Rishi Sunak has committed to bringing forward a review of statutory guidance on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE), in light of the “safeguarding scandal” of inappropriate materials being used in schools.
The Prime Minister made the pledge in the House of Commons yesterday in response to a question from Miriam Cates MP.
She told Mr Sunak that children are being “subjected to lessons that are age-inappropriate, extreme, sexualising and inaccurate, often using resources from unregulated organisations that are actively campaigning to undermine parents. This is not a victory for equality, it is a catastrophe for childhood.”
Urgent action required
Mrs Cates had previously presented the Prime Minister with a letter and 130-page report documenting “unsuitably sexually explicit” teaching resources.
Around 50 Conservative MPs publicly pressed him to “act with similar urgency and decisiveness” as the Isle of Man Government, where all sex education lessons have been suspended pending an independent review of the curriculum.
An investigation led by Cates revealed that inappropriate materials have been in use since 2019 when the Department for Education (DfE) issued guidance drawn up in consultation with LGBT lobby group Stonewall.
‘Unevidenced ideologies’
In the letter, the MPs warned how children are “being taught about extreme and dangerous sex acts” and “encouraged to share intimate details about sexual desires with classmates and teachers”.
They added, “even primary school children are being indoctrinated with radical and unevidenced ideologies about sex and gender”.
“It is unconscionable that our children are being forced to engage with such disturbing materials in school.”
Unaware
One of its signatories, former Home Secretary Priti Patel MP, said: “It’s shocking to see what’s being taught to some children in our schools and concerning that parents are being ignored.”
Former Education Minister Brendan Clarke-Smith, who also signed the letter, warned: “To present contentious issues to young minds as facts is totally wrong”.
MP for Mansfield, Ben Bradley, stated: “I don’t think people have got any real sense of what some children are being taught in their schools. I’ve spoken to a lot of parents who have been horrified by some of the content”.
According to the DfE “schools must make sure all content they use is factual and age-appropriate, and engage with parents so they are aware of what their children are being taught”.
Isle of Man
Sex education lessons were halted in Isle of Man schools, following reports a drag queen told children as young as eleven there are 73 genders.
Parents of pupils at Queen Elizabeth II High School in Peel claimed that when a child in Year Seven told the performer “there’s only two” genders, he said “you’ve upset me” and instructed the pupil to leave the class.
The Isle of Man’s Department of Education, Sport and Culture has launched an independent review into the Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) curriculum it introduced in September, to “gain an independent understanding of what has taken place”.
Abandoned
Last month, a senior Government minister told The Mail on Sunday that teachers who “want to do more to push the stop button when they see children questioning their gender”, feel that they are “being abandoned”.
Teaching staff have complained that schools prevent them from following the Government’s legal advice in the absence of clear guidance from the DfE.
Since June last year, the Department has promised on at least four separate occasions to write to all schools to emphasise the rights of parents to see teaching materials being taught to their children, but has so far failed to do so.
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