School Equality Policy

[GrimDamnFanjo]

Before I put my foot in it at the next Gov meeting - this is not helpful is it?
The school intends to monitor
"staff recruitment data and trends with regard to race, gender and disability"

Should be sex and gender recognition certificate?

Sex and gender reassignment would be in keeping with the legal protected characteristics.

For the purposes of the Equality Act, the characteristic of gender reassignment applies to anyone who is
proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.

No need to get all the way to a Gender Recognition Certificate, pretty much any intention or action to "become" another gender (IIRC, non-binary type genders have been ruled to be included by an employment tribunal - which is not binding - but not by higher courts yet) seems to count.

For the purposes of government monitoring, someone with a GRC should generally be recorded under their legal sex, not biological. The whole thing is a mess and the government frequently make it worse by conflating sex and gender in guidance and other output.

You're right. For some reason they've changed the law
Sex Matters have some helpful guidance:

sex-matters.org/posts/updates/schools-guidance/

The reference in the policy document should be the act

www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/section/4

Each specific policy classification should then quote the specific section as per the post by NumberTheory

I dug into this a bit a while ago and found that lots of school‘s equality policies use gender instead of sex. I suspect that the person writing the policy often has a squeamishness about using the word sex and/or a misunderstanding of what the protected characteristics actually are.

It should be ‘sex’ and ‘gender reassignment’.

The PC should be sex and gender reassignment. Gender and gender identity are not PC.

Can you ask for clarity as to what they mean by gender? Are they trying to monitor sex or gender identity.

And if they mean gender identity, are they also going to monitor sex?

Sorry, I have just re read the title - agree with PPs that the correct PC is Gender Reassignment

Surely race, sex and disability are all very solid, core equality concepts that require clear policies?

It would seem that "gender reassignment" is a much less clear-cut concept in equality law. When does someone who claims to have a trans identity acquire the right not to be discriminated against? Has it ever been an issue in the school?

I would argue that the most important thing is to focus on the core equality concepts, and the second most important thing is to try to understand the badly written law on gender reassignment as best as you can, and try to work out to what extent you can adhere to it whilst not infringing on sex based rights.

I think that there is a strong argument that by mispresenting what "gender reassignment" means, and interpreting it to mean - say - "gender identity" risks being an over-reach and risks having unintended consequences. I would be most concerned that mis-representing the law on "gender reassignment" if you get it wrong, risks impinging on the rights of others and causing a backlash that does more harm than good to trans people. The school needs to watch out for that.

I think they are using gender to mean sex. I cannot think why they would be fussed about recording gender reassignment. It is a PC but does not have to be monitored.

It is useful to know how many male/female staff there are, not least from a salary gap perspective.

I would probably not mention it or just ask “for gender, do you mean sex?”.

This is meant to apply for both students and staff!

All our monitoring data is labelled as gender for attainment as it would seem that our comparative data is from other sources eg LA.

I'll be pointing out sex not gender and the inclusion of GRC for staff.

Head girl/boy has now been abolished in favour of "the best person for the job" so I'm feeling very tetchy.

The lack of comparative data is "not your schools problem". The school collect the sex data and add a warning that the external comparative data has limited value due to a flawed data collection process of using 'gender as defined bla bla'

Your school has to abide by GDPR rules, what legal basis do you have for collecting, processing and storing a data subjects data?

race = the Act section X
gender = ????
disability = the Act section X
GRC = ???

What legal, financial and reputational risk are the school adding by collecting, processing and storing data when the school has no legal foundation to do so?

Then the question is why is the school recording the individual staff data point, the GRC. Is there going to be any situation where the GRC forces the school to change the processes due to the sex and gender reassignment of the individual? If there is a situation eg where single sex services are needed, the school need to look at both elements and rework the process to eliminate the need to produce a GRC. The question: would the school allow female/male staff to do XYZ; if not, why not.

Collecting this data is part of the monitoring process for schools according to the DfE

I understand that but the DfE has to comply the law too.
If the DfE is collecting "gender" information have they got it wrong and should be collecting data on sex?
Eg If they were following "Stonewall law" or "decided to get ahead of the law" (failing to comply with the actual law).

I don't think the DfE are legally obliged to collect data on students' protected characteristics. Potentially, they could have a reasoned need to consider gender data, though I'm not sure what that would be. If they don't have a reasoned need the would, I believe, be breaking data protection laws in recording it.

For staff, (again, I believe) they are supposed to report pay by legal sex for the gender pay gap.