Thank you everyone for your answers.
I did think sexuality meant whether you were attracted to the same or other sex, or both,
and that gender identity was not a sexuality.
It is confusing that the school wrote this given it is the top selective school in this region, where the sixth form is almost like a university, so you would think they would be more exact and thoughtful.
Among replies explaining possible reasons why there might be some ambiguity leading to ‘transgender’ possibly being seen as a sexuality,
@CheeseMmmm yes, I can see that when a heterosexual man becomes a trans woman he might say he was a lesbian.
@Linguini I think that may be what you mean in saying transgender and sexuality cross.
Cases of some trans women claiming they were lesbians, and expecting lesbians to accept them as partners, was written about in an article recently to point how wrong that is, and it is so very wrong that it shouldn’t be part of a school’s interpretation of transgender as a sexuality. You would think they would be aware of that?
Where trans women are autogynephiliacs there is a cross over with sexuality, but isn’t that an aspect not generally admitted to as part of the belief system? So probably not what a school would want to imply admission of.
@EmpressCixi, you suggested they might just be putting everything together in a list of protected characteristics and making a square peg for a round hole, and that could well be true, but it seems sloppy given their aspirations for rigorous standards. I did not write out the whole list of protected characteristics they had written separately (that came before “sexuality”) in my OP, but it included ‘gender’. So it almost seemed intentional when they re-entered transgender under “sexuality”. ( See screen shot)
What they wrote is based on the Equalities Act (2nd screen shot) but then stirs it a bit I think.
I was interested to look at the school’s Diversity Policy wording having heard there is trans gender ideology going on at the school, and pronoun badges are starting to be worn by staff.
Sorry, people I’ve mentioned, if I have paraphrased you wrongly. I didn’t want to try to go back and forth between the two pages of answers while writing.
Thank you all again. I apologise for my delay in replying.