Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason gender is a mandatory field on funding applications to the Education and Skills Funding Agency; and whether he plans to make an assessment of the adequacy of that agency's funding application form.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) does not collect ‘gender’ on funding applications to the ESFA – it collects data on ‘sex’. This is in order to ensure that the ESFA has an awareness of whether applications are coming from men or women. The Department regularly reviews policies to ensure they are relevant and up to date.

However, there is no statutory or policy requirement at this time to collect additional information from providers on gender. Amendments and additions to individual learner record data collections also incur costs to the sector and as such, the Department has no right to request it. The responsibility for this level of monitoring sits with the sector and with employers to ensure they are following the law.