Media information: 28 February 2014
For immediate release
The supplementary advice on sex and relationships education (SRE) does not provide a safe and reliable guide for schools to follow, according to the Family Education Trust.
The guidance, published today by Brook, in association with the Sex Education Forum and the PSHE Association represents the perspective of organisations advocating a highly controversial approach to sex education.
Family Education Trust director, Norman Wells, responded:
It is important that schools recognise this advice for what it is. It reflects the agenda of a group of organisations at one end of a very broad spectrum of opinion on sex education and has no official status. The guidance that really counts remains the statutory guidance published by the Department for Education in July 2000.
The advice has been produced by the three organisations after they failed to persuade the government of the need to issue fresh statutory guidance on sex and relationships education. On the premise that advancing technology since 2000 demanded supplementary guidance for schools, they set about producing their own advice, ostensibly to equip teachers to help protect children and young people from inappropriate online content, and from online bullying, harassment and exploitation.
However, the resulting document is much more broad in scope and reads more like a manifesto document than supplementary advice designed to plug the gaps in official government guidance. The advice makes no explicit reference to the fact that primary schools are not obliged to provide sex education at all and engages in a piece of wishful thinking on the part of the sex education lobby when it asserts that sex education forms part of National Curriculum science at key stages 1 and 2.
The role of parents
At several points, the tone and content of the advice is not so much ‘supplementary’ as contradictory. Whereas the statutory guidance contains over 90 references to parents and the importance of consultation with parents and taking into account their wishes and concerns, the advice of the sex education lobby plays down the parental role.
Although the document maintains that ‘high quality SRE’ is ‘a partnership between home and school’, it places more emphasis on actively seeking the views of children and young people to influence lesson planning and teaching than it does on consultation with parents. In fact, it chooses to state that ‘Parents and carers can be invited to see the resources that the school has selected’ (emphasis added), rather than take the more positive line that schools ‘should’ invite parents to review their sex education resources.
Norman Wells commented:
It comes as no surprise that organisations which have long wanted to limit parental influence over school policies on sex education and the resources used should play down the importance of ensuring that parents remain very much in the driving seat in this sensitive and controversial subject area. Input into this advice was limited to groups who share the outlook of the Sex Education Forum – a body that would like to see the sex education curriculum mandated by central government, rather than determined by governing bodies on a school-by-school basis in consultation with parents. Members of the Forum would also like to see the right of parents to withdraw their children from sex education lessons either limited or removed altogether.Marriage
The ‘supplementary advice’ also departs from the official government guidance on sex and relationships education in that it makes no reference to ‘moral considerations’, marriage or family life.
Section 403 of the Education Act 1996 stipulates that sex education must be given in such a manner that it encourages pupils to have ‘due regard to moral considerations and the value of family life’. It goes on to insist that statutory guidance must ensure that sex education teaches ‘the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and the bringing up of children’.
However, the advice produced by Brook, the Sex Education Forum and the PSHE Association is devoid of references to morality, marriage or family life.
Norman Wells commented:
The advice is devoid of a coherent moral framework. The organisations that have produced it have completely divorced sex and relationships from marriage and even from family life. While it talks about treating sex as ‘a normal and pleasurable fact of life’, it has nothing to say about the moral and family context in which sex is to be enjoyed. There is not even a reference to the need for fidelity and exclusivity. It is as though such considerations are completely irrelevant to sex education in the minds of the authors.Teaching about pornography
The section in the advice on teaching children about pornography is predictably in harmony with previous statements on the subject from the Sex Education Forum. In the first issue of its Sex Educational Supplement, published in April 2013, the Forum suggested that pornography is not ‘all bad’ and held that young people need help in ‘interpreting’ it. The advice similarly takes a non-judgmental and non-directional view.
Norman Wells observed:
We can all agree that the prevalence of pornography in society in general, and on the internet in particular, presents enormous challenges. But the kind of non-judgmental, non-directive approach advocated by this supplementary guidance is bound to do more harm than good.Parents who say they think pornography should be taught in sex education lessons generally assume that their children will be taught that it is wrong and discouraged from viewing it. They don’t for one moment think that it will be presented as a topic for discussion, devoid of any moral framework or direction. Such teaching would merely compound the problems associated with the sexualisation of children. For some pupils it would run the very real danger of arousing a curiosity to search out more pornography for themselves, and for others it might very well introduce the idea for the very first time.Conclusion
The advice asserts that ‘SRE is part of the solution to concerns about sexualisation’, but omits to mention that it can also be part of the problem when it is presented outside a clear and firm moral framework.
Family Education Trust director, Norman Wells, concluded:
As a guide for schools designed to protect pupils and promote optimal sexual health, this advice is simply not fit for purpose.We sincerely hope that when government ministers see the final version they will recognise that it is not suitable for promotion in schools
Family Education Trust is an educational charity committed to promoting stable family life and the welfare of children and young people.