Sex education. For younger readers, those words may remind them of a tedious Netflix show that launched the new Doctor Who’s career. For many more it will conjure up collective memories of trying to stick rubber johnnies on bananas, watching thirty-year-old VHSes of cartoon willies and vaginas, and drawing smiley faces on pictures of sperms in textbooks. It was tremendous fun.
But for all its entertainment value, I’m not sure how much I actually learnt in sex ed classes. I do remember being shown an eight-step process for putting on a condom that was so confusing that I’m shocked my form hasn’t produced a litter of accidental sprogs. Why do we teach sex ed? To explain best relationship practice and basic biology? To put teens off of sex? Or to make it safe?
Relationship and sex education (RSE) was only made mandatory in all secondary schools (and relationship education statutory in primary schools) in 2017. Before then, various forms of non-statutory guidance mixed with a few scientific requirements. This compulsory curriculum was to be taught from 2020 – handy if any bored pupils had passed lockdown by sexting and watching porn.
Unsurprisingly, there was a wide range of opinions on what is required to ground kids in the birds and the bees. Every parent, teacher, and other interested party will have their own idiosyncratic take on the facts of life. Consequently, as Mark Lehain has put it, “the final curriculum and statutory guidance for schools is a masterclass in consensus building” – a big dollop of fudge.
Yet an increasing number of parents have become concerned with what is being taught to their children. Some will be unhappy with any mention of sex in the classroom. But there is much evidence that some rather eye-opening content has been taught that goes into graphic detail and contested subjects far beyond statutory guidelines – and that parents have been blocked from seeing it.
Clare Page, a mother from southeast London, was surprised when her daughter came home from school anxious. She had been told the need to be “sex positive” about relationships. When Page looked up what this meant, she discovered links from the website of one of its instructors to pages promoting anal sex, porn, and sex toys. That’s a long way from the old Durex and fruit approach.
Having contacted her daughter’s school to see the lesson she had had, Page was informed she couldn’t as it had been provided by an external provider, which had worked in about 300 schools, and was covered by copyright laws. The shock this caused Page fed into a national campaign, with the mantle taken up by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates – our columnist – in Parliament.
Cates has told MPs that children were getting “graphic lessons on oral sex, how to choke your partner safely, and 72 genders”. Parts of their New Social Covenant Unit’s report have been contested. But there is no doubt children have been taught both about graphic sex practices, and what Joanna Williams calls “ideologically-driven and scientifically-inaccurate lessons in gender identity”.
The Cass Review highlighted the appalling consequences of allowing such ideas to be promoted and accepted unchallenged. Children have it tough enough without being lectured on onanism and confused about their gender. That is especially true if what is being taught goes beyond the Government’s age-appropriate guidance and into politically contested gender woo-woo.
Lottie Moore – formerly of Policy Exchange, now working for Kemi Badenoch – went into greater detail in her report Asleep at the Wheel. 72 per cent of schools surveyed have informed pupils they may have a gender identity different from their sex. 25 per cent had taught that some people can be born in the wrong bodies. At least 30 per cent or more accepted gender self-identification.
She makes clear that some of what is being taught contradicts government guidance and is scientifically incorrect. So how has it ended up being peddled in our classrooms? Whilst ministers set a minimum for what schools must teach, they did not set a ceiling, nor consider available resources. No government-approved list of content providers was created. Welcome to the “Wild West”.
This has allowed considerable opportunities for external agencies and activist groups to hijack curriculums, and teach contested ideas about gender identity as if they were facts. Fortunately, when sex ed was made compulsory, a pledge was made to review the curriculum every three years. Rishi Sunak therefore responded to campaigners’ efforts last year by speeding up a review.
As a father of young girls, the Prime Minister has an obvious reason to be interested in what is being taught in schools. Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to Gillian Keegan’s looming announcement of the updated guidelines. These are expected to contain new restrictions on teaching gender identity. Teachers must describe the ideology as “contested” and talk of two sexes.
The new guidelines apparently also aim to be much more informative on what in sex ed can focus on before the age of thirteen. Ministers aim to limit earlier teaching to the “basic facts” of conception and birth. Warnings will also be given on the dangers of pornography and sending naked pictures. Contraception, abortion, violence, abuse, and STIs will be kept back for the Year 9s.
All this seems reasonable. Readers will have their own thoughts on where limits should be drawn. Is it better to teach children about sexual violence or abuse earlier, so they can be on the lookout for it? Or is that burdening children at too young an age with some of life’s most horrible and grotesque facets? As with all these topics – how long should a form of youthful innocence be preserved?
Or is that gesturing to an unrealistic ideal? Ministers may be able to demand gender ideology and graphic sexual practices be taken out of the classroom. But we live in an age of online pornography and social media, of TikTok and Instagram. Unless you keep children away from the web altogether, you cannot guarantee that they are not absorbing worrying material of their own accord.
Sufficiently online-adept kids have long been able to access material of sufficient depravity that even your average Soho sex shop would find rather cask strength. Similarly, for the lonely and confused, there are plenty of social media influencers peddling hollow dreams of gender liberation. Have the best efforts of Badenoch (and a few left-leaning lesbians) really stopped the spread?
These realities will remain the same whatever Sunak and Keegan decree that the nation’s teachers must say about the birds and bees. Moreover, a general election may have been called by the time the nine-week consultation on the proposals is completed. No government can bind its successors, despite Tony Blair’s best efforts. So what will Labour’s approach to these issues be?
On gender, Keir Starmer has been on a journey from claiming some women have penises to remembering Rosie Duffield’s mobile number. As a parent, he will share Sunak’s desire for children to be taught age-appropriate content. But he will not be Labour’s leader forever, nor Bridget Phillipson his Education Secretary. What could a pairing more sympathetic to the activist class do?
Unless social conservatives quickly find a Julian the Apostate figure to turn the tide – paging Louise Perry – the internal logic of our new Reformation only points in one direction. Battles can be won to keep children safe from lessons on anal sex, the joys of porn, or the mutability of their gender identity. But look at the opinions of young Labour activists. They’ll be ministers in fifteen years.
The Government’s efforts will be welcomed by parents concerned about what their children are being taught. But this is another example of a pressing issue that Tories must accept will soon be out of their hands.
