A paediatrics professor is slamming a move to educate teachers about how to identify potential transgender students in their classrooms.

News Corp reports teachers in some New South Wales public and private schools are being taught by gender identity experts how to spot transgender signals in students as young as five.

Educators are reportedly being told to look out for key phrases including “I’m androgynous” and “I feel different”.

News Corp also reveals the number of children being referred by hospitals to gender dysphoria clinics has increased by over 200 per cent in three years.

Professor of paediatrics at Western Sydney University John Whitehall tells Chris Smith it’s “madness”.

“If it wasn’t so serious you’d have to laugh at it.

“The education department pays $700 for someone to come into the school to inform the boys and girls that they don’t really exist. That they’re on a gender fluid rainbow somewhere in between.”

Professor Whitehall says these programs are designed in “the name of stopping bullying” but are doing the opposite.

“In reality, there are many ways to bully children.

“I think this is the greatest, most cruel, most dangerous form of bullying I could possibly imagine.”

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The paediatrics professor says this isn’t where the issue starts and ends, claiming teachers are also being directed by the NSW Department of Education to report parents who don’t back their child’s want to transition.

“If a child appeared to be gender confused and parents weren’t to go along with that, they (teachers) were then obliged to basically contact the authorities,” Mr Whitehall says.

Chris Smith says children are too young to “even understand the concept” of being transgender and should be left to making that decision later in life.

“It is fine for adults to decide they’re transgender. We’ve been on the planet long enough to make decisions like that ourselves.

“But children, they’re too young to even understand the concept.”