Teachers are receiving a flood of complaints from parents over sex education lessons, a headteachers union has revealed.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) reported that teachers are often contacted by parents who are concerned that homosexuality is being promoted to their children.
NAHT’s General Secretary, Russell Hobby, warned that the situation is ‘straining’ parent-teacher relations, but called for statutory sex-education as a solution.
Strained
Mr Hobby said that parents of primary and secondary-aged children raise objections to the teaching of “controversial” topics, such as homosexuality.
He said: “We’ve seen really difficult situations where parents who disagree with the philosophies that are being promoted say ‘you’re doing this, you’re brainwashing our children’.”
Mr Hobby conceded that: “These are controversial topics which our society doesn’t wholly agree on” and cautioned that the bond between parents and teachers “can sometimes be strained”.
In order to address the discord between teachers and parents and protect teachers from “accusations”, he claimed that sex education should be made a statutory subject in all schools.
Explicit material
The Christian Institute has repeatedly warned of the dangers of nationally prescribed sex education, highlighting explicit material used in some sex education lessons.
Currently, local authority maintained secondary schools must offer sex education, but free schools, academies and all primary schools are not required to do so.
All schools must have a publicly available policy and parents have a right to withdraw their children from sex education at any age.
Explore’ sexuality
Last month, it was reported that kids as young as four would be given classes on transsexualism and encouraged to “explore” their sexuality, provoking a series of complaints.
Several parents vowed to withdraw their children from a Church of England primary school in Hartfield, East Sussex, during the ‘transgender day’.
Spokesman for The Christian Institute Simon Calvert warned that children should not be targeted in order to “satisfy adult political agendas”.
He said: “Of course we want children to respect all people, but we don’t have to introduce very young children to every conceivable lifestyle in order to teach respect.”