Sex and relationships education — it’s time for action

Compulsory SRE in schools is vital and overdue

First published April 2012.

I first worked for Brook in 1994. Even then the arguments for compulsory sex and relationships education were well rehearsed. More than that, they were backed up with evidence from across northern Europe that showed that with high-quality sex and relationships education from the age of five, focused on relationships and developing confidence and self-worth, teenagers had their first sexual experiences much later and were much less likely to experience exploitation. Add to that the provision of sexual health and contraceptive services and the result was low levels of teenage pregnancy and happy, fulfilled teenagers. Marvellous.

But, we continue to ignore this evidence and apply the tabloid rules of hysteria and hand-wringing with a side of parental and religious ‘rights’ over children’s access to SRE. Great work has been done through the teenage pregnancy strategy since 1997 and the rate has come down. In some areas the impact has been phenomenal. But now the strategy team is being deconstructed, funding lost and posts deleted all over the country. We will the see the impact of this move very soon.

Today a report for the NHS recommends that girls as young as thirteen have access to the pill without seeing a GP. Once again, the same arguments will be re-hashed. By 1995-6, we had nurse-prescribing of the pill at our Brook clinic for young people who showed that they could understand the implications of what they were doing, the so-called ‘Gillick Competence’. This is not terribly new. If you’re worried that girls as young as thirteen are having sex, then it’s time to introduce compulsory sex and relationships education.

I looked back at my blog because I knew this has been coming up regularly over the last few years. This is some of what I found there:

February 2009

Last autumn the Government announced that PSHE would become a statutory part of the National Curriculum. A review is being led to determine how this should happen. It will include education on Sex and Relationships from the age of five to sixteen. This is a welcome step in the right direction but comes too late for Alfie, a father to Maisie at the age of thirteen. I get so infuriated listening to the discussion that develops around this issue. More often than not, it is ill-informed and guided by self-appointed moral guardians in the press. Let us begin with the facts. There is an enormous, I mean really vast, amount of evidence from across Europe that shows that high-quality sex and relationships education from the age of five onwards delays young people’s first sexual experience and keeps the teenage pregnancy rate low.

There is nothing new about this. I began my career working in the field of sexual health education with young people and even then we were looking at evidence that was fifteen years old. These are long-made arguments that have been ignored over time. We should also acknowledge that the environment we subject our children to is filled with messages about sex. We made it, not them. Here again, we fail to provide them with the skills and knowledge they need to navigate a world we have created for them, not least to address the messages they experience about gender. Thirdly, children and young people have the right to an unfettered childhood and a positive transition to adulthood.

November 2009

Today the Government has announced that Sex and Relationships education will be compulsory within PSHE from September 2011. Parents will have the right to withdraw their children from this curriculum time up to the age of fifteen, this has dropped from nineteen years old under current law.

So the Government has decided to stand up and defend the right of young people to information about sex and relationships unfettered by their parents views, but only once they are fifteen years old. A quick glance at teenage pregnancy and other data illustrates that many young people in Britain are sexually active much earlier than their fifteenth birthday and that some at fifteen will already be parents. A quick glance around the shelves of any newsagent or supermarket shows you why young people need to have a place to explore these issues very early in their adolescence.

Young people need time and a place in which they can learn facts about their bodies, their biology and themselves. The prevention of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease is a health issue, young people need access to information. Crucially they need to learn and think about sexual feelings, sexuality, relationships and how to manage those unfamiliar but overwhelming adult feelings that are starting to emerge.

How are we preparing young people for healthy adult relationships of all kinds if we allow parents to refuse their children the experience of exploring these issues in a safe, supportive, learning environment?

The Government argues that only one tenth of one percent of parents have removed their children from sex education in science lessons so far, mostly for religious reasons. They seem to imply that maintaining the right to withdraw children is acceptable because only a small number will bother to do it. I disagree. The hysteria that will follow this announcement will inevitably focus on ‘homosexuality and abortion being taught in lessons,’ and may very well encourage parents to withdraw their children. And even if it doesn’t, just having the right to withdraw sends out the wrong message: it says that parents are right to be suspicious, to be concerned. It’s not a positive position.

And then this in April 2010, just before the election

If you want an idea of the damage that will be done to the prospects of young people in and out of schools in the event of a Tory win, look no further than to the actions of the Conservative Party last night. Michael Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, refused to support individual tuition for young people struggling with learning, the implementation of a new primary curriculum and most egregiously, the implementation of compulsory PSHE — including sex and relationships education — even with the right of parents to withdraw their children up to the age of fifteen.

When I wrote about the announcement on PSHE I was cross that parents were still being allowed to withdraw their offspring up to fifteen and that faith schools would still be free to teach PSHE within the “context of the values of their faith”, whatever that means. It was clear that an accommodation had been reached with parents’ and faith groups to ensure wider support for the measures. In a response to a hectoring tweet I sent the Secretary of State, he indicated as much to me — that more radical steps would be difficult to achieve.

Now even this hammered-out political compromise has been up-ended by the man who would like to be your next Education Secretary. Mark me, this is not a man who is interested in schools as part of Children’s Services, despite the positive impact of the Children Act 2004. He is interested in Schooling: the filling of impressionable young minds with facts, the instilling of discipline with force if necessary and the exclusion of children with special educational needs and behavioural problems to the backwaters of separate schooling and Pupil Referral Units. Don’t believe me? Think he sounds reasonable when he talks about parent-founded schools? Then I direct you to his speech last July at the RSA. I think you will find it informative.

No, last night Michael Gove flexed his political muscles well in advance of receiving a mandate and it was a disgraceful act, illustrating the shape of things to come if he does indeed find himself in the big chair at Sanctuary House. Young people — desperately in need of information, support and the opportunity to explore the personal and complex issues associated with the journey to adulthood — will be worse off if it comes to pass.

And so it has.