Accord Chair, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE, speaking at today’s launch of the Fair Admissions Campaign, along side Chair of the Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, Jeremy Rodell, and founder of the Institute of Community Cohesion (iCoCo), Professor Ted Cantle CBE.

The Accord Coalition welcomed the launch today of the Fair Admissions Campaign, a new single issue and ecumenical campaign focused solely on reducing and preventing state funded faith schools in England and Wales selecting pupils on the ground of religion, and the unwelcome consequences of this selection in terms of religious, ethnic, social and economic segregation.

While the Fair Admissions Campaign would welcome legislative change to end such selection, other goals include persuading Dioceses and individual religiously selective schools to embrace open/more open admission arrangements, and to encourage local campaigns seeking to ensure that local schools are made inclusive.

The Campaign is so far backed by a number of other civil society groups, including the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the British Humanist Association, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, and both the Labour and Liberal Democrat education associations. The groups have also been joined by Professor Ted Cantle CBE.

Professor Cantle is a leading expert on community cohesion and inter-cultural relations, and has made a significant contribution to the debate about the effect that schools may have on these issues. He set up the Institute of Community Cohesion (iCoCo) at the University of Coventry in 2006, and wrote the ‘The Cantle Report’, which was commissioned by the Home Office and published in 2001 after race riots in Bradford, Leeds, Oldham and Burnley that year. The report popularised the term community cohesion and cited religious and ethnic fragmentation as an underlying cause of the unrest.

Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE, said ‘Campaigning to end religious discrimination in pupil admissions is one of Accord’s key aims, and we are delighted to work with others to drive this strand of our work forwards. Religiously selective schools entrench religious discrimination in the very institutions that should be equipping pupils for respectful engagement with the challenges of living in a mixed-belief society. Children should not be the victim of discrimination by schools, and nor should discrimination be a part of school life, least of all in the name of religion.’

A number of Accord’s supporters have come out in support of the Fair Admissions Campaign today. Rector of the Parish of Aldrington in Hove and former faith school Chair of Governors, the Rev Stephen Terry, said ‘Faith selection at Church of England schools make the Church appear defensive and inward looking, when the schools should look outwards, as an expression of the warmth and generosity of our mission to the whole community. Having open admissions would not only serve local communities better, but would undoubtedly help to achieve a more positive image and reputation for the Church in our society. I hope more Dioceses and Church Schools will critically engage with the issues that the Fair Admissions Campaign is raising.’

Executive Director of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, the Rev Steve Dick, said ‘Faith supported schools make a meaningful contribution to society only if their admission policies do not discriminate on religious grounds.  Division and discord in our larger community grows in part from seeds sown by those who are only willing to teach and support those whose believe as they do.  If there is to be any hope of peace between people, faith groups need to model the golden rule by sharing our good works, such as the gift of education, with all regardless of their understandings of spirituality.’

Notes

In November 2012 an Accord commissioned poll by ComRes on religious selection in pupil admissions found that 73% of respondents agreed that ‘state funded schools, including state funded faith schools,  should not be allowed to select or discriminate against prospective pupils on religious grounds in their admissions policy’, including half (50%) who stated that they agreed “strongly”. Only 18% of respondents disagreed. The full survey results and field work data can be found here. ComRes interviewed 2,008 adults online between 2nd and 4th November 2012. Data was weighted to be demographically representative of all British adults aged 18+. ComRes is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules.

Speaking at a meeting of the Committee for Education of the Northern Ireland Assembly on Wednesday, the Chief Executive of the CCMS, Jim Clarke, said that the Council agreed that the rules that allowed schools to discriminate in employment ‘should go’. Clarifying the orgainsation’s position, Eugene O’Neill, the CCMS Head of HR, finance and cooperate governance added:

‘Our Council finds the notion of discrimination on the grounds of one’s religion abhorrent. It is on record as saying that. We do not believe that, in 2013, there is a place for that exemption of teachers from fair employment. We, as a council, are quite happy for that exemption to be removed’.

Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘Experience from Northern Ireland’s sectarian education system offers important lessons that policy makers in Great Britain are still failing to learn from. If schools employ teachers who hold the same religious views, and often the same views as the family of pupils, then they pose a greater threat to community cohesion by making themselves more religiously ghettoised, and by having discrimination an institutionalised part of school life.

‘The position of the CCSM is therefore to be welcomed. It underlines a powerful message that faith discrimination in employment at faith schools is neither proportionate nor justified, and that staff can still uphold a religious or philosophical ethos at a school without the need of being discriminated against.’

Notes

Minutes of this Wednesday’s meeting of the Committee for Education of the Northern Ireland Assembly can be found at http://www.niassembly.gov.uk/Documents/Official-Reports/Education/2012-2013/130529_CertificateinReligiousEducationCCMSBriefing.pdf.

Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE said, ‘As the Government promotes the diversity of provision of state funded schools through the Free Schools programme, it  should also ensure more oversight, not less, to help make certain that new freedoms are not abused. However, Accord is concerned that many safeguards have been taken away, which we consider particularly unwise when untested education providers are entering the state funded sector, and we advocates that a range of reforms be made.’

‘These include ensuring that:
1. All state funded schools are again inspected upon how effectively they promote community cohesion;
2. There is greater oversight of local school admission arrangements to ensure they are fair and sound;
3. Guidance is produced to ensure that all state funded schools, including Free Schools, teach Religious Education that it broad, balanced and objective.

‘It is vital that pupils receive an education that offers them a pathway to better citizenship and a proper understanding of one’s neighbour in today’s multi-belief Britain. Schools should be engines rooms of cohesiveness and mutual understanding, providing their pupils with a broad curriculum, where their horizons are widened, not blinkered. There is a risk that Free Schools may help in compounding the problem of social division – by giving the schools more power to do their own thing, but ignore the greater good, such as in admissions and the curriculum. We do not want schools to be inward-looking and self-serving.’

Notes

Over the three years several major safeguards have been removed by Government. Schools rated as “outstanding” have been freed from automatic OFSTED inspection and have had any application to become an Academy school fast tracked, meaning that the frequency of inspection has been reduced at many of the same schools being given greater powers and freedom.

Meanwhile, the 2011 Education Act resulted in state funded schools in England no longer being inspected by OFSTED upon their effectiveness at promoting community cohesion. In addition, the Act has meant that local authorities no longer have to organise school admission forums, which among other functions, help ensure that admission policies in a local area are fair and adhere to the School Admissions Code. Schools within the Academy sector have also been accused of failing to abide by relevant laws with regard to permanent exclusions.

Professor Ted Cantle CBE

Professor Ted Cantle CBE, Chair of the iCoCo Foundation and a leading national expert on community cohesion and intercultural relations, has joined the Accord Coalition.

Professor Cantle set up the Institute of Community Cohesion at the University of Coventry, and wrote the ‘The Cantle Report’, which was commissioned by the Home Office and published in 2001 after race riots in Bradford, Leeds, Oldham and Burnley that year. The report, which popularised the term community cohesion, argued that the fragmentation of communities along religious and ethnic lines and the lack of contact between those communities reinforced disadvantage and discrimination, and was an underlying cause of the unrest. The report described communities as living ‘parallel lives’.

Explaining his decision to join the Accord Coalition, Professor Cantle said, “We still have an alarming number of young people growing up in ignorance of ‘others’ and with little or no chance to dispel stereotypes and prejudices. Faith schools add to these divisions and the prospect of their expansion to all minority faiths, which cannot be denied to them, will create an even more balkanised community. The only solution is for a new open and mixed school system.”

Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE said ’Professor Cantle has made an enormous contribution to the debate about the effect that schools may have upon cohesion and inter-cultural relations. His support further strengthens Accord’s voice and we are delighted to welcome him as a Distinguished Supporter’.

Professor Cantle joins Accord’s growing list of Distinguished Supporters, who come from a wide variety of backgrounds. The list includes:

• Baroness Tessa Blackstone, Labour Peeress, Minister for Education (1997-2001) and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich
• Rt Rev Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh
• Naomi Long MP, the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland’s first MP elected to the House of Commons; Northern Ireland’s largest non-sectarian party
• Dr Caroline Lucas MP, former leader of the Green Party of England and Wales
• Lord Glentoran, Conservative Peer and Olympic gold medallist
• Philip Pullman, author
• The Rev Professor Christopher Rowland, theologian at the University of Oxford
• Polly Toynbee, journalist and writer

Notes

Professor Cantle’s website can be found at http://tedcantle.co.uk/.

The school is required to follow guidance from its local Archbishop, which mandates it to give priority to children from Catholic families when it is over-subscribed. An extract from the letter to affected parents read: “[Our] Trust Deed requires us to prioritise Catholics, and … as a school we cannot deviate from the Trust Deed…. [The Diocese lawyer] advised us that other schools had faced our predicament and consequently also sought advice from the Diocese, whereupon the issue had been referred to the (then) Director of Education for Westminster, Paul Barber. He confirmed that, given the terms of the Trust Deed, there was no scope for change.”

The case echoes that of Kentish Town Church of England Primary School in the London Borough of Camden, where nine children with an older sibling at the school have been denied a place this coming September, after a surge of applications were received from children who had attended a local Church. Under the school’s current arrangements children who attend Sunday Mass at the nearby St Benet’s & St Silas Church twelve or more times in the preceding year are prioritised over children with a brother or sister at the school. Earlier this month the school decided to change its admissions policy from September 2014 onwards, so that children who already had a sibling at the school were prioritised ahead of children admitted on faith grounds.

Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE, said ‘Having religious selection at schools within the state system causes a wide range of problems, and these are not just realised at a community level, such as through the negative effects for social cohesion by segregating children, but they also directly impact upon numerous families throughout the county, as these two cases in London highlight.’

‘School’s conduct should be exemplary, and no state funded schools should be discriminating on the grounds of religion. The blinkered pursuit by religiously selective schools to serve their own, rather than the wider community, and in this case, the families of children at the school, brings into question whether they are fulfilling the social contract that people might reasonably expect of them.

‘A humane, and also a religious response would be to find room for siblings of existing children and not to use religious discrimination to split families. That does not sit well with the values of most faiths.

‘Although nine children with a sibling at Kentish Town Church of England Primary have lost out this year, and although the school will continue to privilege children on faith grounds in its admission policy, the recent change to its policy is to be welcomed as a step in the right direction, and Accord urges the Archdiocese of Westminster to critically engage with the issues that Kentish Town Church of England School has done.’

Notes

Sacred Heart Primary School’s case was highlighted this week by the Richmond Inclusive Schools Campaign, a local group endorsed by the Accord Coalition, which campaigns against religious discrimination in pupil admissions at state funded schools in the London Borough of Richmond.

Guidance for Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Westminster, including about their approach to pupil admissions, is contained in the document ‘The Trust Deed for Catholic Schools and Colleges in the Archdiocese of Westminster’.

Among the report’s key findings were calls to the Department for Education to ensure that there is better training for new and existing PSHE teachers, that schools have better access to guidance highlighting examples of best practice, and that the Department should give a clear message to schools about the importance of PSHE. However, these recommendations make awkward reading for Ministers, as they follow on from the conclusion of the Government’s own nineteen month review of PSHE, which was published in March.

The Government’s review did not set out firm proposals for improving teacher training, but instead its publication coincided with an announcement that the PSHE Association would have its funding reduced, while the Government did not consider whether PSHE should be added to the National Curriculum, which would ensure that all schools provide it. Meanwhile, the latest draft of the Government’s revised National Curriculum offers less information on the teaching of biological aspects of sex education than is included in the current National Curriculum.

This is despite there being a cross-party consensus in support of proposals to make PSHE, which includes Sex and Relationships Education, a statutory entitlement for young people as part of the National Curriculum, when an unsuccessful attempt to establish this was made during passage of the Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009/2010. The proposals were also supported by the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales and the Church of England.

Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, said ‘Surveys show that parents want children to receive PSHE, that pupils want to receive more and better quality PSHE, and that teachers want extra support and materials to help in teaching it. The report from OFSTED also highlights various areas of major weakness in PSHE provision, which it thinks should be addressed.

‘However, in stark contrast the Government has done little to improve the standing and provision of PSHE, and may now even undermine it by reducing the modest amount of sex education that is currently required to be taught as Science in the National Curriculum. The Government’s position seems increasingly isolated, detached and hard to understand. To deny pupils information about how their bodies work, as well as personal boundaries, how to resist pressure, how to seek help and misleading and inappropriate messages in the media places the future health and well-being of children and young people at risk.

‘OFSTED’s report highlights a close correlation between schools rated as outstanding in their provision of PSHE, and also those schools that were rated as outstanding in their overall effectiveness and the grades that pupils achieved. This should send yet another powerful signal to the Government about how boosting pupils’ emotional, behavioural and social well-being also boosts their achievements and general fulfilment, both academically at school and during later life.’

OFSTED’s new report ‘Not yet good enough: personal, social, health and economic education in schools’ found that PSHE education was good or better in 60% of schools, but required improvement or was inadequate in 40%. It found that at 20% of schools staff had received little or no training to teach PSHE education, and that many teachers lacked expertise in teaching sensitive and controversial issues, which resulted in some topics such as sexuality, mental health and domestic violence being omitted from the curriculum. The report highlighted concern that a lack of high-quality, age-appropriate Sex and Relationships Education in schools may leave children and young people vulnerable to inappropriate sexual behaviours and sexual exploitation. It also noted that the weakest aspect of PSHE teaching was that the assessment of pupils’ learning was usually less robust for PSHE education than for other subjects.

Notes

OFSTED’s report ‘Not yet good enough: personal, social, health and economic education in schools’ can be found at http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/not-yet-good-enough-personal-social-health-and-economic-education-schools.

The PSHE Association is the national subject association for professionals working in PSHE education.

The NSPCC report ‘Child cruelty in the UK 2011: An NSPCC study into childhood abuse and neglect over the past 30 years’ found that in 2009, one in four 18-24 year olds (25.3%) had been physically attacked by an adult during childhood, sexually assaulted, or severely neglected at home, and that one in twenty children (4.8%) had been sexually assaulted – either by an adult or another child.

The report ‘Sex and Relationship Education: Views from teachers, parents and governors’ (2010), commissioned by the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, the National Association of Head Teachers, the National Governors Association and Durex, found that 90% of parents and 93% of Governors thought schools should be involved in providing SRE, but that 80% of teachers do not feel sufficiently well trained and confident to talk about SRE. Only 9% of school leaders rated the teaching materials available to them as ‘very useful’. More than one in four school leaders and a fifth of governors believe that current SRE in schools is failing children by preparing them for the future ‘not well’ or ‘not at all well’.

A poll from Brook in November 2011 found that around one in four 12 to 18 year olds in the UK indicated that they didn’t receive any Sex and Relationships Education in school at all.

‘Schools in England and Wales are held back by laws that require they provide a daily act of collective worship of a wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character, unless a school is a non-Christian faith school, when they are required to provide assemblies that are distinctive of their faith. However, while these requirements must be changed, schools should not only creatively use the current flexibility under the law to provide a programme of assemblies that are made a bit more appropriate to their student body, like Slough and Eton College, but they should provide assemblies that are accessible for all and draw upon and forge shared values, investigating ethical and moral values from a variety of sources, including religious and philosophical.

‘School’s conduct should be exemplary, and this kind of approach would be much more appropriate and respectful in a society such as ours with increasingly religious plurality and a growth in the non-religious. Slough and Eton College’s approach is just a small step, and they and many other schools still have a long way to go.’

Notes

This story first appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Times (£).

The latest guidance on Collective Worship for schools produced by NASACRE and AREIAC can be found at http://www.nasacre.org.uk/downloads/CollWorRevisit.pdf.

A July 2010 YouGov poll commissioned by the Accord Coalition found that 43% of GB adults agreed (to 30% against) that the laws that require schools to provide daily collective worship, including in faith schools, should be replaced by a requirement that they hold assemblies which consider spiritual, moral and ethical issues shared by different religions and by those who are not religious: http://accordcoalition.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Accord-Coalition-Opinion-Poll-by-YouGov-July-2010.xls.

‘Worship in School Study’ for the BBC by ComRes in July 2011 found only 60% of adults (to 36%) thought the Collective Worship laws should be enforced: http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/BBC_Religion_Worship_in_schools_results_(plus_regions)_July11.pdf

• maintained schools must consider, in particular, how the RE and assemblies they provide meet their legal requirement to provide a Curriculum that provides pupils ‘for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life’
• maintained schools are reminded of their legal duty to promote community cohesion and to consider how their teaching may advance this
• the value of providing assemblies that forge shared values is stressed
• the sex education provided as part of science at the primary stage should ensure that both boys and girls know about puberty before they experience the onset of physical changes and know how a baby is born, as the Government’s own SRE guidance recommends
• sexual health and contraception is included in Key Stage Three
• schools are encouraged to raise awareness of gender variance

Chair of the Accord Coalition, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain said, ‘We wanted age appropriate Sex and Relationships and Religious Education to be included in the National Curriculum, and are disappointed that the Government chose not to review the standing of these subjects, along with school assemblies, as part of its Curriculum review.

‘However, as there may still be room for debate about the wording of the Curriculum, we have made a range of suggestions about how it could make a stronger emphasis on schools promoting shared values and the growth of mutual understanding, as well enhancing the provision for sex education. The draft Curriculum is currently worded in a way that would allow schools to deny pupils vital knowledge about how their bodies work and risks they may face, as well as for schools to not consider their contribution to social cohesion.’

Last week the Accord Coalition joined over one hundred groups and individual experts in a joint letter, which argued that the current draft National Curriculum would have a ‘negative effect on sex education’ and called on the Government to include the ‘essentials of sex education in science’.

The letter, signed by Accord’s Chair, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE, follows publication by the Government of its revised draft National Curriculum in February, which offers less information on the teaching of sex education than in the current National Curriculum. The Accord Coalition had previously written to the Government about its proposals for the provision of sex education in Science, describing them as ‘cursory’.

Rabbi Romain said ‘Accord believes that all schools should teach age appropriate sex and relationships education, and we supports a rights based approach to its provision, grounded on evidence and needs of children and young people. Children are bombarded by misleading messages about sex and relationships in the media, and should be entitled o know about how their body work and of risks they may face.

‘However, the sex education element of the National Curriculum for Science is the only sex education that schools have to offer, and thus that some pupils will ever receive, so has added importance. The development of high quality and thorough sex education in schools is being frustrated by a small, but vocal and ideologically driven lobby, whose opinions lack firm evidence. We consequently therefore enthusiastically support this letter.’

The SEF is the country’s leading authority on age appropriate Sex and Relationships Education (SRE), which Accord joined in August 2012. The joint letter and its signatories are reproduced below:

“Sir, We are deeply concerned that the science curriculum proposals will have a negative effect on sex education.

Children have a right to learn about their bodies, physical development and reproduction. We know there is easy access to explicit sexual images on the internet. The National Curriculum science is the only compulsory part of sex and relationships education in schools and must teach children about how their bodies work to prepare them for growing up and to protect them from harm. However, the science proposals omit any reference to genitalia, puberty or sexual health.

We believe that these proposals will not help schools to ‘create an honest and open culture around sex and relationships’, as set out in the new Framework for Sexual Health Improvement. It is time to put any adult squeamishness about sex aside. We urge the government to safeguard children by unambiguously including the essentials of sex education in science.

Dr Hilary Emery, National Children’s Bureau; Justine Roberts, Mumsnet; Jane Lees, Sex Education Forum; Dr Anthony Falconer, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists; Professor Lindsey Davies, Faculty of Public Health; Reg Bailey, Chief Executive, Mothers Union; National Working Group for Sexually Exploited Children and Young People; Annette Smith, Chief Executive, Association for Science Education; Dr Chris Wilkinson, President, Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Health; Dr Audrey Simpson, OBE, Acting Chief Executive, FPA (Family Planning Association); Sir Nick Partridge, CEO, tht (Terence Higgins Trust); Helen Lansdown, CEO, Deafax; Simon Blake, OBE, CEO, Brook; Royal College of Nursing; Institute of Health Promotion and Education (IHPE); Janet Atherton, President, Association of Directors of Public Health; Association of Young People’s Health; Martin Tod, Chief Executive, Men’s Health Forum; British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS); Jonathan Bartley, Co-Director, Ekklesia; Derek McAuley, Chief Officer, General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches; Martin Pendergast, Chairperson, Centre for the Study of Christianity & Sexuality; Leap Confronting Conflict; Charlotte Hill, Chief Executive, UK Youth; Susanne Rauprich, Chief Executive, National Council for Voluntary Youth Services; Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, MBE, Chair of The Accord Coalition for Inclusive Education; UK Youth Parliament; British Youth Council; Youth Net; ASDAN

And supported by the 75 member organisations of the Sex Education Forum:

Action for Children; APAUSE; Avert; ASHEC; BARCA-Leeds; Barnardo’s; Big Talk Education; Black Health Agency; Body & Soul; British Humanist Association; Brook London; Cambridge Education @ Islington; Caught in the Act; CHIV; Children’s Society; Church of England Education Division; The Christopher Winter Project; Cornwall Learning; CPHVA; CSN Consultancy Ltd; Deafax; Dept of Sexual & Reproductive Health Lewisham PCT Community Health Services; Esteem Resource Network; Family Lives; FFLAG; Forward UK; Grace Academy Foundation; Image in Action; KIDS; Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement; Loudmouth Education & Training; Marie Stopes International; MEDFASH; Mencap; The Methodist Church; NAPCE; National AIDS Trust; National Secular Society; Naz Project London; National Children’s Bureau; NGA; NHEG; Nottingham Domestic Violence Forum; NSCoPSE; National Youth Agency; Oasis; One Plus One; Oxfordshire County Council; Platform 51; Population Matters; PSHE Association; Relate; Richmond upon Thames College; Romance Academy; Scope; Sexpression:UK; SHARe Team (Sexual Health and Relationships Team); SRE in London; Stonewall; Straight Talking Peer Education; StreetwiseGB; Teaching Lifeskills; Teens & Toddlers; Tender; Womankind; Woodhouse College; Working with Men

And supported by life members of the Sex Education Forum:

Anne Weyman, OBE; Sue Plant; Dilys Went; Hilary Dixon; Liz Swinden; Lorna Scott; Melody Dougan; Hansa Patel-Kanwal, OBE; Jo Adams, MBE; Gill Frances, OBE; Alison Hadley, OBE”

Notes

In December a cross Party enquiry of MPs looking into the issue of teenage pregnancy recommended that schools be required to provide pupils with Sex and Relationships Education (SRE), and that teachers of SRE receive compulsory training in the subject. Their report, The Morning After: A Cross Party Inquiry into Unplanned Pregnancy, can be found here.

Similarly the House of Lords Select Committee on HIV and AIDS urged that SRE be made a part of the National Curriculum in their report ‘No vaccine, no cure: HIV and AIDS in the United Kingdom‘, published in September 2011.

In July 2012 Channel 4 withdrew a resource that it had made available over the preceding ten years that supported the teaching of SRE in primary schools, so as to ensure that their products reflected the government’s ‘current policy’.

In January 2012 Nadine Dorries MP tabled, though later withdrew a Private Members’ Bill, which called for schools to teach girls aged 13 to 16 the ‘benefits of abstinence from sexual activity’.

The NSPCC’ report  ‘Child cruelty in the UK 2011: An NSPCC study into childhood abuse and neglect over the past 30 years’ found that in 2009 one in four 18-24 year olds (25.3%) had been physically attacked by an adult during childhood, sexually assaulted, or severely neglected at home and that one in twenty children (4.8%) had been sexually assaulted – either by an adult or another child.

Sex and Relationship Education: Views from teachers, parents and governors (2010) found that 90% of parents thought schools should be involved in providing SRE, but that 80% of teachers do not feel sufficiently well trained and confident to talk about SRE, only 9% of school leaders rated the teaching materials available to them as ‘very useful’, and more than one in four school leaders rated the current provision of SRE in schools in preparing children for the future as ‘not well’ or ‘not at all well’.

‘The Government’s commitment to PSHE is half hearted and inadequate. High quality PSHE, which includes age appropriate Sex and Relationships Education, improves children and young people’s health and wellbeing. Surveys show that parents want children to receive PSHE, children want to receive more and better quality PSHE, and teachers want extra support and materials to help in teaching it.

‘We welcome that the Government intends on providing a small grant to the PSHE Association to work with schools to advise them in developing their own PSHE curricula and improve the quality of teaching. However, PSHE teacher training and resources for teaching staff remain insufficient, and children and families continue to face a lottery about whether or how seriously their school takes PSHE.

‘At a time when children are bombarded by media messages about sex and subject to peer pressure, the Government has decided to stick its head in the sand. Its commitment to PSHE is half hearted, inadequate and has placed the future health and wellbeing of children and young people at risk.’

The Government statement was made this morning in the House of Commons by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education, Elizabeth Truss MP. The Accord Coalition responded to the Government’s PSHE consultation back in November 2011.

Notes

The outcomes of the Department for Education PSHE review are available to view here.

The NSPCC report Child cruelty in the UK 2011: An NSPCC study into childhood abuse and neglect over the past 30 years found that in 2009, one in four 18-24 year olds (25.3%) had been physically attacked by an adult during childhood, sexually assaulted, or severely neglected at home, and that one in twenty children (4.8%) had been sexually assaulted – either by an adult or another child.

Addressing the Home Affairs Select Committee on June 12^th, 2012, Sue Berelowitz, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner for England, gave a shocking testimony on the prevalence of sexual exploitation of children in England, which she claimed took place in every ‘town, village and hamlet’ in England.

Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) forms an integral part of PSHE and SRE provision in the UK currently lags behind that of many developed countries. A 2007 survey by the UK Youth parliament of over 20,000 young people found that shockingly 61 per cent of boys and 70 per cent of girls aged over 17 reported not receiving any information at school about personal relationships.

An Ofsted report on PSHE published in 2010 found that some aspects of SRE were less well taught than others, particularly relationships. Amongst the report’s key findings, it was concerned over a lack of discrete curriculum time in a quarter of schools visited, particularly at secondary schools, which meant that programmes of study were not covered in full. The areas that suffered most included Sex and Relationships Education and mental health issues.

The report Sex and Relationship Education: Views from teachers, parents and governors, commissioned by the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, the National Association of Head Teachers, the National Governors Association and Durex, found that 90% of parents and 93% of Governors thought schools should be involved in providing SRE, but that 80% of teachers do not feel sufficiently well  trained and confident to talk about SRE. Only 9% of school leaders rated the teaching materials available to them as ‘very useful’. More than one in four school leaders and a fifth of governors believe that current SRE in schools is failing children by preparing them for the future ‘not well’ or ‘not at all well’.

Support for making SRE statutory has extended to the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales and the Church of England. Both groups supported SRE becoming part of the National Curriculum at primary and secondary levels when proposed by the un-amended Children, Schools and Families Bill 2009-2010.