More than 100 councils are asking parents what “gender identity” is used by their three year-old child on school application forms. The Mail has the story.
Parents are being asked how their three year-old children identify to register them for a place at school.
Local authority admissions forms ask what “gender identity” primary school aged children have in addition to their sex.
The form asks parents whether their children are “man/boy/male”, “woman/girl/female” or whether they would “prefer to self-describe”.
They are then encouraged to give a more detailed description of the “gender identity” of their child, who would be aged under five if registering for a place at a primary school.
The software comes from an external provider and is used by more than 100 local authorities across the U.K., including by councils in London and the North of England, it is understood.
More than 550,000 school place applications were made using the software in 2021. However only parents applying for a primary school place for their children for the next academic year will be confronted by the question after it was recently updated, it is further understood.
One Buckinghamshire mother who was applying for a school place for her three year-old son shared the question online and said: “It has no place on the form with regard to three year-olds on any level.”
She further noted that parents were not asked about potential allergies or other health or behavioural information that may be useful to schools.
Last night Martin Tett, the head of Buckinghamshire Council, admitted that it was “totally inappropriate to ask this question of young” and said he has asked for it to be removed as “swiftly as possible”.
His call was echoed by women’s rights campaigners who demanded that local authorities immediately “ditch these questions or ditch the software”.
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