The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has temporarily withdrawn controversial LGBT hate crime guidance for schools after being threatened with legal action by a 14-year-old girl.
The girl, named as Miss A in legal documents, is being supported by the Safe Schools Alliance, which said that the guidance would curtail free speech and make "female students feel unsafe in schools".
The CPS has withdrawn the guidance for review after a pre-action letter was sent by lawyers on behalf of the 14-year-old.
The guidance threatened schools with legal action if they did not permit transgender students to use facilities in line with their chosen gender, and defined a hate crime as "rejecting someone" and "not wanting to work with them".
Miss A said that the guidance, published in January, was distressing.
The Safe Schools Alliance said: "We are grateful to the CPS for withdrawing their schools guidance. While the idea that this guidance would educate students on hate crime and reduce bullying may have been well-intentioned, the effect was quite the opposite.
"It reinforced sexist and homophobic stereotypes, curtailed free speech and made female students feel unsafe in schools."
It is the second LGBT policy to be withdrawn from schools in the last month after Warwickshire Council U-turned on its All About Me policy, which taught young children about self-stimulation and said that gender identity "can be best understood as a spectrum".
