Yesterday the Government published their final guidance[1] and regulations[2] on relationships education (primary school) and relationships and sex education or RSE (secondary school).

Positively, there is now a reference to the negative impact of pornography in the section on what pupils should know about online and media environments. There is also a new reference in the guidance to the risks related to online gambling for the secondary school health education curriculum.

Unfortunately, all of the concerns raised by CARE in last year’s consultation have been entirely ignored. Headteachers will now have the final say on requests for children to be withdrawn from sex education at secondary school and there is no requirement in the regulations that they take note of the Government’s guidance in this matter.

Under the new regulations parents will only be able to request that their children be withdrawn from sex education in RSE. The guidance states that these requests should usually be granted apart from in ‘exceptional circumstances’. When pressed, however, Ministers repeatedly refused to expand on what these ‘exceptional circumstances’ might be when a headteacher would overrule a parental request.

How can parents be expected to trust the Government’s assurances when they refuse to clarify how this process will work and on what grounds decisions will be made? Undoubtedly many headteachers will comply with parents’ requests however combative headteachers ideologically opposed to a religious or faith perspective will have total discretion to ignore parent’s wishes and force children into sex education.

As Shabana Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Ladywood argued, “I do not believe the Government have the right to legislate for the calling of an individual’s conscience.”

This goes directly against promises the Government made in 2017 that they would retain parents’ right to withdraw they child from sex education at secondary school.[3]

Furthermore, there has been no change in the guidance about teaching RSE as an integrated subject which will make it almost impossible for parents who want to withdraw their child.

The guidance repeatedly stresses that RSE should be taught in an integrated manner without artificial separation between sex education and relationships education. This entirely makes sense as sex never takes place in a relational vacuum, the two are integrally related and should be taught as such.

Despite this the Government has only allowed parents to withdraw their children from sex education at primary school and to request as much in secondary school. It will become quite impractical to withdraw a child from the sex education component, while keeping them in the relationships education component. This could make it impossible to use the right of withdrawal from sex education only, apart from relationships education, rendering the right entirely meaningless.

In the Westminster Hall debate Jim Shannon MP made a helpful contribution noting that, “These are issues of a personal nature —matters of morality, and it is best left for parents to decide how to raise their children. It is not for the state to decide the morality and standards of each family in the United Kingdom. It is for those families and parents to decide, and it should not be otherwise. …fundamental to the values of a democratic society is our respect of the privacy of each other’s family life at home and our upholding of the freedom of conscience, thought and religion.”

Commenting, CARE’s Family Policy Officer Jonathan Williams said:

“The Government is sending entirely mixed messages around whether or not they trust parents. Minsters have stated that, ‘Parents and carers are the prime teachers for children on many of these matters, and schools complement and reinforce that role’ however the regulations show that as a matter of law the final decision about whether or not to withdraw a child from secondary school sex education will, for the first first time, rest with headteachers, not parents. This would constitute a profound shift in the relationship between the state and family.

“CARE would like to see the Government taking the approach of empowering parents, rather forcing children into sex education against parents’ wishes. This would mean giving back to parents the right to withdraw their children from both relationships and sex education.

“The practical impossibility of withdrawing a child at secondary school from sex education but not relationships education makes a mockery of the Government’s claim that they are upholding the role of parents as ‘prime educators’ of their children. These subjects are not, and should not be, taught in an artificially separated way and yet this is how the Government has set up the right to request withdrawal at secondary school. This will prove overly complicated for both parents and schools and the solution of extending the right to both sex and relationships education is simply too easy for the Government to ignore.”

[1]Accessible as a PDF from the Department for Education here.

[2]Accessible as a PDF here.

[3]Accessible from the Hansard website here.