What Happens When Schools Decide What You’re Allowed to Read 🚫📚
A Greater Manchester school’s reported removal of more than 130 books is not just a row over one title. It is a wider warning about who gets to decide what young people are allowed to read and what happens when fear, bias, and overreach take over.
A new report from Index on Censorship has put a far more serious spotlight on school book removals in the UK, and it goes well beyond one title being quietly taken off a shelf. According to its investigation, a secondary school in Greater Manchester removed or targeted more than 130 books from its library in late 2025, with nearly 200 affected if individual graphic novel issues are counted. Among the titles listed were Girl, Woman, Other, We Should All Be Feminists, Men Who Hate Women and Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.
That alone would be alarming. What makes the story more troubling is the reported treatment of the librarian at the centre of it. Speaking anonymously, she said she was threatened with disciplinary action, labelled a safeguarding risk and ultimately resigned under severe stress. According to the report, the situation began after the headteacher objected to Men Who Hate Women, which had been ordered for older students following safeguarding training on incel culture. From there, the issue appears to have escalated into a much wider removal of books across the library.
This is where the story shifts. It stops looking like a disagreement over age-appropriate reading and starts looking far more uncontrolled. Index reports that books were removed under vague criteria, including whether they were “not written for children”, had themes that “could be upsetting”, or were considered “inappropriate or a safeguarding risk”, with no clear definition of what “inappropriate” actually meant. That left everything from identity-led titles to biographies, classics and graphic novels open to removal.
One title, Twilight, was reportedly flagged for “mature romantic themes, sexual tension, and violence involving vampires and werewolves”, a detail that would almost be laughable if the wider implications were not so serious.
Because this is the real issue, once broad, undefined standards start driving decisions, almost anything can be framed as unsuitable. Books about racism become a problem because they discuss race, while books that reflect different identities become suspect simply for acknowledging lived realities. At that point, it stops being safeguarding and starts becoming censorship dressed up in school language.
The report also raises a concerning point about how some of these decisions were made. In one document seen by Index, the school reportedly admitted that certain book categorisations had been generated using AI and then treated as “broadly accurate”. That should give pause. Librarians are trained to think carefully about context, readership and access, and replacing that judgement with automated categorisation is not just a shortcut; it risks removing nuance entirely.
What also stands out is who is affected first. Not the people making the decisions, but the students who rely on the library. According to the librarian’s account, many of those students were neurodivergent and LGBTQ+, using the space as somewhere consistent and supportive. When the library was temporarily closed as a “safeguarding measure”, that space was removed from them.
The inclusion of Girl, Woman, Other is especially telling. This is a Booker Prize-winning novel by Bernardine Evaristo, one of Britain’s most respected authors, which shows just how wide the net was cast. At that point, the question is no longer whether books are being reviewed carefully, but what perspective is driving those decisions.
Index on Censorship has described the case as an unprecedented attack on the freedom to read in a UK school setting. Based on what has been reported, that concern is difficult to dismiss. The issue is not just what has happened in one school, but what could follow if this becomes normalised. Librarians may begin to self-censor, schools without clear policies may default to risk avoidance, and students will not stop seeking information; they will simply find it elsewhere, often without context or guidance. That is where the real concern sits, not just in what has happened, but in what it signals going forward.
Restricting access to books does not remove difficult topics from young people’s lives. It removes structured, thoughtful ways for them to understand them, and the world does not become safer because a library becomes emptier; it just becomes less honest.
Looking at the books being removed, a pattern begins to emerge, and it’s not random. Titles like Girl, Woman, Other, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race and Men Who Hate Women don’t just tell stories; they question systems, name inequality, and centre lived experience in a way that is direct rather than softened.
The issue isn’t simply that books are being removed. It’s which voices are being labelled as “too much”. Women writing with clarity about race, identity and power are more likely to be framed as inappropriate, not because their work lacks value, but because it challenges comfort. Once that line starts to blur, safeguarding risks becomes a catch-all, one that can quietly filter out the very perspectives young people may need most.
If a book keeps being challenged, it’s usually not because it lacks value. It’s because it says something people aren’t comfortable hearing. That alone makes it worth paying attention to and worth reading for yourself.
Explore these titles and more through the FROW Book Club on Bookshop.org, and decide for yourself what they have to say.