Mother loses campaign to have RSE materials released

In a case that was brought to the courts, a mother has lost her campaign for a school to share sex education materials taught in her daughter’s lesson.

Under freedom of information laws, Clare Page requested that the lesson plan, accompanying slides and the names of the facilitators be released after her daughter was taught that ‘heteronormativity’ was a ‘bad thing’, and that she should be ‘sex positive’ in her relationships.

The School of Sexuality Education which hosted the class at Hatcham College, a state school in New Cross, Southeast London, refused to release the information which led to Mrs Page making legal action.

Looking into the sex education provider, Mrs Page found that one of the teachers described themselves as a ‘master fetish trainer’, and that some of the people hosting lessons had commercial interests in the sex industry.

In March of this year, Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, wrote to all schools stating that “parents should be able to view all curriculum materials”, including cases “where an external agency advises schools that their materials cannot be shared due to restrictions in commercial law, or a school’s contract with the provider prohibits sharing materials beyond the classroom”.

The case was overruled by Judge Sophie Buckley who said that the commercial interests of the third-party sex education provider outweighed the public interest of a parent requesting the materials.

Mrs Page is taking legal advice on whether to pursue her campaign at an upper-tier tribunal, sharing that she is concerned that this case breached a ban on the political indoctrination of children in schools.

She said, “At the most simple level, the fact that the teachers, the IC [Information Commissioner] and a judge have all had access to hold a copy of this lesson plan, whilst the parent of a child taught the lesson has not, is just plain wrong.

“This reservation of decision making and secrecy is part of an authoritarian trend in governance, law, education and especially RSE [relationships and sex education]. Full transparency would therefore produce a necessary rebalancing of power towards the parent and citizen, against that of the state, the education sector and commercial interests.”