Relationships and Sex Education

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. The key point that I would like to make is that this is the first change to this part of education for 18 years, which is extraordinary when you think that 18 years ago very few children owned a mobile phone, and Facebook did not even exist—so this is a major step forward to bring us into the 21st century. The Secretary of State said today that this would be kept under review every three years or so, to make sure that we were keeping on top of any further developments that occur in the online world. I gave the noble Lord, Lord Storey, a taste of some of the things that we are including, although I did not give the whole list. To give the noble Baroness some reassurance, it includes strengthened content around areas such as relationship focus and bullying, including cyberbullying. We are very alert to this—it is so important.

I can tell you a terrible story in my own life as an academy sponsor. Last year, in one of our schools a young girl of 16 went on a date with a boy. They ended up in bed together, and the next day the boy boasted on Facebook, and the girl was so mortified that she hanged herself—dead. That is the reality. That boy will have to carry that for the rest of his life, and a young girl lost her life. So there is no one more passionate about this than me.

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I declare my interest as the chair of the All-Party Group on Sexual and Reproductive Health. I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement, and I too think that Justine Greening deserves great commendation for having started this, and that Nick Gibb deserves credit for taking it through. This is clearly a very carefully worded document and I very much welcome its main intention.

There are just two things that I take the opportunity to pick up. The first is about pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. There are very few people who are expert in the field of developing materials and delivering training for talking to people with disabilities, including learning disabilities or disabilities such as deafness. Can the Minister say whether the Government will make sure that, during this consultation, young people with disabilities and the people who work with them are included? They are often very isolated; it is difficult enough to talk about some of these matters if you are in full command of your communication, and sometimes teachers find it intensely difficult to speak to people with disabilities about these matters. There is a lot of evidence that these young people end up relying on the internet and coming away with really strange ideas, because they have been looking at the wrong sort of stuff. It is an area that has to be handled with great sensitivity and care.

Secondly, I welcome paragraph 33 of the draft guidance, which is about the inclusion of LGBT, and I note the way in which it has been drafted. It is my understanding—and I ask the Minister to correct me if I am wrong—that there is no general guidance for schools about transgender issues, including what happens when you have trans teachers or trans pupils. There are bits and pieces of guidance that individual schools and authorities have developed—most notably Cornwall County Council—but I do not think that there is any general guidance for schools. Am I right that this is the first time that any kind of guidance on trans will be in schools? Will the Minister consider that in a bit more depth?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Baroness raises two important questions. First, on SEND, just to reassure the House, the whole thrust of these changes is for the teaching of all pupils, including those with special needs. In the debate in the other place today, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State made particular reference to reaching out in the consultation to special schools, SENCOs and others on how we can support the needs of pupils with SEND to ensure that we have the correct materials available for them. Likewise, on the LGBT question, I do not know what the existing materials are, but one reason for not bringing this in sooner, as some people would like, is to give us the time to start developing best practice, particularly across these sensitive areas. As I mentioned to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, earlier, we expect quite a few schools to be starting this in September 2019, which will give us time to develop good practice and make it available across the whole system.