St Helens Council has revealed that it finds it ‘very difficult’ to engage with local Catholic schools about sex education and hopes new statutory Relationships and Sex Education guidance will provide it with a platform to better work with the schools. The comments have been made this week in a report regarding teenage sexual health to the local authority’s Children & Young People’s Services scrutiny committee.
Chair of the Accord Coalition, the Reverend Stephen Terry, said ‘Age appropriate sex and relationships education makes a very important contribution to ensuring the future health and well-being of pupils. It is an important safeguarding measure.
‘The best schools already provide it, but the subject suffers from a lack of status and, in some cases, from misguided beliefs that pupils are better served by delaying when certain information related to human reproduction is covered. Religious arguments are sometimes misapplied in support of such approaches.
‘The local authority’s report highlights how many education and health care professionals are relying on forthcoming guidance to boost the standing and provision of high quality Relationships and Sex Education. This includes many people working in faith schools.
‘The Government must not relent and permit faith schools exemptions to ignore core knowledge or not promote an acceptance of sexual diversity. Special pleading must not be allowed to trump best practices and the expressed needs of children and young people.’
Following the passing of the Children and Social Work Act 2017, from September 2019 all school pupils in England receiving primary education will be required to be taught ‘relationships education’. Those receiving secondary education will be required to be taught ‘relationships and sex education’. The Act requires the Education Secretary to produce statutory guidance on the teaching of these subjects, so granting them considerable power to determine what schools teach. Over the winter the Department for Education held a consultation regarding new guidance.
Making sex education compulsory has long been frustrated by a lobby lacking in evidence which has sought to delay when information surrounding how human reproduction occurs is presented in schools. Last summer Accord helped a group of 53 faith leaders organise a joint open letter urging that the new guidance require schools to provide factual information about contraception, abortion and to promote the acceptance of LGBT people.
Notes
A 2017 YouGov opinion poll, commissioned by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, found three-quarters of children aged between 11 and 15 believed they would be safer if they received RSE; seven in ten such children believed RSE should be compulsory in schools; and that 14% recorded that they have not received any RSE lessons at school.
