Consultation: relationships and sex education in English schools

Following legislation passed last year, all primary schools in England will have to teach Relationships Education (RelEd) to their pupils from September 2019 onwards, and all secondary schools must teach Relationships and Sex Education (RSE).

The Department for Education has now launched a consultation on what should be taught as part of these subjects and how existing guidance on sex education should be updated. Views are also being sought on whether or not to make personal, social, health, and economic education (PSHE) compulsory in schools too.

We are encouraging all of our members and supporters to respond to the consultation before 11.59pm on 12 February 2018.

A model response is provided below, and will be automatically submitted to the Department for Education. Responding will only take a moment, but it could make a big difference in ensuring that children are given the skills and knowledge they need to stay healthy, happy, and safe.

Please, take action today!

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Subject

Key subject areas in Relationships Education and Relationships and Sex Education
Relationships Education and RSE must promote safe, equal, respectful, and enjoyable relationships. They must present a positive view of human sexuality and relationships, whilst ensuring that children and young people are prepared for the risks and challenges that they will face in their relationships, sexual or otherwise, throughout their lives. At the very least, that means teaching about the following topics:
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Body parts, including which parts are private
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What constitutes inappropriate touching and how to report abuse
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Boundaries within different relationships
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Puberty
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Body diversity
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Consent
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Sexual harassment
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Characteristics of happy and unhappy relationships
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Gender stereotyping and equality
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Safe sex and sexual health
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Contraception
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Fertility and reproduction
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The range of options during pregnancy, including abortion
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Staying safe online
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This is by no means an exhaustive list. It is important for any guidance to make clear that if teaching and content is to meet the needs of all pupils, it must include those with special educational needs and disabilities, and be fully LGBT-inclusive throughout.
Sexual health
RSE in schools must be a source of medically-accurate, unbiased, non-judgmental, and legally-sound information. That means educating children about the variety of ways of engaging in safe sex, presenting the full range of options that young people are likely to consider, and confronting honestly the pressures they are likely to face. This rules out teaching an abstinence-only approach to safe sex and sexual health. Whilst some young people may choose this option for themselves, the vast majority of young people will not and will therefore be put at risk by abstinence-only teaching. The Government must be clear about this in its guidance.  
Similarly, comprehensive RSE means providing information about the full range of options available to women during pregnancy, including abortion. It is not acceptable to suggest, as some Christian RSE providers are known to, that ‘<a href="https://lifecharity.org.uk/news-and-views/stis-teen-pregnancies-sexual-behaviour/">condoms are ineffective as a prevention technique</a> for diseases’, that <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/2012/03/23/news-1009/">abortion can lead to ‘suicidal tendencies’</a> and ‘drug and alcohol abuse’, that the morning after pill <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/2012/03/23/news-1009/">‘can cause an early abortion</a>’ and may be damaging to women’s health and future fertility, or that abortion increases a woman’s chances of <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3568041.stm">developing breast cancer</a>. None of this information is medically or legally accurate and such teaching must be explicitly prohibited in schools.  
LGBT inclusion
Guidance on both RelEd and RSE must make absolutely clear that the provision of LGBT-relevant information on sex and relationships is not to be confined to one topic or lesson. If RelEd and RSE is to be relevant to LGBT pupils or pupils with LGBT parents, and if it is to promote understanding and respect for LGBT people, the entire curriculum must be LGBT-inclusive throughout.  
It would evidently be remiss, for instance, for a secondary school to teach about safe sex and sexual health, without providing information that is specific to LGBT people and the different considerations that apply to same-sex relationships. It would be equally remiss for a primary school to use images of only heterosexual relationships and family structures in their teaching, thereby ignoring some children’s home circumstances and preventing them from understanding that there are different kinds of family.
It has been suggested by some conservative religious organisations that there is no age-appropriate way to provide an LGBT-inclusive education. The evidence does not support this at all, and in fact there are a great many providers who have been teaching LGBT-inclusive RelEd and RSE for many years. <a href="http://www.educateandcelebrate.org/resources/">Educate and Celebrate</a>, <a href="http://rainbowteaching.co.uk/index.php/resources/">Rainbow Teaching</a>, <a href="http://www.schools-out.org.uk/?page_id=59">Schools Out</a>, <a href="http://www.rsehub.org.uk">RSE HUB</a>, being just a few examples.  
To be clear, then, it does not matter if some religious groups do not ‘believe’ that age-appropriate, LGBT-inclusive RelEd and RSE is possible. The evidence demonstrates that it is entirely possible, and can be delivered without passing judgment on the various forms of family or sexual relationship conducive to individual and collective fulfilment. Moreover, the evidence demonstrates that failing to do this has very real consequences. Last year Stonewall’s <a href="http://www.stonewall.org.uk/school-report-2017">School Report</a> found that:
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‘LGBT pupils of faith are somewhat more likely to have tried to take their own life than those who aren’t of faith (30 per cent compared to 25 per cent).’
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‘LGBT pupils in faith schools are more likely than those in non-faith schools to say that teachers and school staff never challenge homophobic, biphobic and transphobic language when they hear it (31 per cent compared to 22 per cent).’
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‘LGBT pupils attending faith schools are less likely to report that their school says that homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying is wrong’ (57 per cent, versus 70 per cent of other schools)
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‘Nearly nine in ten LGBT pupils (87 per cent) have learnt about contraception and safe sex at school, however just one in five LGBT pupils (20 per cent) – and only one in ten LGBT pupils who attend faith schools (10 per cent) – have learnt about this in relation to same-sex relationships.’
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The Government must move to protect LGBT children and young people, rather than accommodate the damaging tolerance of religious groups who either refuse to acknowledge their existence or actively encourage hostility towards them.
Right of withdrawal
The Government must make clear to schools that the parental right of withdrawal rests with individual parents, and should not be abused by schools. In the past, some religious schools have used withdrawal to avoid teaching RSE/RelEd altogether. <a href="https://humanism.org.uk/2014/03/28/yesodey-hatorah-says-censoring-exam-questions-successfully-place-within-charedi-schools-throughout-england-many-years/">In 2014</a>, for example, Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School revealed that ‘the school does not teach sex education because in practice all parents will exercise their statutory right to withdraw their children’. Similarly, religious schools have been known to omit the teaching of LGBT-relevant information in RSE on the grounds that parents would object to such teaching. Indeed, during <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/education/2017/may/02/catholic-grammars-free-schools-malcolm-mcmahon-archbishop-liverpool">a 2017 interview covering RSE</a>, CES chair Archbishop McMahon even went so far as to ask ‘Why would same-sex parents want to send their children to a Catholic school?’
This is not an acceptable approach, and schools must neither make assumptions about the beliefs of parents, nor encourage them to take a negative view of RSE and RelEd in order to provoke withdrawal. The Government must be clear about that in the guidance it produces.
Guidance on which withdrawal at primary level must also be clear. The information delivered to pupils during RelEd forms a vital component of a school’s safeguarding duty and, as such, parents must not be entitled to withdraw their children from parts of RelEd designed to keep them safe. This includes basic information about their bodies, which parts are private, inappropriate touching, how to report abuse, and relationships with family members and people in authority. Given the evidence that a high proportion of abused children are abused by a parent or family member, this is of paramount importance to the safety of children.
Faith schools
A child’s access to accurate, evidence-based information about relationships and sex should not be determined by their religious or non-religious background, nor by the type of school to which they happen to have been sent. If all children have a right to comprehensive, age-appropriate RSE, as the Government maintains they do, then all children must have access to it. To allow certain types of school to opt out of this teaching, as is proposed, is either to declare that no such right exists, or to endorse the widespread violation of that right.
Whether or not children have a right to this information, however, all the evidence suggests that high-quality RSE leads to the best outcomes in terms of improving sexual health, reducing unwanted pregnancy, challenging gender stereotypes, educating about consent, protecting children from abuse, and tackling homophobic and transphobic bullying. Given the benefits of RSE to the wellbeing of pupils, it is simply not appropriate to be providing it to some whilst denying it to others.
Furthermore, relationships and sex education is concerned with equipping children to engage in respectful relationships, to challenge and be resilient to damaging gender stereotypes and other discriminatory attitudes, and ultimately to stay safe and healthy. As such, it must be relevant to them and to the choices they are free to make. Clearly, if RSE in all types of schools is not fully LGBT-inclusive, if it withholds information or passes judgment on the various forms of family relationship conducive to individual and collective fulfilment, or if it presumes the availability of only a limited range of options for staying safe within relationships, sexual or otherwise, then it fails children and young people. This is not acceptable.

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Consultation: relationships and sex education in English schools

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