ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

Young children at schools up and down the country are to be told to stop using the terms ‘boys’ and ‘girls’.

Guidance being sent out for use by teachers, parents and pupils as young as seven advises against the language because of fears it discriminates against transgender people, the Mail on Sunday reported.

The book instead encourages the use of terms such as cisgender, for children who identify with the gender in which they were born.

It also uses the terms ‘genderqueer’ and ‘panromantic’, meaning someone who is attracted to people of all gender identities.

It is entitled ‘Can I Tell You About Gender Diversity?’ and features a fictional story about a 12-year-old boy ‘transitioning’ from female to male.

Its publishers describe it as “the first book to explain medical transitioning for children aged seven and above”.

Instead of terms such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’, the book suggests: “It may instead be preferable to group students into classes, or houses, or pupils”.

The book will be distributed to 120 ‘best practice’ schools by the government-funded and Ofsted backed organisation ‘Educate and Celebrate’.

Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative Party chairman, told the Mail on Sunday: “I think it is damaging to children to introduce uncertainty into their minds.”

Educate and Celebrate founder Elly Barnes said the book, to be released next month, is “much-needed”.

“Not everyone identifies as male or female – that is fact”, she added.