Parents are celebrating after Warwickshire County Council ditched an explicit and error-strewn sex-ed policy following a legal threat from The Christian Institute.
The Council’s All About Me materials contained explicit images as part of policy which also failed to apply equality, human rights or education law correctly.
The Institute had warned it put schools at risk of breaching their legal obligations, and last week Council lawyers contacted the Institute to say the programme has been dropped “with immediate effect”.
‘Catalogue of errors’
Lesson materials encouraged masturbation and included “gratuitously graphic” sexual images yet made no reference to marriage, contrary to national requirements and despite the lessons concerned not being classed as sex education.
It made a number of false assertions, including that gender identity “can be best understood as being a spectrum” and “transgender children have the right to use whichever toilet or changing room they feel most comfortable using”.
It also encouraged schools not to inform parents if their children would be sharing overnight accommodation with pupils of the opposite sex while on residential trips, and to conceal a child’s transgender status from their own parents – contrary to parental rights protected under the Human Rights Act 1998.
The Institute stepped in after being contacted by horrified parents. It notified the Council it would look to take legal action if it failed to address the “catalogue of errors”.
‘Explicit sexual content’
Local parents have welcomed the news. One said: “This is not before time. My wife and I were deeply troubled by the explicit nature of some of the All About Me materials – and the ideology underpinning them.
“We don’t want our children being taught about masturbation, explicit sexual content or experimental transgender ideas in school.
“For a long time, it felt like the council didn’t want to listen to the concerns of many reasonable parents; we’re glad and relieved that they have now withdrawn this programme.”
more concerned with indoctrination than education
Another said: “I’m delighted. These materials were never suitable for children. They always seemed to be more concerned with indoctrination than education.”
‘One-sided ideology’
The Institute’s Education Officer John Denning said swift action was now needed to ensure parents are aware of the changes.
Warwickshire’s climbdown will come as welcome news to hundreds of concerned parents
“Warwickshire’s climbdown will come as welcome news to hundreds of concerned parents. The highly explicit imagery and one-sided ideology of All About Me has no place in Primary Relationships Education.
“Schools are obviously facing a challenging time at the moment. But as soon as they can, they must consult with parents on a different approach to teaching RSE which complies with the law.
“As with other teaching in state schools, it must be balanced, objective and critical, not pushing particular controversial views such as transgender ideology.”