A six year-old girl in the UK who wants to be treated as a boy has been given a support worker to make sure she is treated as a member of the opposite sex at school.

Georgia, who is known as George, has wanted to be a boy since the age of three, according to her mother – the girl refused to wear dresses and tried to cut her own hair short, the Christian Institute reports.

The child’s teacher initially declined to treat the girl as a boy, but now a specific support worker has been assigned to ensure that she is.

Georgia, who is an identical twin, has been referred to local NHS services which specialise in gender issues among children.

Her mother Hayley said she is speaking out now so “people in authority will take us seriously”.

She said: “One day I said, ‘Come on girls’ and she instantly said, ‘No! I’m a boy’! Then she kept telling me she wanted to be a boy. So from then on I had to refer to her as that.”

“I’ve neither encouraged or discouraged it, I’m just going with it. I just want her happy and confident with who she is”, she added.

Hayley is working with the Tavistock and Portman Clinic, which is a charity dealing with children who have gender issues.

The child’s school said it was unable to comment on the case.

In October The Times newspaper reported that the number of children wanting a sex change in 2012 saw an increase of 50 per cent compared to the previous year.

In July, the Government here published the Heads of a Bill which will allow people to change the sex registered on their birth certificates and other official documents without having to undergo “sex change” operations.

The legislation, entitled the Gender Recognition Bill 2013, is based largely on a report by the Gender Recognition Advisory Group, established by the last Government.

Under the proposals, applicants will not have to have lived with their “acquired gender” for a specific period of time prior to their application. Instead, they will be required to make a statutory self-declaration by the applicant that they intend to live permanently in the new gender.

Applicants will not be required to undergo a ‘sex change’ operation, meaning they would not have to have the sexual organs of the sex into which they were born removed.

Instead, they will merely be required to supply validation by the primary treating physician that the person has transitioned or is transitioning to the acquired gender.

Other countries have different requirements. For example, Germany requires that a person undergo a sex change operation before their official documentation will be changed.

The proposed Irish law will be modeled on the UK law which is among the most liberal in Europe.