The first census in the UK was taken on 10 March 1801 and this year's census is the 22nd in UK history. The first record of a census in the UK was taken in 1086, ordered by William the Conqueror and called the Domesday book, however this census was more about land people owned than people who lived on it.
Today, the questions ask who lives in your house; their age, race, occupation, relationship status. People can also answer questions about any religion they may follow and this year for the first time ever people were able to say if they were LGBT.
For the first time, people over the age of 16 were able to answer a voluntary question, "is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth," and there was a follow up question asking people to specify their gender identity.
Campaigners have been asking for questions about LGBT identity to be included for the first time. Paul Martin said, "We want to encourage members of the LGBT+ community to be counted and to be proud to be included.... all of us filling in our census forms have a part to play in history - we are the first generation to be able to disclose our sexual orientation or gender identity and that's really exciting."
- what is a census, why do we have one?
- can you think of a famous bible story where two people take part in a census?
- why do you think the questions have changed since 1801?
- why do we need to know the race, age, sex of people living in each house? Do we need to know?
- why wouldn't people in the 1961 census have written down that they were gay? (it was illegal and they would have been sent to prison)
- what does that show about ideas and society changing over time?
- why are people saying it is important for people today to be able to say if they are LGBT?
- "is the gender you identify with the same as your sex registered at birth," what does this mean? what is the word for a person who identifies as a different gender to the sex they were registered at birth?
- "be counted and to be proud to be included." what does this mean? why is this important?
- how does the census help us learn about history?
- why is this about no outsiders?
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