for the

Family

for the

Youth

for the

Future

Bulletin 136: Summer 2009

In this issue:

Please respond to the government’s consultation on PSHE

At the end of April, the government launched a 12-week consultation on Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education, including sex and relationship education. Having finally succeeded in persuading the government to consult on whether PSHE education should become a statutory part of the national curriculum, it is important that we take time to respond to the consultation and make our voices heard.

The consultation questions simply invite you to state whether you agree or disagree with a series of 11 statements and the questionnaire takes only a few minutes to complete. If you wish, you may give reasons for your answers, but you are limited to only 400 words in total.

In addition to consulting on whether PSHE should become a statutory part of the national curriculum, the government is also asking whether parents should retain the right to withdraw their children from sex education lessons, and whether school governing bodies should retain the duty to prepare their policy on sex and relationships education in consultation with parents.

It is important to send out a clear signal to the government that they must take account of parental concerns on such a sensitive and controversial issue.

The consultation period will conclude at 5.00pm on Friday 24 July. Please make sure you respond in good time and encourage your friends and other family members to let the government know their views.

 

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Government does not bring up children – parents do

An extract from Norman Wells’ report at this year’s annual conference.

Who is responsible for bringing up children? Parents or the state? According to the Children’s Plan, ‘Government does not bring up children – parents do.’ In fact that is one of the five key principles on which the government’s policy for children rests. And yet, as social commentator, Shaun Bailey has written:

‘We live in a country that for the past 10 years has tried hard to replace families with the state, parents with rules and  fathers with the benefit system… All the government’s proposals for young people involve putting more professionals in their lives rather than encouraging them to spend more meaningful time with their families. Many parents feel they have been robbed of the right to guide and discipline their children.’

We have seen it in the government’s promotion of daycare; we have seen it in the home education review; and we have seen it in the sex education review and the proposal to make PSHE a statutory part of the national curriculum.

Daycare

In December, the Department for Children, Schools and Families issued a publication aimed at parents entitled, Affordable childcare: great for your kids, great for you. The leaflet extols the benefits of placing children in childcare outside the home. In response to concerns we expressed, Beverley Hughes, the minister responsible, replied: ‘I would like to stress that the government is not promoting childcare in opposition to full-time parenthood’ (see Bulletin 134).

However, the ink was hardly dry from Beverley Hughes’ letter before the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) published a report looking into why it was that some couples chose to have only one earner and what should be done about it. I don’t know how much of our money was spent on this study, but this is what it found:

 

‘[T]he desire for one parent to be the primary carer for their children was the overriding consideration in making decisions about work. To achieve this, participants and their partners were prepared to accept a lower household income than if both partners worked. Most participants and their families managed to live on a low income through careful budgeting, and in some cases had consciously adjusted their spending patterns to cope on one wage…[A]ny move into work was largely contingent on finding a job that fitted around children and family.’

Given that ‘Government does not bring up children – parents do’, you might have thought that the government would have been pleased to see parents making sacrifices in order to care for their children. But not a bit of it. The purpose of the DWP report was to:

  • explore the type of support non-working partnered parents might require in order to make paid employment a realistic option; [and]
  • to identify how best to help this group move into work with information, advice and support.

Do you ever get the impression full-time mothers are seen as a ‘problem’ requiring encouragement, incentives and ‘support’ to get them out where they belong – in the workplace?

Given the fact that many families want to have one parent at home as the primary carer for their children, we put it to Beverley Hughes that if the government is really ‘not promoting childcare in opposition to full-time parenthood’, perhaps the government could undertake a study to:

  • explore the type of support working partnered parents might require in order to make full-time parenthood a realistic option; and
  • identify how best to help this group return home to care for their children with information, advice and support.

In reply Miss Hughes said she appreciated our suggestions but was unable to make any further comments on the issue.

Home education review

Less than 18 months after the government had issued new guidance to local authorities on home education, it launched a fresh review, with a particular emphasis not on education standards, but on child protection issues. The review questions were quite frankly insulting to parents:

‘Do you think that home educated children are able to be healthy? Do you think they are able to be safe? Please let us know why you think that.’

Have we really reached the point where parents have to provide evidence that they are able to care for their own children? Can you imagine the government ever issuing a consultation document asking, ‘Do you think that children in school are able to be healthy? Do you think they are able to be safe? Please let us know why you think that’?

The resulting report on home education recommended an unprecedented level of state intrusion into the lives of ordinary families, and the government has said it accepts its proposals in total (see Home education proposals pose serious threat to all families in this bulletin).

‘Government does not bring up children – parents do,’ we are told, and yet the reality is that parents are treated with great distrust and suspicion. They are deemed to need constant monitoring and supervision in order to ensure they are bringing up their children in a state-approved way.

Sex education review

From the beginning of the sex education review in February 2008 until the launch of the public consultation on Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education in April 2009, parents were systematically excluded from the entire process.

At the moment, the government is proposing to allow parents to retain the right to withdraw their children from sex education classes. However, the Secretary of State, Ed Balls, has said that he wants to keep the parental right of withdrawal under review to make sure that all children and young people receive their ‘entitlement’ to sex education. Quite how he proposes to check up on what parents who withdraw their children teach them at home, I don’t know.  But here you have another example of a government that has its own views about what children need to learn and is determined that they learn it, whatever their parents think. Parents simply can’t be trusted to form their own judgments.

‘Government does not bring up children – parents do’. So says the Children’s Plan. But in practice, parents must bring up their children by government diktat.

The family: an agent of the state?

The family is increasingly being viewed as an agency to pursue and promote government policy. Parents are expected to put their children in state-regulated childcare in their early years, and to send them to state-regulated schools later on. If they don’t – if they care for their children at home, or if they home educate them – they are viewed with suspicion, and the safety and well-being of their children is called into question.

For the time being parents who send their children to school may withdraw them from sex education lessons, but only on the strict understanding that their children have an ‘entitlement’ to sex education and if the government finds that parents aren’t delivering on that, then the right of withdrawal is likely to be taken away.

What is happening is that the government wants all of us – parents, families, teachers, faith communities – to be agents of government policy. We must all see ourselves as branches of government rather than as free individuals and institutions.

There is tremendous pressure on children, parents and teachers to conform their thinking to the government’s permissive agenda, and that pressure can come in all kinds of different ways. But in whatever form it comes, we must resist it. We must avoid giving in to the intimidating tactics of our opponents. We must refuse to be gagged.

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Two new titles from Family Education Trust

Too Much, Too Soon: The government’s plans for your child’s sex education by Norman Wells

In 11 short chapters, this booket tells parents what they need to know about sex education. It explains the law, identifies the aims of the key players, considers the research evidence, and weighs up the case for making sex education compulsory for all pupils from the age of five. It argues that young people do not need to be presented with a menu of sexual options from which they can make ‘informed choices’. Rather, the whole issue needs to be approached with honesty, modesty and within a clear moral framework that shows a proper respect for parents and for marriage.

Prices (inc p&p): single copy – £3.50; 5 copies – £12.50; 10 copies – £22.50; 25 copies – £50.00.

 

Education and Culture by Irina Tyk

In this thought-provoking booklet, Irina Tyk reflects on the growing difficulty of training the minds of children in a culture that is overtly irrational, anti-intellectual and amoral. Drawing on her experience over almost 20 years as the Headmistress of a successful independent preparatory school, she subjects modern educational trends to a penetrating critique and outlines the steps that need to be taken if we are to rescue children from mediocrity and begin to teach them once again ‘the language of ideas’.

Copies of Education and Culture are available for £3.00 (inc p&p).

 

 

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Annual General Meeting and Conference

Saturday 13 June 2009

Our annual conference took place at the RAF Club in central London on 13 June and was once again a day full of information, inspiration and challenge. It was good to welcome supporters from as far afield as Glasgow in the north, Truro in the south, Suffolk in the east, and County Down in the west, and to have a number of friends with us for the first time.

In his Chairman’s report, Arthur Cornell highlighted three areas of concern:

The effect of ‘childcare’ on children

The UK government remained committed to promoting a form of equality that aimed to encourage both parents to work at a time when other countries were beginning to evaluate the outcomes of such a strategy. In Sweden, for example, where 85 per cent of children under the age of five were in childcare, Jonas Himmelstrand’s research had found that the Swedish policy had resulted in insecure youth, stressed adults and lower quality parenting.

While Sweden may have the most equal wages in Europe, the lowest levels of child poverty, and the lowest level of child mortality, Swedish society was suffering from a lack of close relationships. The symptoms included the increasing psychological ill health of young people, the growing incidence of stress-related ill-health in adults, declining standards of behaviour and academic outcomes in schools, and high levels of divorce. Himmelstrand had concluded that small children need attachment not education, that parents are more important to older children than their peers, that good close relationships are the most important health factor, and there is a need to commence a national educational programme about children’s development and the value of families.

Schools as surrogate parents

Parents were increasingly looking to schools to do their parenting for them. Growing numbers of children were attending nursery school and even starting infant school who were not toilet trained and unable to use a knife and fork. There was a widespread expectation that the school would see to such matters. Schools were now asking whose job it was to change children who soiled themselves and were seeking additional funds to cover the cost of a duty that was not included in any existing job description.

A culture of ‘equal choices’

The concept of a culture of choices all deemed to be of equal value lay at the root of the government’s proposals regarding sex education. In commending the Trust’s new publication, Too Much, Too Soon, Mr Cornell selected several quotations that illustrated the ‘secular absolutes’ which the government was seeking to impose.

Mr Cornell stressed that those who wished to promote traditional patterns of family life were not ignoring other lifestyles. Rather, they were demonstrating the courage to point to the lifestyle that is the best, both for the individual and society at large as evidenced by the personal, social, economic and community outcomes.

The Hon Treasurer, Simon Ling, presented the accounts for approval. He reported that both income and expenditure remained at a similar level to the previous year, though there had been a marked reduction in the value of the Trust’s investments as a result of the global financial crisis. Mr Ling explained that the Trust’s general policy was to hold about half its endowment in cash based or fixed interest deposits and about half in equity based forms. This provided some insulation against the worst market volatility. The intention was to build the endowment to the point at which the income derived from it would be sufficient to cover the Trust’s core expenditure, thereby allowing most donations to be used for specific research projects.

In his Director’s report, Norman Wells noted that after years of denial, there was now widespread recognition that marriage, stable family life and committed parenthood did make a difference and brought benefits to parents, to children, and to society as a whole. Evidence for this recognition was found in the Families in Britain paper published by the Cabinet Office and the Department for Children, Schools and Families, the Children’s Society Good Childhood inquiry, and the Unicef report, The childcare transition. Mr Wells also cited two articles in the national press in which leading commentators had drawn attention to the fact that children are far safer when they are brought up by their two natural parents than in homes where the mother has ‘a succession of itinerant boyfriends’.

The evidence was clear and unequivocal, yet there was a lack of political will to follow it through. In its desire to celebrate a diversity of family forms, the government was stubbornly refusing to allow the evidence to shape the direction of public policy. The task of the Trust and its supporters was to keep pressing the truth to its logical conclusion. (See Government does not bring up children – parents do.)

 

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Local Reports

The local reports session always forms a lively part of the morning and this year was no exception as regular contributors were joined by two new speakers to raise awareness of a variety of issues and to share news of activities in which they had been involved throughout the previous year. Topics covered included sex education, confidential clinics on school premises, new curriculum material, programmes encouraging young people to save sex for marriage, advertising regulations, the promotion of homosexuality, the HPV vaccine and the campaign to outlaw smacking.

Devon

Christine Hudson described herself as a ‘driven mother’. She strongly objected to the indoctrination of her children through the vehicles of ‘sex education’, ‘safe sex’ and ‘ideological brainwashing’. She was convinced that the government and local authorities were only succeeding in pushing a permissive sex education agenda because parents had become passive. The situation would continue to worsen unless parents became more proactive.

From her own experience in Plymouth, Mrs Hudson had found that schools were often unfamiliar with government guidance. She therefore encouraged parents to be vigilant and to write to their children’s schools and to arrange meetings with the relevant teachers or headteacher.

In an effort to offer schools an alternative to materials that were anti-life and anti-family. Mrs Hudson and her colleagues had sent sent out 46 promotional copies of the LoveWise DVD, Growing up – growing wise, to primary schools in South Devon, and had provided six further copies to an activist in North Devon for distribution in his locality. She had also sent 42 letters and pamphlets to secondary schools in the Plymouth area encouraging them to invite the Challenge Team to give a presentation.

Mrs Hudson had contributed to the production of a SPUC leaflet, ‘Take a reality check on your child’s school’ which lists 17 questions directed at parents concerning their level of awareness about the provision of PSHE education at their child’s school. She had also been active in collecting signatures in Plymouth city centre for the SPUC campaign, ‘Stop turning schools into abortion referral centres’, and had alerted churches in the city to the availability of contraception, emergency hormonal birth control and abortion referrals at health clinics on school premises.

Mrs Hudson had submitted a formal complaint to the local authority about the failure of her daughter’s school to consult with parents before setting up a confidential clinic on school premises. In response, the Children’s Services Department had thanked her for raising relevant points which would be incorporated into guidelines for other City schools, but stated that the guidelines did not apply to her daughter’s school as the school denied offering any sexual advice services. Since the headteacher had admitted that the school offered a sign-posting service and there was a distinct lack of transparency with regard to the specific services offered, Mrs Hudson planned to take the matter further.

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Hampshire

Sarah Carter spoke of a local Youth Council’s Review of Sex and Relationship Education in Schools which she had attended in April. The conference had been attended by local secondary school children, as well as by school nurses, youth workers, sexual health nurses, Connexions representatives, and other parties interested in issues surrounding sexual health and unplanned pregnancy, and sent out a number of inaccurate and concerning messages:

  • While the law stated that it was unlawful to have sex under the age of 16, young people would not be prosecuted if they wished to have sex before that age.
  • Students as young as 12 years old were encouraged to be sexually active and to seek advice on condoms and the contraceptive implant.
  • Young people were entitled to six free condoms a week regardless of age.
  • Condoms offered 97 per cent effective protection against all sexually transmitted infections including chlamydia and herpes.

Since attending this conference, Mrs Carter had become acquainted with the work of Family Education Trust, had written to MPs and peers, and had numerous conversations with people involved in delivering sex and relationship education. All seemed to share her concerns but still believed that condom promotion was the best way forward. She was also investing more time in promoting Lovewise materials in local schools and had been given opportunities to teach it to pupils in Years 9 and 11.

She had also developed the website www.iHeartPurity.co.uk which included the stories of young people who had benefited from abstinence teaching, in order to give young people positive role models with achievable testimonies, and to provide them with facts relating to contraception and other relationship issues.

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Alive to the World

Louise Kirk provided an update on the translation from Spanish into English of the PSHE programme Alive to the World. Two volumes had been produced so far, covering Years 5 and 6. The aim was to make available material of a wholesome character that advocated confining sexual intimacy to its proper place in marriage.

Mrs Kirk expressed concern at the exclusion of parents from discussions about PSHE and the absence of moral values in many of the materials in use. She believed that Alive to the World would fill a real need. The volumes focused on positive character traits such as honesty, hard work, and respect for marriage and family by means of stories.

 

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Northern Ireland

Mary Russell began by referring to the ideologically driven campaign of the Northern Ireland children’s commissioner to enforce a ban on the physical punishment of children. Having failed in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal, the commissioner was considering an appeal to the House of Lords. The Taxpayers’ Alliance had commented: ‘It’s bad enough that the Commissioner is trying to intervene in how parents discipline their own children, but spending a fortune on her courtroom crusade is an outrageous waste of money,’ while the Democratic Unionist Party spokesman on children and young people had stated: ‘The purpose of the Children’s Commissioner should be to stand up for the interests of children, not to attempt to make criminals out of parents because of the way they choose to raise their children.’

Following the Appeal Court ruling, Mrs Russell had taken part in two radio debates, and had been astonished to hear her opponent assert that ‘ordinary decent parents’ had nothing to fear from a law banning all forms of physical punishment, evidently suggesting that parents who smack are abnormal and unloving. Her opponent  was  also  insistent  that a  ban on smacking would not criminalise parents, but simply ‘send out a message’ to them. Mrs Russell suggested that if ‘sending out a message’ were all that is required, a billboard would be far cheaper than the commissioner’s expensive legal actions.

In September 2008, there had been intensive media coverage of the government’s plans to vaccinate all 12-year-old girls against the strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) that are responsible for 70 per cent of cases of cervical cancer. This drive was conducted in much the same vein as inoculation programmes against measles or mumps, with an air of inevitability about contracting cervical cancer, and very little actual information on the medical facts. Several letters from Mrs Russell had been published in all the main newspapers in Northern Ireland with a view to informing the general public that HPV is a sexually transmitted infection and that remaining faithful to an uninfected partner provides the best protection against it.

In March, Mrs Russell had taken part in a studio debate with a representative of Brook on plans to advertise condoms before the 9.00pm watershed, and later in the same month she had participated in a television discussion on the rise of out-of-control children.

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Cornwall

Ann Whitaker reported that Cornwall’s Community Standards Association continued to meet bi-monthly. During the last year, the group had been in touch with Mr and Mrs Peter Bull, owners of the Chymorvah Private Hotel near Penzance, who had been taken to court for refusing a double room to a homosexual couple.

Miss Whitaker and her colleagues forwarded e-mail briefings from Family and Youth Concern and other national organisations to over 40 contacts, mostly in Cornwall. She had recently written to each of the 178 Members of the House of Lords who backed Lord Waddington’s free speech amendment during 2008, which the government was now seeking to remove from the statute book. She had also made a submission to the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice on its proposal to allow the advertising of pregnancy advice centres and condoms on daytime television.

The Western Morning News had recently published three of Miss Whitaker’s letters in the space of seven days. In one letter she had used information from the Family and Youth Concern Spring bulletin about the financial cost of family breakdown.

Miss Whitaker had visited the headteacher of Penair School in Truro to express concern about the establishment of an integrated health centre on school premises. The   headteacher had explained that the health centre would be open during school hours and would be entirely under the direction of the Primary Care Trust rather than the school. This arrangement ensured that pupils could receive advice on sexual matters without the knowledge of their parents.

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Ireland

In a written report, John O’Reilly noted that while both major political parties had pledged not to legislate for abortion during the term of the present government, the real attack was taking place in other sensitive areas – the status of the human embryo, same-sex civil partnerships, and discrimination against married couples in the fiscal system.

In addition to the production of the quarterly Response magazine, the priorities of Family and Youth Concern in Ireland included:

  • Preparing the ground for another referendum on abortion to restore full constitutional protection;
  • Pressing for legislation to protect human embryos in IVF procedures, as in Italy and Germany;
  • Seeking to prevent any experimentation on human embryos in Ireland.

London

Yusuf Patel spoke on behalf of a group of parents from George Tomlinson Primary School in Leytonstone who had been concerned about crosscurricular teaching on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) issues for a week earlier in the year.

Without any prior consultation, parents were advised about the LGBT week in a newsletter from the school just before half-term. A number of parents contacted the school to complain that the decision to hold such a week had been made without consultation. In response, the school offered an opportunity for parents to view the materials that were going to be used and over 100 parents attended. Despite parental concerns, the school was determined to proceed with the planned lessons. The parents then presented a petition to the school, signed by over 50 parents, but to no avail. Since the LGBT emphasis was cross-curricular and not part of PSHE, parents were denied any legal right to withdraw their children. Nevertheless, over 30 parents withdrew their children from school for the week.

It was only after the parents contacted the press that the school began to take note of their concerns. The story featured in the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Times, and received coverage on television and radio. Although Waltham Forest Council had told the school to advise the parents that the withdrawal of their children would be recorded as an unauthorised absence, which could incur penalties, a Freedom of Information request to the school had revealed that it had never been the intention of the local authority to prosecute the parents.

The parents had subsequently held a public meeting which had attracted over 100 parents and formed an organisation called Parents Against Sexualisation in Schools. The group was particularly concerned about the lack of consultation with parents and the promotion of homosexuality.

The headteacher at George Tomlinson School had initially tried to deny any responsibility for the school’s actions, saying that it was a national issue and that the school had no option but to follow government instructions. However, when the parents queried this with the Director of Children and Young People’s Services at Waltham Forest, they were advised that this was not correct and that the school did have discretion over what was taught.

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Challenge Team UK

Sue Relf reported on the progress being made by the Challenge Team UK. The Team visits a wide variety of schools, from boisterous comprehensives to privileged Catholic colleges in most regions of the UK, and at Easter completed its twelfth tour. Since 2004, 30 presenters had been trained and spoken to 75,000 teenagers across the country.  The Team was on target to reach 100,000 young people by the end of 2010.

In 2006, a charitable trust had pledged £25,000 for three years to enable the Challenge Team to employ a team leader to recruit, train and support the team of volunteers, and two part-time administrators to contact schools and prepare itineraries. This financial support had now been renewed for a further three years.

The Team continued to receive positive feedback from both teachers and pupils and had attracted national publicity on both television and radio. Nevertheless, Mrs Relf was conscious that the Team reached only a fraction of secondary schools and that there was a constant need to recruit new young adult volunteers. Two young male volunteers were still required to join the Team in September, and there was also a vacancy for a team leader. Mrs Relf had found that personal recommendation was by far the best way of getting into schools and therefore appealed to supporters to introduce the Challenge Team to their local schools.

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Teenage Pregnancy: Dissecting the evidence

A summary of the address given by Professor David Paton at the Family Education Trust conference on 13 June 2009

 

Although the government claims that the teenage pregnancy strategy is working, the evidence tells a different story. The reality is that the government has slowed down the decline in under-18 conception rates, while under-16 conception rates are at the same level as when the teenage pregnancy strategy began. The past decade has also witnessed a massive increase in sexually transmitted infection (STI) rates.

In a quick overview of research evidence on teenage pregnancy, Professor Paton showed that there was little evidence that any of the key components in the government’s strategy is working, while there was mixed evidence with regard to the effectiveness of abstinence education:

Summary of evidence
  • There is very little evidence that access to contraception has any impact on unwanted pregnancy or abortion rates, especially among younger teenagers;
  • There is little evidence that sex and relationships education has any significant effect on rates of sexual activity, unwanted pregnancy, or abortion;
  • There is mixed evidence on the effectiveness of abstinence education. Most studies find no significant impact on rates of sexual activity, pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection, though there are some exceptions and research is still at an early stage;
  • There is no evidence that the confidential provision of contraception to young people leads to lower teenage pregnancy or abortion rates. However, there is considerable (though disputed) evidence that where young people are unable to obtain an abortion without parental involvement, teenage pregnancy and abortion rates are lower, and there may also be a reduction in the incidence of STIs;
  • Every study on emergency birth control (the morning-after pill) to date has found that it has no significant impact on unwanted pregnancy and abortion rates.

Professor Paton likened social science research to a trial in court. In a court of law, the defendant is innocent until proven guilty and may only be declared guilty if the case is proven beyond reasonable doubt. Similarly, in social science research, a hypothesis can only be accepted as correct if the supporting evidence is statistically significant (ie only if the researcher can be 95 per cent confident).

Different types of evidence
  • Randomised controlled trials treat one group and compare it with another ‘untreated’ group;
  • Population-level studies estimate the impact of a policy at aggregate level, controlling for other factors;
  • Conjectural surveys – for example: What would you do if you needed to obtain the consent of your parents before you could access contraception?
  • Computer simulations – for example: How many pregnancies does a condom programme prevent, assuming an x per cent take-up rate and a y per cent failure rate?

Professor Paton then reviewed three case studies:

1. Rosenbaum (a semi-randomised trial published in Pediatrics, 2009)
This study compared sexual activity and condom use amongst virginity pledgers with non-pledgers who were similar in other ways. It found that pledgers and matched non-pledgers did not differ with regard to premarital sex, the number of partners, or the incidence of STIs, but fewer pledgers used birth control and condoms. According to Rosenbaum the policy implications were clear:

Federal abstinence-only sex education funds should be shifted to evidence-based sex education programs that teach birth control…

However, the evidence did not support such a conclusion at all, since the study showed that even though young people who took an abstinence pledge
were less likely to use a condom, they were in fact also less likely to contract an STI. A correct inference from the results would note that:

  • Pledging has beneficial effects on most sexual behaviour and reduces condom use;
  • Some of the estimated beneficial effects are large (eg 40 per cent reduction in chlamydia), though these effects could be due to chance;
  • At worst, pledging is as ineffective as standard sex education.

In terms of policy implications, the Rosenbaum study showed that:

  • While the case for pledging is not proven, it shows encouraging signs;
  • There is therefore no justification for shifting funds away from abstinence programmes, but further research is required;
  • Concerns that programmes involving an abstinence pledge will result in an increase in STIs are misplaced;
  • A question mark hangs over funding for condom promotion schemes.

2. Santelli (a computer simulation study published in the American Journal of Public Health, 2007)
This study found that decreased sexual activity was responsible for a quarter (23 per cent) of the decline in teenage pregnancy rates among 15-17 year-olds in the United States from 1995-2002, while increased contraceptive use was responsible for the remainder (77 per cent). It concluded that:

‘Public policies in the US and elsewhere should…support increased availability and accessibility of contraceptive services for adolescents and promote the value of…condom and contraceptive use.’

However, Professor Paton demonstrated that the results depended on the assumptions that were built into the study, and other researchers had recorded quite different findings. A crucial question to ask is whether those who abstained would otherwise have used contraception or not. If those who abstained from sexual activity would not have used contraception if they had been sexually active, then a much larger proportion of the reduction in teenage pregnancy rates would be due to abstinence. In the absence of such knowledge, there is a far greater degree of uncertainty than the authors of the study were prepared to admit.

Professor Paton also observed that the policy conclusions did not follow from the research findings, since the study was concerned with contraceptive use, and not access to contraception.

3. Zavodny (a population level study published in the American Journal of Public Health, 2004)
This study compared teenage pregnancy rates in McHenry County, Illinois before and after laws were introduced requiring parents to give consent to the provision of contraception to their teenagers. The researchers found that ‘pregnancies and births among young women increased [after parental consent] relative to other counties’.

However, there were a number of methodological problems with the study, the most important of which was that abortion data were left out of the estimated teenage pregnancy rates. Professor Paton had corresponded with Professor Zavodny on this point, with the result that an erratum was subsequently published. However, Professor Zavodny had not amended her conclusions in line with the evidence.

In conclusion, Professor Paton drew some general lessons:

  • Don’t shoot the messenger (at least, not straight away!)
  • Check what is missing (or de-emphasised)
  • Check for clinical versus statistical significance
  • Has the subject been changed?
  • Recognise that even top researchers make mistakes

Above all, he stressed that we should not be afraid of social science research. Parents and teenagers need to know the truth.

David Paton is Professor of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School.

 

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The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education

Professor Dennis Hayes

Professor Hayes began his address with two examples of how ‘therapeutic education’ was impinging on the experience  of children in school  from their  earliest  years.  He related the story of a girl who came home from school crying. Her parents tried to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. Eventually she told them her problem: it was her turn to put something in the ‘worry box’, but she wasn’t worried about anything, so didn’t know what to do.

Then there was an emotional learning assistant, helping children to discuss their feelings in ‘circle time’. One child was excited because it was his birthday. ‘Yes, but are you sure there’s nothing you are worried about?’ he was asked.

The government’s Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) initiative had become a multi-million pound project that was manipulating the emotions of children in both primary and secondary schools. Professor Hayes identified seven key changes that were occurring:

1. An emphasis on emotions over the intellect

He cited two titles from the 1960s which had analysed the shift from therapy as a professional specialism into wider culture: The Triumph of the Therapeutic by Philip Rieff, and The Faith of the Counsellors by Paul Halmos. Rieff had shown how ‘a sense of well-being has become the end, rather than a by-product of striving after some superior communal end’. There had been a major cultural shift into a therapeutic culture preoccupied with personal happiness.

2. An epistemological change

Pupils now wanted to know more about themselves than the world. A 1979 paper published by the Further Education Curriculum Review and Development Unit, entitled A Basis for Choice: a report of a study group on post-16 pre-employment courses had exerted a major influence, with its emphasis on attitudes and character rather than knowledge. However, experience demonstrated that self-obsession leads to misery, not to happiness.

3. Political change

This was epitomised by President Clinton’s statement in the 1990s, ‘I feel your pain.’ Instead of asking, ‘What do you think?’ there was a shift towards asking ‘What do you feel?’ The obsession with people’s emotions was seen in the government’s appointment of 3,500 therapists to work with the unemployed and in the fact that in Newcastle every child was to be given counselling whether they needed it or not.

4. An attack on the human subject

At the root of the therapeutic culture was a philosophy of human beings as hopeless and helpless, and an undermining of objective knowledge. Many universities now had ‘lead learners’ rather than lecturers, and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers could assert that subjects are the worst thing that ever happened to education. Therapeutic thought had led to a diminished view of people.

5. An assessment of yourself rather than of the subject

Teacher training competencies now focused on ‘the self’ rather than on subject knowledge. Content had been removed from teacher training courses.

6. Change in the meaning of education

It was very difficult to have an education system that had any meaning at all when there was no interest in objective knowledge. This explained why many teachers were willing to follow any fad. Professor Hayes cited the example of a class of seven year-olds who were asked to discuss their feelings about suicide. Children were being manipulated. They were now only permitted to have empathetic feelings; they were not allowed to express any anger or passion.

7. A new social settlement

There was cash in promoting a diminished sense of self. It had become a multi-million pound industry, with companies set up to promote SEAL and circle time. The focus on self-esteem was giving way to a new emphasis on resilience. To say that a person lacked self-esteem was now viewed as negative, but the new vocabulary amounted to the same thing: ‘You’re hopeless; you’re not resilient enough’.

Professor Hayes argued that the current preoccupation with happiness was doing a disservice to children and to society. When people are miserable, they try to do something to change things. Misery gives birth to political and moral reformers. Therapists were now replacing priests and pastors. Some theologians were even talking in terms of ‘therapeutic prayer’. A term which at one time had been used in connection with sickness, was now being used universally.

There was a danger that the current preoccupation with therapy would deny future generations the possibility of an intellectual life. The rise of therapeutic education was more dangerous than any other minor intervention because emotional training gets into the mind in a way that Stalin never did. It was important to recognise what was happening in order to resist and challenge it.

Professor Hayes has recently been appointed Professor of Education at the University of Derby. Copies  of  his  book, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic   Education (co-authored with Kathryn Ecclestone) are available from Family Education Trust, priced at £15.00 + £2.00 p&p (rrp £18.99).

 

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Home education proposals pose serious threat to all families

Proposals to subject home educating families to an unparalleled level of intrusion into family life could set a dangerous precedent for all families in Britain. The government has accepted in full the recommendations of a review into home education undertaken by Graham Badman, the former director of children and educational services at Kent County Council.1 The recommendations include mandatory visits by local authority personnel to the homes of children educated outside the school system, with the right to speak to home educated children alone without their parents being present, where deemed appropriate.

The Home Education Advisory Service has described the proposals as ‘a charter for state interference in the private lives of law-abiding citizens to a degree hitherto unknown in this country’.2 To contemplate authorising social workers and other local authority personnel to conduct routine visits to families where there is not the slightest evidence that parents are failing in their duties towards their children or that the children are at risk of any harm runs counter to centuries of British law. Family Education Trust director, Norman Wells said that the proposals displayed ‘a fundamental distrust of parents’. He observed:

‘If the government gets its way, home educated children will be subject to a far greater degree of individual state surveillance than children receive in school. The current legal framework already grants local authorities sufficient power to intervene where they have evidence that a child is at risk of suffering significant harm whether the child in question is in school or not.’

Mr Wells warned that if the government’s groundless suspicion of home educating families were applied more widely, it could lead to full-time mothers being subject to statutory home visits if they did not place their children in state-regulated childcare, and parents of children in school being more closely monitored if they withdrew their children from sex education lessons. Any parent who failed to conform to the ideals of the government of the day could place himself at risk of additional surveillance measures.

Whether the government’s proposals will stand up to human rights legislation remains to be seen. Little more than two years ago, officials in the Department for Children, Schools and Families took the view that ‘under human rights and privacy laws we would never be able to legislate for the routine right of access to the family home even if we wanted to’.

In a Westminster Hall debate on home education, Mark Field MP warned that a change in the current law ‘could affect the balance of power between civil liberties and state intervention, whether one is innocent until proven guilty or guilty until proven innocent, and whether the state or parents have ultimate responsibility for their children’. He continued:

‘[T]he authorities can intervene only when people are seen to be breaking the law. It is for the same reason that police do not routinely visit people’s homes to check for stolen property. Therefore, there is an overwhelming case that home educators should be allowed to get on with their lives without undue state interference…

‘Increased intervention makes little financial sense and has the potential to divert resources from truly vulnerable children. It also further infringes the rights of parents to make the best decisions for their children. Current legislation is perfectly adequate, but poorly understood.’3

References:
1. Graham Badman, Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England, June 2009.
2. HEAS Bulletin, Summer 2009.
3. HC Hansard, 9 June 2009, cols 219-221WH.

The DCSF has launched a public consultation on Home Education – registration and monitoring proposals http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/consultations/
Closing Date: 19 October 2009.

 

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FPA forced to withdraw leaflet for primary school pupils

Thanks to the vigilance of a Family and Youth Concern supporter, the fpa (formerly the Family Planning Association) has been forced to withdraw from circulation a leaflet for primary school pupils.

Since February, the fpa had been promoting a leaflet aimed at 9-11 year-olds which was directing children to websites intended for teenagers and young adults containing advice on ‘exploring sexuality’ and all manner of sexual practices.

When our supporter visited the websites advertised on the reverse of the fpa leaflet 4You, he was appalled and immediately contacted the headteacher of his child’s school. Initially the head was defensive and said that the leaflet had been approved by the local authority. However, when she was persuaded to visit the websites and see for herself, she was very concerned about the explicit sexual content of the material that young children were being directed to.

Both the school and the local authority took up the matter with the fpa, with the result that the leaflet has been withdrawn. In a written notice that appeared on its website for a limited period in June, the fpa described the inclusion of the websites on the leaflet as a ‘printing error’ and undertook to withdraw all existing stock of the leaflet from circulation.

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