Education Scotland information on holding or collection of data about a pupil's sex at birth: FOI release

Information requested

Does Education Scotland, either directly or through any of its data providers such as SEEMiS, hold or collect data about a pupil’s sex at birth?

If yes, how is this data obtained?

Please provide details on:

• All data fields related to gender and sex.
• How these specific data fields are kept up to date.
• If and how this data is shared with schools in Scotland.

Response

Education Scotland are provided with access to the background data sets from the Insight Benchmarking tool, access which is regulated by the Education Analytical Services (EAS) division of the Scottish Government. These data sets contain certain characteristics of pupils in the senior phase of publicly-funded and grant-aided secondary schools in Scotland, with gender included amongst these. Pupils are not identifiable by name or date of birth.

We also receive school-level data from the annual Pupil Census returns and the biennial school exclusions statistics release, in which the overall number of pupils is split by male and female.

Education Scotland does not maintain these data sources, but analytical staff receive regular updates from colleagues in the Scottish Government. The data itself is not shared directly with schools, but is provided to lead inspectors and headteachers of individual schools selected for inspection.

You may find it helpful to contact Scotland’s 32 local authorities directly, they may be able to assist you further with your request and provide a response to the questions you have asked.

For ease, please find a link to all 32 local authorities websites - https://www.mygov.scot/organisations#scottish-local-authority

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.