Exam breakdown to be done by male female and non binary

The only problem here is NOT recording sex. The "non-binary" bit is irrelevant, except where it's undermining the sex recording.

I'd personally have no problem with extra stats about "trans" and "non-binary" being collected. As long as it was voluntary, and sex was also recorded so we knew which were male and female.

It might produce some very interesting information, getting a profile of female non-binaries versus male non-binaries. I'd be all in favour of seeing clear sex-disaggregated data about the "non-binary" population.

Yes, me too.

Would be interesting to have a legal challenge to say, essentially, that if (at least as a public body) you're collecting data about gender id but not sex there's no legitimate (eg, Equality Act respecting) use for the resulting data so it's not legal to keep the data. IANAL but I would hope that might succeed. If not, I would like to see the law changed so that it would.

Seems like it could well succeed. And on top of that you're probably not collecting data about sex that you're required to collect.

The only problem here is NOT recording sex. The "non-binary" bit is irrelevant, except where it's undermining the sex recording.

I'd personally have no problem with extra stats about "trans" and "non-binary" being collected. As long as it was voluntary, and sex was also recorded so we knew which were male and female.

It might produce some very interesting information, getting a profile of female non-binaries versus male non-binaries. I'd be all in favour of seeing clear sex-disaggregated data about the "non-binary" population.

It might not make a trivial difference, either. Girls make up under a quarter of Physics A level entrants for example, and IME girls in male-dominated STEM subjects are exactly those likely to declare themselves trans or non-binary (this is one of the things that makes me saddest). Imagine you're a smallish school, say with an average Physics A level cohort of 10-20 students, looking back at ten years of data trying to work out if your sex-balance data are improving or not... You're going to have to have institutional memory of which "non-binary" students were actually female, or you won't be able to get at that trend at all reliably.

Mind you, in the university where I now work, turns out we don't ever have data on sex. Incoming students get to self-id, and have done for years! Fortunately at this scale I don't think it makes much difference to the aggregate stats. I hope it doesn't.

Would be interesting to have a legal challenge to say, essentially, that if (at least as a public body) you're collecting data about gender id but not sex there's no legitimate (eg, Equality Act respecting) use for the resulting data so it's not legal to keep the data. IANAL but I would hope that might succeed. If not, I would like to see the law changed so that it would.

Makes me wonder why they didn't categorise us into chav, norm, goth, rocker at school.

This is daft as a brush. Students can decide at any moment that they are or are not a different gender identity, it's unstable and unreliable as data collection, unlike sex.

It'll make the figures completely meaningless. Though perhaps that's the idea.

Maya is quoted in the Telegraph article on this subject and all the reader comments are aghast and demanding this nonsense be stopped:
' 'It'll show they are real people'
Responding to the proposals, Dr Jane Hamlin, the president of Beaumont Society charity which supports transgender and non-binary people, told The Telegraph: “It’s going to show that transgender and non-binary people are recognised as real people and it's a good idea.”

However, Maya Forstater, the executive director of the campaign group, Sex Matters, told the Telegraph: "You are losing data, and the potential to see whether girls are doing better than boys or vice versa.

"This is important for the government and education authorities to know. If information on the sex of some students is not being collected because they declare themselves non-binary, it undermines the statistics."

She added: "Throwing away the data even for just a small group means the overall data is not robust. Anything that you do that is trying to address inequality between boys and girls needs to be based on clear data.

"Schools, the government and the exam boards all have an interest in being able to ensure boys and girls can both access education and be assessed fairly. Non-binary has no legal status, so there is no reason to ask children if they are non-binary."

It would certainly be interesting to find out if teens with trans umbrella identities are achieving in line with their non trans classmates but we’d really need to see both sex and ‘gender reassignment’ status recorded for the data to be of any use.

personally, I have observed numerous newly ‘out’ trans identifying teens whose mental health has significantly declined taking their academic abilities down with it, so I would be extremely surprised if Stonewall wanted publishable statistics that could demonstrate this.

I expect the country would be very interested in just how many 16 year olds are claiming to be neither male nor female in 2022 and so I doubt Stonewall would want those numbers crunched either.

Easy way to reduce the achievement gap between boys and girls. No need for any extra input for boys to redress the problem, just persuade half the girls to register as non binary

A spokesman for the JCQ said: “The JCQ tables currently include breakdowns by male and female gender types.

Do they? Are exam candidates asked for their 'gender type'? Or is it still actually categorised by sex?

This needs to be challenged under the Equality Act. Gender identity is not relevant, sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment are the categories to measure.