of ‘non-binary’ as gender violates norms, as the approved term is ‘transgender’.
On 16 February, NCPCR issued notices to Principal Secretary of the Department of Basic Education of the UP govt and Secretary (Education) of the Directorate of School Education of Haryana over a parent feedback form issued by Shiv Nadar School with campuses in Gurugram, Faridabad, Noida and Chennai.
The notice issued by NCPCR states that it has received a complaint regarding use of inappropriate terminology by the school with respect to child’s gender. The notice stated, “As highlighted in the complaint, the school in its Parent’s Feedback Survey has a question on Child’s Gender. The options given arc Female, Male and ‘Nonbinary’.”
NCPCR states that the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 defines and uses the term ‘transgender’. The National Education Policy (NEP) also refers to transgender children/students and do not use any other term, like ‘non-binary’.
The national child rights body therefore asked the education officials to ensure that no such term is used by any school in any form that does not align with the National Education Policy (NEP) and the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019. NCPCR further instructed the officials to submit a report on actions taken in the matter within 10 days of issuance of the letter.
Notably, in the Parent’s Feedback Survey, the Shiv Nadar School provided three options for the child’s gender, female, male and non-binary.
In the form, there is an option to select the child’s grade. It is evident that this form is to be filled even for kids as young as 3 or 4 years of age since selecting ‘Foundation year’ and ‘Nursery’ is also an option.
A copy of the controversial form was posted by an X user on the social media platform. The matter came into focus after OpIndia reported on the matter yesterday, 15 February.
Non-binary is used to describe people who feel their gender cannot be defined within the margins of a gender binary. Instead, they understand their gender in a way that goes beyond simply identifying as either a man or woman. It would, therefore, mean that Shiv Nadar is going down a slippery slope of elected pronouns and woke gender politics of the West.
