Children to be recorded on school census by sex not gender

[RedToothBrush]

FairPlayForWomen AT fairplaywomen
BREAKING NEWS: Schools told they must record the SEX of all pupils in England /1
^www.gov.uk/guidance/complete-the-school-census/changes-for-2022-to-2023^

Every term schools in England must submit data to the DfE. This is known as the School Census. The DfE determines what data is required by law. In recent years, sex data had been replaced by "self-declared" gender /2

With the high numbers of children now self-identifying at school this was likely to seriously corrupt any dataset cross referenced with sex. /3
^sex-matters.org/posts/updates/school-survey/^

Following our Census court win forcing the ONS to drop the idea that sex can be "self-identified" we have been pushing for the same to apply to the School Census. We have been lobbying Government to rectify this problem for two years. This week new guidance has been published /4

Every school in England MUST submit data on SEX for all pupils. SEX is defined as "the sex of a person as recognised in law". /5

No school child can change their "sex recognised in law". A GRC cannot be obtained under the age of 18. This means schools must collected data on the sex every child was born, regardless of how they identify /6

Green shoots of common sense are emerging at last. "gender ... has been replaced by the new sex data" /7

Worth reminding everyone that in schools, girls are far more likely to self-identify as trans than boys, so this really does matter. Otherwise girls would be massively unrepresented.

That would affect requirements for provision of toilets for example (amongst other things).

Well done to Fair Play For Women

Yes, well, the SIMS database has renamed "gender" (M or F) to "sex", which is great.

But SIMS now has new fields "gender identity", "pronouns" and a "pronouns only to be used in school" flag.

As I say on the other thread:

I'm ok with that tbh.

It means data is being recorded.

That might mean in future you can see how many trans kids there are in each school, what the demographic profile is and potentially whether there are correlations with high rates of SEN or social service involvement. It might allow us to see patterns which, to date, haven't been formally identified.

If we see patterns we can ask questions. Asking questions is a good thing. It encourages critical thinking.

Out of interest what are the options on gender identity on SIMS?

Good question! I haven't actually seen this field populated (not sure if my school intends to use it) so I couldn't say.

No organisation should collect more data than it needs. All organisations must lawfully process data, which includes processing, storing, deleting.

If schools are going beyond the law, they're only storing trouble for themselves. Including any deletion they do, thinking they can hide their tracks.

I did wonder how this was justified under GDPR.

I'm trying to summon the courage to stick my oar in.

Cross post from elsewhere after @MrsOvertonsWindow sent me the url. We have Arbor at my school & that has always had the Sex data item - they added the optional Gender over the summer.

But already this term I have had 3 different data queries asking for the Gender instead of (or in once case replacing) Sex of the children when data is uploaded for assessment purposes (including one from the DfE!). All 3 data collections could not have this box left blank so we had to rename our Sex info to upload.

So am wondering how to go about complaining about this?