Exam breakdown to be done by male female and non binary

[hedgehogger1]

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/joint-council-for-qualifications-exam-results-alevel-stonewall-pearson-b2151855.html?amp

So even exam results analysis is being stonewalled now. Some of the teenagers I teach would just pick the non binary category without even knowing what it means. Seems to render the whole thing completely pointless

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

My first thought was as this may disadvantage males more, it won't last.

Wouldn’t it also make it easier to identify the person. If you only have one nb student taking exams that year it’s impossible to make their results anonymous. Everyone know it’s Zand.

This 100% this

They can ask students whether they identify as anything they like, they can ask them their favourite colour too if they like as long as they also accurately record the sex of the students

As long as sex is still recorded, I think it would be quite interesting to know how many teenagers identify as nb or trans, and then to see how this changes over time.

But sex must still be recorded obvs, anything else is idiocy.

They certainly wouldn't be able to use the data at the school level, though I don't know if they would do that anyway - unfortunately in mixed sex schools the 'one girl in the physics/comp sci/etc class' thing still happens.

Why not ask which football team candidates support, but obviously without the option to say 'I do not support a football team'?

' '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, Dr WooWoo McWooFace, the president of the BlowOff society charity which supports football fans told The Telegraph: “It’s going to show that transgender and non-binary people Tottenham, Rangers and Burnley fans are recognised as real people and it's a good idea.”

Why is it up to an exam board to collect this data?

But sex must still be recorded obvs, anything else is idiocy

absolutely

That's their basic error.
They've always recorded sex. That includes every single child. But some idiot has relabelled it as 'gender type'. The label is meaningless guff which doesn't define any clear categories. 'Gender type' is useless for any sort of statistical analysis.
They need to put the label back to being 'sex' and remember what the purpose and limits of data is.

Same. As ever, additive measures are not really an issue, so long as you don't throw out material reality in favour of faddy ideological theory.

If they're recording by gender type I'm starshine-dusk-firefly and I will fight to the death to be recognised. I am valid!

Ooh how are the frost gendered kids doing? Are they doing better than the demi boi Goliath gendered fae fluid ones? What does this tell us about how education could be developed to work better for....

Ffs. What a waste of everyone's time and money on a lot of pointless wankery.

I’d be interested in attendance figures for trans and non binary identifying kids and SEN stats too.

in fact, what I’d really like is some sort of schools census to get a proper understanding of how many ‘trans kids’ are on the school roll of every school in the country. Might help us get a more accurate picture of the scale of the phenomenon.

(as long as they clearly record sex as well as any special genders obvs)

^^ That

How is there any way to know the demographics of TQ+ identified children in any way that supports and betters education and provision for those children without knowing clearly all the relevant information, the basic first of which is sex?

For a start, we know already that we are talking in massive majority about teenaged girls. But which teenaged girls. What's the crossover with other needs since there's a lot of floating suggestive information that many of those girls are likely to have Autism, diagnosed or undiagnosed (and unsupported), mental health needs also both diagnosed and undiagnosed (and unsupported), trauma, history of CSA/DV/DA, is this equal across all areas and socioeconomic backgrounds, etc etc etc

If we don't know then the data does nothing to help improve the circumstances and chances of those children and gathering it is just about some adults patting themselves on the back about how very very open minded and lovely they are. And no. If you're not focused on how does this data improve things for those kids, it does not signal to others how very lovely and progressive you are.

It might show up clustering too.

I doubt the transactivist orgs really want accurate stats tbh.