When I was growing up, I wanted to be James Bond, Robin Hood or the Saint.

It never crossed my mind to be anything other than a boy and certainly not a cat.

Had I tested my parents’ patience with the latter, I would have been offered kitty cat, given a litter and told to enter the house on my hands and knees through a flap in the door!

Madness, you might think, but this week a Sussex schoolgirl, who refused to treat her classmate as a cat, saying it was “crazy”, was told by her teacher that her attitude was “despicable”, and that she should find another school.

The girl and her friend were also reported to a senior authority for ‘re-education’, in a move straight out of Orwell’s 1984.

Thankfully, the cat was literally let out of the bag when a recording of this interchange went viral.

It’s concerning that some teachers appear to be adopting this new religion of equality, diversity and inclusion with fervour.

Not so the redoubtable Katharine Birbalsingh, a no-nonsense headteacher who came to Dorset some years ago at my invitation.

She told the Telegraph: “Teachers and parents have allowed children to lead the way and adult authority has completely dissolved.”

She added: “Teachers are not allowed to tell you what’s going on.”

Certainly, teachers have been fired for failing to address children with their recently adopted, ‘correct’ pronouns, which perhaps explains the total capitulation of some members of the profession.

Children will always be children and test the boundaries.

However, it’s when, for whatever reason, those boundaries are not crystal clear, and parents are kept in the dark, that we see the rise of this claptrap.

Enough is enough.