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Schools no longer required to record pupils’ nationality

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Author: Richard Adams

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.

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