Education: Personal, Social and Health Education

Baroness Kidron Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Kidron]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for bringing forward the debate eventually. I support many of the comments that noble Lords have made about skills and values. However, I would like to concentrate on sex education and pick up the question of pornography.

A few weeks ago, I sat in the bedroom of a 15 year-old boy. Together we looked at a website that, at a touch of a button, conjured up hundreds of pornographic films in 32 different categories which I will not embarrass noble Lords by mentioning. This young boy admits that his porn addiction is a barrier to having a relationship because real girls do not conform to the images he sees online. This 15 year-old bitterly regrets this situation. Imagine bitterly regretting such a thing at the age of 15 when he is not yet supposed to be having sex. As uncomfortable as it is for us to acknowledge this, his experience is becoming a new normal—it is not an unusual thing. Multiple studies, including a recent one from Boston University’s School of Public Health which reported on the rise of teen group sex, show that sexual activity among teens is increasingly reflective of commercial sexual fantasy, including its very damaging gender stereotyping. Nearly a third of all girls between 13 and 17 report having engaged in unwanted sexual acts demanded by a partner, which is a terrible blurring of the concept of consent that goes way into adulthood. Children and young adults need a less heightened environment in which to rehearse their route to being self-respecting and respectful sexual beings.

With only minimal changes to the proposed curriculum, the Government have the opportunity to ensure that primary science teaches about the changes brought on by puberty, provides a formal setting for the naming of genitalia and delivers a clear understanding of reproduction. As children get to key stage 3, experiences of adolescence, hormonal change, sexual health and disease contextualised in a science lesson would do much to give children confidence in the quality of the information they have about their bodies, while PSHE provides a broader and more discursive forum in which young people can learn about many of the complex issues they face in this area.

A recent report from the Department of Health, A Framework for Sexual Health Improvement in England, puts the emphasis for the under 16s on building knowledge and resilience and for those who are 16 plus on access to high quality services and information to provide knowledge of what sex is, resilience against the sexualised imagery that dictates inappropriate behaviours and confidence to resist the pressures that result in unwanted or abusive sexual activity. No young person should be isolated or ignorant on their journey to sexual maturity. It is disappointing that the Government have not yet made PSHE a statutory requirement, but they could undertake to make more explicit the relationship between the statutory requirement to provide for the mental and physical development of children and the provision of PSHE in our schools.

In my view, PSHE should provide not only sex education, it should include sophisticated learning about the internet itself. It should be learning that explores and emphasises its wonders, but does not duck any of the problems it produces, not least the unremitting backdrop of commercially driven sexual content. We have to be careful not to vilify parents. They are struggling to police their children on the net and many of the young people I speak to do not wish to discuss intimate bodily functions with their parents. I fear that if we do not grasp the opportunity to offer high status, high quality PSHE, the realpolitik is that we will leave the sex education of many young people to the pornographers.