Dd, 17, asked by school if she had Bristish passport

[Sadusername]

DD just let it slip that she was asked to go to the school office to declare whether or not she has a Brisitsh passport. Only young people with foreign names or who "looked" foreign were asked. I am furious. Feels like the beginning of a slippery slope....

what "need" does nationality identify

The point is that right now we don't know. It may be that the information will reveal that children who are not born in the UK and/or children who are not of British nationality tend to underperform at school regardless of their fluency in English. It may tell us that schools with high percentages of such children tend to underperform even if they all speak English as their first language. Or it may not identify any need at all, in which case collecting the information will, at least, have confirmed that there really is no need requiring a policy response.

i was never asked if DD had UK passport on any documentation. I was sent letter asking me to let school know if DD not born in UK.

It's almost as if certain posters here are really heavily invested in denying that racism exists

Yes, racism exists. And it may be that some schools are making assumptions and only asking the parents of some children, in which case they are not doing it right. Equally it may be that some schools already have this information for many pupils and are only asking those for whom they do not currently have the details.

If our schools are failing non-UK students, do we really not want to know?

I was sent letter asking me to let school know if DD not born in UK

The information schools are being asked to collect is country of birth and nationality. They are NOT being asked about passports. I suspect your school is assuming that all UK-born pupils are of British nationality. This may, of course, not be true.

If our schools are failing non-UK students, do we really not want to know?

We know why schools are failing students, and it's not their nationality! It's the very people who are collecting this data who are forcing teachers out of the profession in droves and sending childhood mental health problems through the roof! Wiping out non core subjects, leaving no time for creative topics.

You think they're going to use this info to do good stuff? And not to justify yet more bad stuff?

It may be that the information will reveal that children who are not born in the UK and/or children who are not of British nationality tend to underperform at school regardless of their fluency in English.

The question as posed is too crudely put to elicit any useful information.Take the example of a child born in Australia to British parents who is brought to the UK as a baby of 6 months, and will have no recollection of living anywhere else. This data wouldn't distinguish that person from a child of exactly the same parentage and birthplace who didn't come to the country until the age of say 15, and might find that the different school systems and curricula caused them problems.

So this may just be a badly drafted question, but with the current xenophobia prevalent in this country, parents are right to express concern.

We know why schools are failing students, and it's not their nationality

Many schools are not failing their students at all. The performance gap between publicly funded schools and independent schools is closing rapidly. The only statistics I can find on childhood mental health problems suggests that the figures are pretty stable, not going through the roof. It is, however, true that teacher retention is an issue.

I believe the government is trying to improve the performance of our schools. Whether or not all the measures they are introducing are effective is open to question. It is certainly possible that the information gleaned from these statistics will result in a policy response that is either ineffective or worse. However, in my view the point at which to deal with that is when the policy goes out for consultation. If policy makers are denied this kind of information there is no way for them to identify issues and form an appropriate response.

Exactly, dual nationality tells you nothing. Nothing at all.

It doesn't distinguish between dual nationals who happened to have one Italian or Irish grandparent even though everyone else in their family is British, and someone who only naturalised recently. Which shouldn't matter anyway, because a naturalised dual citizen is still 100% British, not some second rate part-british entity (yet )

(except, it tells us that even if you follow ALL the rules and naturalise, you're never really welcome or "like us")

So how does the Dual category tell us anything of educational use at all? It doesn't, It just doesn't. Gives lots of useful stats for political games though

It's a census thing, we've had to complete it for my dd's school.....

Peregrina, presumably the 15 year old who didn't come to the UK until they were 15 would have their English education start date recorded because this data is tracked every year.

Here's what this new data does offer:

If the EFL stats aren't giving the right politically charged stats, they can now add in ALL "other nationals & dual nationals" to paint an inacurate shocking picture, implying that "other" or "dual national" means people who shouldn't be here

we've had to complete it for my dd's school.
you didn't have to...

presumably the 15 year old who didn't come to the UK until they were 15 would have their English education start date recorded because this data is tracked every year.

Which could be useful information, so what purpose is served by asking whether they are British?

This is the problem with the superficially simple and appealing "We'll assume that all our pupils are British born UK citizens by default, let us know if that isn't the case" approach.
You send the letters out, you don't get a reply concerning little Emily Carter, whose parents you went to school with, or from little Zotya Wasliewski whose parents speak strongly accented monosyllabic English. Do you chase up both, or neither, or do you "use your common sense"?

Just wait for the headlines, they will come:

shocking % of children using our schools are of foreign nationality

It won't matter than many of those are actual dual british nationals
it won't matter if they are foreign nationals via one parent or grandparent and the rest of their family is british
it won't matter if one of their parents is british
It won't matter if they naturalised
It won't matter if they only speak English
It won't matter if they're from a statistically high attaining family (academic parents) who are net contributor

It will be implied (probably with visuals of BAM or muslim kids with the white lookin ones cropped out) that everyone with a foreign nationality is one of them economic migrant's "CRIPPLING" our schools

They'll still be used as "other" for whatever they are to be scape goated for

Leaving others free to sit back and profit by sucking everything that is good out of education while everyone's eye is on their neighbour's 5 year old who is now apparently responsible for everything that's unsatisfactory with the education system

Surely it's obvious that your child was asked because you ignored the letter from the school, nothing to do with whether she looks 'foreign'. I don't see how you can make that assumption.

Sorry, what I meant to say is that our DCs were born in Bulgarian but have British citizenship through being adopted by us. So, strictly, they are British. They have integrated very well and have no trace of accents or anything, seeing as we adopted at birth.

Don't be sorry Bowiefan - there are plenty of ways that someone not born in Britain can be British, and if there are people here ignorant and rude enough to come on and question someone else's right to call themselves British without knowing that, well, they can count themselves lucky they came across you and not me because I'd have told them to fuck off.

Ridiculous

we've had to complete it for my dd's school.

you didn't have to...

No. When it comes down to it, you don't "have" to do much. You don't "have" to put any clothes on but you might choose to, to avoid embarrassment or arrest. You don't "have" to send your kids to school. You can choose to home educate. When it comes to it, the only thing you "have" to do is eat, drink, sleep, breathe and excrete, surely?

That poster said she had to fill in in, presumably, because she was asked to and did.

The census day was Friday. OP presumably as the school had not had a return from you, refusing to answer the questions, they asked your daughter.

prh47bridge is spot on. The government is looking to close the gaps in attainment and I suspect if they find those students do not perform as well then funding streams will increase to allow schools to provide better interventions.

And if they are not underperforming then there will be no need. They can't use that information willy nilly. Data protection would prevent that.

Ive obviously been living net a rock as had no idea about the census.

However DS started a new school in September and the data sheets did ask for this information.

Ds was born abroad - but he's British with a British passport!

The point is that right now we don't know. It may be that the information will reveal that children who are not born in the UK and/or children who are not of British nationality tend to underperform at school regardless of their fluency in English.

Why do intelligent and informed posters defend the indefensible?

If you wanted to do serious research about whether nationality affects school performance, first you would need a hypothesis (hint: "we don't know" isn't one) and to construct a scientific data collection method that will help determine whether the hypothesis is correct or not. This doesn't: as others have said, nationality may or may not have any impact on educational need.

^I have sent in a letter to my DS's school withrawing my permission for them to supply central government with any information on DS's birth country or nationality, and they have acknowleged that they will respect my wishes.

I am finding it funny/depressing at all the people here accusing the OP of "drama" and "whinging", and scoffing at the idea that certain pupils are being targeted. This despite plenty of documentation of letters people have got from their schools saying exactly that.

It's almost as if certain posters here are really heavily invested in denying that racism exists. I wonder why that could be? ^

This. All of it.

I've always ignored such requests from school. It's racism by the back door, and it's wrong.

Schools giving information about non British pupils, workplaces giving information on non British workers...

Why don't we just give them all a badge and be done with it?

We have been asked and my DC are clearly British (surname and looks).
It is the DFE census that has been discussed on other threads.
Hoe is your DD sure about who has/hasn't been asked?