Is sex education under threat?

The government has claimed that children will be "protected" from "inappropriate teaching" on sex and relationships by new guidance announced today – but critics say they are alarmed by the rollback of sex education in England's schools. 

The government has published new guidelines on Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) in schools in England following, it said, "multiple reports of disturbing materials" being used in sex education lessons in schools.

Under the guidelines, children will not be taught sex education before Year 5 – about nine years old – "and at that point from a purely scientific standpoint". 

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'Let children be children'

"Children must be allowed to be children", said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan writing in The Sun, announcing the new policy. While children need to be prepared for issues they will face in the future, "that doesn't mean they should be rushed into being adults or bombarded with concepts that they are not ready to grasp".

In the three and a half years since RSHE was made compulsory in schools "vocal groups have used it to push inappropriate and inaccurate teaching", said Keegan. 

As well as introducing "age limits" for the first time, the guidelines "leave no room for doubt" that teachers should not teach about "the contested issue of gender identity", she said. "Never again will young girls be led to believe they might be happier if they were a boy, or children to think that there are 72 genders", she said. 

A certain group of Conservative MPs have long pushed the idea that England's sex education is "age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate", said Nimo Omer in The Guardian. Some 50 MPs urged Rishi Sunak last year to commission an independent inquiry into how sex education was being conducted in schools after evangelical Christian Conservative MP Miriam Cates claimed children were being presented with "graphic" material including "lessons on oral sex" and "how to choke your partner safely".

But most teachers "do not recognise" this characterisation of sex education; most say schools are "exceedingly cautious" about what they teach. Nevertheless, the "crusade against sex education" appears to have "won out" with the government announcing an overhaul of guidance.

'War on woke'

It's hard to view this policy as anything other than part of the Tories' "war on woke" said Liz Toner in The Independent. Since parents can already opt their children out of sex education this new guidance seems firmly aimed at "the self-proclaimed anti-'woke' brigade, who believe that kids are filtering into school aged five, handed a rainbow flag and told they're any gender they want". For Sunak, this is not "a true issue of concern or conscience" but about avoiding "a trouncing at the polls".

As an "old-fashioned common sense type" I have a "horrid suspicion" I may be the kind of parent the government is trying to appeal to, said Jemima Lewis in The Telegraph. But the new guidance is "both a drastic over-reaction, and a cowardly fudge" which seeks to "mollify two quite different cohorts of concerned parents: the middle-aged liberals like me who think sex is tremendous but the whole gender thing has gone a bit far; and the religiously devout, who don't want their children exposed to any of this filth". 

"Both cohorts are somewhat deluded", as "like it or not, our children will pick up most of their sex 'education' from the internet'", said Lewis. But if the government really is concerned about "unscientific gender notions being reinforced in schools" then it should address that issue separately.  "Lumping gender in with sex – quite apart from being a category error – is politically short-sighted" and risks  "destroying a good, and increasingly necessary, part of the education system in order to pacify two completely different groups of anxious parents, neither of whom are likely to be satisfied".