Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department classifies (a) Sikhs and (b) Jews as (i) an ethnic and (ii) a religious group.

The department collects information on the ethnicity of pupils annually through the spring school census, in line with the harmonised standards set by the Office for National Statistics and the Government Statistical Service.

The department publishes the data code sets that must be used when submitting information as part of the Common Basic Data Set (CBDS). The CBDS ethnicity code set does not include separate categories for Sikhs or Jews.

The department does not collect information on pupils’ religion.