The personal information section on your GovernorHub profile page is designed to support boards who wish to meet DfE guidelines on collecting and publish board diversity data.
Read more about collecting board diversity data on GovernorHub and how will we anonymise this data.
More detail on the questions
Most of our questions are identical to the question and answer options used in the 2021 census (those around disability, ethnicity, sex and gender identity, religion and sexual orientation). This will allow for comparisons with census data based upon our existing free tool for schools, Community Insights.
The questions on age and education are adapted slightly from census questions, as we don’t need as much detailed information. For more information on each question, please see the questions below:
How are you identifying age?
We have used the same wording as the 2021 census to ask about your date of birth, for the questions and their answer options.
How are you identifying disability?
We have used the same wording as the 2021 census to ask about disability, for the questions and their answer options.
How are you identifying ethnicity?
We have used the same wording as the 2021 census to ask about ethnicity, for both the question and its answer options. These ethnic groups are explained in more detail here.
How are you identifying religion?
We have used the same wording as the 2021 census to ask about religion, for both the question and its answer options.
How are you identifying sex?
We are asking a question about sex as registered at birth, and a separate question about gender identity, which may be different.
We have used the same wording as the 2021 census for both questions and their answer options.
How are you identifying gender?
We are asking a question about gender identity, because this may be different from sex as registered at birth. We’re also asking a separate question about sex as registered at birth.
We have used the same wording as the 2021 census for both questions and their answer options.
How are you identifying sexual orientation?
We have used the same wording as the 2021 census to ask about sexual orientation, for both the question and its answer options.
How are you identifying education level?
We have merged 2 questions from the 2021 census, to ask just 1 question about this.
The census asked “Have you achieved a qualification at degree level or above?” and “Have you achieved any other qualifications?”. We have merged these into 1 question about the highest level of education qualification an individual has gained in their lifetime.
Asking just 1 question on this will give us the information we need to establish education levels among governors and trustees, and to be able to make regional and national comparisons.
Why do you ask about so many things?
True diversity encompasses many characteristics, so school and trust boards need to reflect a wide range of backgrounds and life experiences. We want to look at diversity in a broad sense, to understand whether there are any particular groups whose perspectives are underrepresented on school governing boards.