Schools no longer required to record pupils' nationality
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Loading... - Giulia Falcone
- 29 Jun 2021
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Schools in England will no longer be asked by the government to collect information on pupils’ nationality and place of birth, the latest significant climbdown in the suite of “hostile environment” policies targeted at immigrants living in the UK.
The low-key announcement, confirming earlier reports, came in the form of a technical document for schools from the Department for Education (DfE) regarding its school census for 2018-19.
Under the heading Discontinued Items, the technical specification lists “pupil country of birth” and “pupil nationality”, with a note that they are “no longer required by the department and, as such, it is removed from the school census collection from autumn 2019 onwards.
“Schools must no longer request this information from parents, or retain the data within their system, for purpose of transmitting to the department via the school census,” the document states.
Two years ago the department added a requirement for schools to ask parents for the information, along with a question on proficiency in English, apparently under pressure from the Home Office under Theresa May.
The department said that answering the questions were voluntary for parents but some schools began requiring families to submit passports and birth certificates.
The DfE later came under sustained criticism when it was revealed that it had been sharing information from its national pupil database – which records the educational progress of every child in England’s school system – with the Home Office and police.
The change was published on the same day as the results of the 2018 annual school census, which showed record numbers of pupils attending England’s state secondary, primary and special schools.
More than 8 million pupils are in the school system, a rise of 66,000 compared with 2017, with 4.7 million enrolled at primaries and nurseries, and 3.3 million at state-funded secondary schools.
The proportion of pupils at mainstream schools receiving free school meals fell to its lowest level since data was first collected in 2001, at 13.6% this year compared with 14% in 2017.
The census also showed a further increase in the proportion of pupils from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, including 33% of primary school pupils and 30% of secondary pupils.
Teaching unions voiced their concern at figures showing a continued outflow of staff from the classroom and a fall in the numbers joining as new teachers, the first overall decline in six years.
The DfE’s school workforce survey showed that 42,400 qualified, full-time teachers joined the profession last year, while 42,800 teachers left, for a decline of around 1%. The data also revealed that 38% of physics teachers did not have a degree or similar qualification in the subject.
A DfE spokesman said: “Teacher recruitment will always be challenging in a strong economy with record numbers of jobs. But we know there is more to do, which is why the education secretary has made it his top priority to make sure teaching remains an attractive and fulfilling profession.
“We are building on our strategy to drive recruitment and boost retention of teachers, working with the unions and professional bodies, and pledged to strip away workload that doesn’t add value in the classroom.”
But Angela Rayner, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said: “As vacancies continue to rise, schools will be left with no choice but spending more and more on supply agencies, which cost schools hundreds of millions of pounds a year because of this government’s failure to recruit the teachers we need.”
