What's changed?
To align with the DfE, we’ve made some changes to the gender field in ScholarPack. It’s important to us that you understand why we’ve made these changes, and how they affect the recording of student and staff information.
As part of the census, the DfE collects information about students’ legal sex, and for a long time, this field has been labelled as ‘gender’. To match what is collected in school census, workforce census and other statutory returns, we have re-labeled the ‘gender’ field in ScholarPack as ‘sex’.
The options for this field as set by the DfE are ‘Male’ and ‘Female’. We know this doesn’t allow for schools to record comprehensive information about their staff and students, so we have now:
- relabelled the Gender field in ScholarPack to Sex
- added a new field on student, guardian and staff profiles for Gender Identity. We’ve named it Gender Identity rather than Gender to minimise any confusion between the new and old fields.
Please note that the DfE's guidance here currently states that "Gender should be self-declared and recorded according to the wishes of the parent and / or pupil". Our update coincides with DfE guidance changes that will come into effect next year, but we've introduced these changes now to enable you to record what you deem to be appropriate at the time.
If you have any feedback about this update, click Contact Us in the top right of the Help Centre and select Make a product suggestion.
Sex
Logging different users' sex
In ScholarPack, there are 2 options for setting a staff member, student or guardian's sex:
- Female
- Male
These options have been outlined by the DfE in the DfE's Complete the school census guidance (please note they still refer to it as Gender here).
Is this field required?
This is the field that is required and returned in censuses and files. If a student's sex hasn't been recorded, you will receive errors in your census, such as Error 1610.
How do we report on Sex?
Sex can still be found across the MIS, including in reports. Please note that you may still see it referred to in reporting as Gender. We will be swapping this terminology over to Sex over in the future.
Gender Identity
This new field can be found in the Extended tab on profiles for students, staff and contacts. This field defaults to blank for everyone - we don't assume this field.
Click on the Gender Identity field to edit it.
If you select Prefer to self-describe, you can then type this into the Self-described Gender Identity field, or leave this field blank.
Can we report on gender identity?
Gender Identity can't be used in reporting on ScholarPack.
Parent App and communications
Pronouns used in communications will only be based on Sex, not Gender Identity.
Parents can only see their child's Sex, not Gender Identity. Please note that parents will still see this field referred to as Gender. We will be swapping this terminology over to Sex over in the future.