Family

Youth

Future

Letter – Parents are responsible in law for the education of their children

Sir, Robert Rhodes is mistaken in his assumption that Ed Balls’s plan to deny parents the right to withdraw their children from sex education lessons once they reach the age of 15 may be motivated by a desire to reduce teenage pregnancy rates (letter, Nov 7). In the absence of any evidence that children whose parents have opted to remove them from sex education classes are placed at increased risk of either teenage pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection, it is quite clear that Mr Balls’s proposal is purely ideological.

Unless and until the Government has firm evidence that the parental right of withdrawal is having a significantly adverse effect on child health outcomes, and equally solid evidence that compulsory sex education would effectively address the problem, it should allow the current legislation to stand.

Parents are responsible in law for the education of their children until the summer after their 16th birthday. It is not the business of the State to ride roughshod over the principled views of parents and attempt to impose its own ideology where it does not bear the ultimate responsibility.

Norman Wells
Director
Family Education Trust

Published in The Times, 11 November 2009

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