MP calls for parents to have legal right to view sex ed materials

Withholding sex education materials from parents and guardians should be illegal, a Christian MP has said.

Miriam Cates wants schools in England to have to share copies of materials used in Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) lessons with parents and guardians.

Her Relationships and Sex Education (Transparency) Bill would also prohibit schools from using unpublished third-party teaching resources in the classroom.

Problem

Last month, a tribunal ruled against a mother trying to require sex education materials shown in her daughter’s school to be made public.

Clare Page took legal action after her 15-year-old daughter said a lesson at Hatcham College told her to be “sex positive” and that “heteronormativity” was “a bad thing”.

The School of Sexuality Education, which teaches the materials, offered to let Page view them but claimed publicly releasing them would compromise its “intellectual property” and enable schools to use them for free.

The Information Commissioner’s Office and the tribunal both backed the controversial group.

Parental rights

Referring to the case, Cates described its outcome as “incredibly disappointing from a parent’s point of view”.

She explained that because recent Department for Education (DfE) guidance telling schools to “share materials with parents wasn’t statutory, but commercial interests are established in law, the judge found in favour of commercial interests”.

But the purpose of the transparency Bill is to “make provision to require the sharing with parents and guardians of copies of materials used in relationships and sex education lessons in schools in England”.

Schools send maths and history text books home, and members of the public can buy these books if they wish to scrutinise them. RSE includes highly sensitive & contested topics and it’s concerning that any school or sex education provider would want to hide what is being taught /8

— Miriam Cates (@miriam_cates) June 26, 2023

Mrs Cates has acknowledged that her Bill, presented to Parliament on Monday, is “highly unlikely to become law” but hoped her action would “persuade the Government to use its powers to make the transparency guidance statutory”.