School maths activity - form filling

[Deanefan]

Live in Wales. My middle child is in year 8 and has decided to accept the opportunity to attend a number of maths workshops at the local university.
The acceptance letter includes a monitoring section and of course asks about ethnicity and “gender identity”
I have explained that my sons biological sex is male and that this might be useful in monitoring as per Equality Act and in determining female engagement in STEM activities 🙄🤞👍

Good work.

Thank you it is the first time I’ve actually put something in black and white that will out my views to the school. Just waiting for the achingly woke SLT SWAT team to knock the door later now!

I did similar when my dd attended a university run course through her schools. Hers was a female dominated activity and I said the same sort of thing that you did that how could they make sure that the group of children currently identified by the government as being the least likely to engage, white boys, were represented.

I received a very speedy reply from them.....because they assumed when I was talking about my daughter......that she was my biological son. Thrilled they were. Absolute thrilled to think that they could make my biological son who identified as a girl very comfortable on this course.

After my email clarifying that my child identified as a female and was born a female they were not quite as happy.

As you rightly suggest we are required to help our partners ensure they are targeting the children who will benefit most from their activities. As such we also need to monitor who attend these activities and thus ask a series of questions to check targeting is effective.

We specifically ask about gender, rather than biological sex, as research has shown that gender^ identity^ affects how a student is perceived by the rest of the world and this is what can have an affect on their chances of progressing to university (e.g. boys being under-represented because of stereotypes about them getting out and earning money, particularly for boys from working class backgrounds).

We feel it important to ask in this way as some individuals may prefer to present their gender differently to their biological sex and this again may affect their chances of progressing to university. Collecting data in this way also allows us to analyse the impact of gender^ identity^ on progression to higher education and degree outcomes.

my ds is year 8 at school. I always cross out "Gender" on any forms and write "sex". I'm sure they roll their eyes every time. 😁

I do that to. Why they need sex is one issue - but maybe ‘Brian she/her’ may flag potential issues/drama/headaches!