Nursery pupils told: Now you can pick gender

EDUCATION chiefs have been criticised for asking children as young as two what their preferred ‘gender’ is when they fill in the national school census.

In a move that has sparked a backlash from parents, youngsters have been asked to choose if they ‘feel’ more like a girl or boy rather than note down the sex they were born.

The nationwide survey, which is carried out across state schools, including nurseries, primaries and secondaries three times a year, gathers key information about children between the ages of two and 19 living in England.

Everything from names, postcodes, age, ethnicity, educational history and attainment scores are collected and then logged in a central database run by the Department for Education to help inform future policy and planning decisions.

Now The Mail on Sunday can reveal that officials are also asking children to say what ‘gender’ they are, rather than to state their sex.

It means that a child who was born a boy but identifies as a girl will be logged as ‘female’ on Government records.

Currently, there is no provision in the survey for the Government to record legal sex.

Last night, critics warned that the move could be subject to legal challenge and endanger young girls. Stephanie DaviesArai, of pressure group Transgender Trend, said: ‘The Office for National Statistics was legally challenged on exactly the same data collection and had to change it.

‘The Department for Education should be aware of the law and aware of the ONS case.

‘It means essentially they cannot distinguish between girls and boys and therefore monitor sex discrimination in schools.

This is really serious.’ It comes as Tory peer Baroness Barran admitted that the Department for Education’s school census did not collect children’s sex.

She said the Government’s position was that ‘gender should be specified as either “M” (male) or “F” (female) (which may be different from the individual’s legal sex)’.

She added: ‘This should be self-declared and recorded according to the wishes of the parent and/or pupil. The school census does not collect the sex of pupils.’

The move comes amid a growing trend among public bodies to allow individuals to record their preferred gender.

But in the past year, pushback has been gaining momentum.

In December, a leading girls’ schools organisation, the Girls’ Day School Trust, declared it would not accept transgender pupils over fears they could ‘jeopardise’ schools’ status as single-sex institutions.