Things we should learn about

Compulsory sex and relationships education in all schools? About time! Don’t ruin it now, Naomi Phillips tells the Government.

After years of calls from campaigners, educational experts, teachers, parents, young people, and backed by all the evidence that comprehensive sex education is better for health and happiness, the Children, Schools and Families Bill is finally making PSHE – which crucially includes Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) – mandatory in all schools. This applies to both community and “faith” schools. Even better then that the Bill clearly stipulates that it is not enough for schools just to teach SRE, but already requires them to teach SRE in ways that are age appropriate, reflect a variety of views, are appropriate to the cultural backgrounds of pupils, are accurate, balanced and promote equality and diversity. This is a hugely important change in policy that seems focused on the rights, needs and realities of young people’s lives in the 21st Century.

And yet, with just days left to go before the final stages of the Bill in the Commons, the British Humanist Association (BHA) is working with others including the Accord Coalition, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) and the UK Youth Parliament, to counter a serious last-minute change to the Bill that could seriously infringe on the rights of children in “faith schools” to fair and balanced education.

The Government has tabled an amendment to the Bill that effectively gives state-funded “faith schools” an opt-out from all the requirements described above, should the school feel that the requirements go against the religious character of the school. In other words, “faith schools” need not teach SRE in ways that promote equality, diversity or even that the information provided is accurate, let alone balanced. This is an amendment that trades children’s rights for the support of a vocal, religious minority (note that the Catholic Education Service is claiming credit for this “victory”).

In practice, this could mean that “faith schools” can teach homophobic doctrine in SRE. The Accord Coalition has described the amendment as a “21st Century Section 28“. This should sound shocking. It is.

The amendment flies in the face of the report (PDF) on the Children, Schools and Families Bill by parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, which had praised the Government for developing an SRE policy based on human rights principles (for example, that SRE needs to promote equality and deliver objective and, you know, accurate information!). The report did contain its caveats: the Bill probably did not go far enough to ensure that pupils in “faith schools” are guaranteed an equivalent standard of SRE that their friends in community schools will receive. But if Balls’ self-proposed amendment goes through then these principles will be completely undermined anyway.

Our concerns are not just about little details, such as violations of children’s rights to good education! Nor that, as the committee’s report suggests, there is likely to be a gender-unequal effect of unbalanced SRE (it is girls, after all, “for whom the personal price of insufficient access to information about sex and relationships is likely to be higher than boys”). Nor simply that gay pupils in “faith schools” now face real risks of harassment and discrimination through the narrow, subjective, religious teaching of SRE, not least, as the committee again points out, because the Government failed to outlaw harassment on grounds of sexual orientation in schools in its much-hailed Equality Bill.

These are all very real, very powerful concerns. But the biggest concern must be the effect across the board.  Age-appropriate sex and relationships education means that young people as they grow up are better able to avoid exploitative and unhealthy relationships and engage maturely and confidently in healthy relationships. They have the information they need to access sexual health services and the advice hey might need as they mature.

It should not matter what sort of school the preferences of their parents or the lottery of their postcode has landed each child in. Wherever they happen to be educated, sex and relationships education should be truthful, accurate, and appropriate to them, not to the prejudices of their teachers or the church that happens to run their state-funded school.

In Holland, the teenage pregnancy rate has been dramatically reduced since the introduction of compulsory sex and relationships education, which begins in primary schools and includes objective teaching about different sexualities as well as age-appropriate learning about contraception. We know from evidence from parts of America that teach only abstinence in place of an objective and accurate curriculum of SRE, that it has no effect on behaviour; teenagers still do what teenagers have done since before our ancestors left the trees, but they do it without benefit of the knowledge and understanding that learning how to avoid pregnancy, disease and abusive relationships would give them in a proper curriculum. To deny them that and substitute it for guilt, suffering, disease, unwanted pregnancy, exploitation, neurosis, and ignorance is a clear failure of society. It’s a failure to nurture and protect future generations.

The Government’s u-turn on SRE is nothing short of an outrage. Unfortunately, as with so much of its education policy in the past 12 years, the Government seems more concerned to protect the interests of “faith schools”, than the rights of children.

Naomi Phillips is Head of Public Affairs at the British Humanist Association

Photo by Lolie Smith

The British Humanist Association campaigns for fair, balanced and objective education on sex and relationships. You can take action today by contacting your MP and asking them to vote against Ed Balls’ amendment which jeapordises the Bill.