Relationships Education: LGBT Content

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I would like to inform Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during today’s debate for its series of procedural explainers—welcome.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 630932 and 631529 relating to LGBT content in relationships education.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. Let me begin as usual by reading out the prayers in the petitions. The prayer in e-petition 630932 reads:

“We believe kids shouldn’t learn about this at an early age. I am sure there are many parents who do not want their or other children taught about LGBT in primary school.”

The petition closed on 12 July 2023 with 249,594 signatures, including 490 from Carshalton and Wallington. It did receive some attention because of the person who started it, so I want to clarify that they were a UK resident and that the Petitions Committee therefore felt it was appropriate to schedule this debate on the petition.

The prayer in e-petition 631529 reads:

“We believe kids should learn about this at an early age. I am sure there are many parents who want their and other children taught about LGBT issues…There is a petition to remove this content, which we believe is discriminatory. LGBT people exist, they have the same rights as the rest of us and kids should know them…without judgement or issue. Despite what their parents might believe.”

The petition closed on 20 July 2023 with 104,920 signatures, including 151 from my constituency.

In their replies to the two petitions, the Government stated that they had no intention of revising their guidelines, but they have since commissioned a review of relationships and sex education, or RSE, as I will refer to it throughout the rest of the debate. Today I want to make the case for why we should not go backwards and allow a return to the days of section 28, and to make the positive case for an inclusive, age-appropriate RSE curriculum. This is a policy the Government should be proud of rather than backing away from.

First, I want to share a little of my own story. I was at school before mandatory RSE and certainly before LGBT+ inclusive RSE. I came out very early in my secondary school career at Carshalton Boys Sports College to a few select peers and staff who I trusted. If that had happened in the days of section 28, I would of course have had to be turned away by my teachers and told to shut up about it. Instead, I was part of a school that was well ahead of its time and that not only taught us about healthy relationships and safe sex, but made sure that that teaching was inclusive of all identities, including LGBT+ people like me. I want to be clear: it was not some graphic exposure of how to have sex or the various things that people might want to do with each other behind closed doors; it was simply about the fact that LGBT+ people exist and can form loving relationships with each other just like any other person and about the precautions they should take, but it was also about how to access specific advice and support if we needed it. That was it.

I now want to set out the current framework for RSE in England, and I want to thank the House of Commons Library, Brook, the Sex Education Forum and others for their helpful briefings in advance of today’s debate. The Government’s RSE guidance of 2019 advises schools to plan a developmental and age-appropriate curriculum. Relationships education is therefore approached in ways that are relevant to the age and maturity of the pupils. For example, teaching about “Families and people who care for me” in primary school can be an opportunity to talk about the fact that some people have two dads and some have two mums.

Key messages taught throughout relationships education include that people do not have to conform to narrow stereotypes and that discrimination, bullying and prejudice are harmful and wrong. Indeed, that principle is woven throughout the British values element of school teaching, the aim of which is to encourage and foster respect, kindness, equality and inclusion. Those are British values: they are intrinsic to the ethos of most schools, and families are supportive of them.

Primary schools are not required to teach sex education or explicitly teach about LGBT+ issues; it is more about families and relationships. Parents also have the right to withdraw their child from the sex education part of RSE up to the age of 16.

The Government ask for a whole-school approach from our schools as a vehicle to deliver strategies to tackle violence against women and girls, sexual harassment —which, as we know from Ofsted reports, is rife—peer-on-peer abuse, bullying, forms of hatred such as racism and religious abuse, and much more. My concern is that removing LGBT+ content from relationships education would conflict with the existing obligation on schools under the public sector equality duty and the community cohesion duty and undermine the Government’s strategies to deliver on both.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for the way in which he has introduced the debate, which was made more powerful by his sharing his own experience. Some 512 of my constituents signed the second petition, and I am sorry I cannot stay for the whole debate, but I want to pick up on the point the hon. Member just made. Does he recognise the significant academic research demonstrating that, where we have LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula, there are higher levels of safety for individuals, lower levels of bullying in school and lower levels of adverse mental health reporting?

[Elliot Colburn]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for that intervention, and I absolutely agree with him; in fact, that is the part of my speech I am moving on to, so I am grateful to him for giving me an opening. It is true that research has found that LGBT+ inclusive curricula are associated with reports of greater safety for individuals, lower levels of bullying at school and fewer reports of adverse mental health among all young people, irrespective of their gender identity or sexual orientation. That was set out in a report by Goldfarb and Lieberman in 2021.

High-quality, inclusive RSE is vital for children and young people to live safe, healthy and happy lives, and that can be demonstrated by young people themselves. Young people who took part in the Sex Education Forum’s research told us that their relationships education is not sufficiently inclusive of LGBT+ people, with 38% reporting that their RSE failed to provide any or adequate information about sexual orientation, and 44% reporting that it failed to provide any or adequate coverage of gender identity and information relevant to trans people.

I will share a couple of quotes from some of those young people. One of them said:

“We need to be told more about LGBT…I am a lesbian and growing up I never knew you could have sexual diseases”

from same-sex activities

“until the age of 15 when I started myself”.

Another said:

“Educate children on the LGBTQ community and same sex relationships. There will be someone in each class that it’ll be relevant to and children”

should learn

“to be more accepting. Queer people have and always will exist and children”

should be taught.

In addition to learning at school, children learn about relationships from their families, communities and wider media. The Sex Education Forum surveyed more than 1,000 young people between the ages of 16 and 17 and found that they were more likely to have learned about LGBT+ identities from social media, at around 30%, than in school, at just 25%. Parents were identified as the main source of learning for just 4% of respondents.

That leads me on to a key point that I want to make. Rather than going after LGBT+ identities as part of their review into RSE, I urge the Government to focus on the quality of the content, the resources available to schools and the training available to teachers to provide RSE in a safe and age-appropriate way. Again, research back in 2018 demonstrated that only 20% of teachers said they felt extremely confident in delivering inclusive RSE, with 10% reporting that they were not confident at all. A later survey, conducted in 2019 by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the National Education Union, found that almost half of teachers said they did not feel confident delivering statutory RSE.

Since RSE became statutory, the Government have invested about £3.2 million of their planned £6 million in implementing the statutory RSE curriculum. However, that is only a fraction of what schools say they need to be able to do so safely, which sits at a best estimate at around £29 million. The voices of those children and teachers are clear: they need the tools to be able to deliver this effectively and appropriately, and I hope that that is what the Government’s review will focus on.

I want to address some of the criticisms surrounding an inclusive RSE policy, especially in the area of parental oversight and engagement and the appropriateness of materials used in the classroom. A number of the statements the Government have made recently about parents’ right to see RSE materials suggest that the issue is somehow new, but that is not the case. Schools have always been encouraged to share RSE resources with parents and carers.

[Dame Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

I have a constituent whose school will not show the materials. It will show a summary, but not the actual materials, so she has taken her child out of that school. I agree that we need complete transparency and that parents have a right to that. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Elliot Colburn]

That is absolutely appropriate. If the school has done that, it is contrary to current Government guidelines. I do not disagree with my hon. Friend at all.

The Government’s own statutory RSE guidance outlines obligations for parents and carers to be consulted on the development and review of schools’ RSE policies. It explicitly states that, as part of that process, parents and carers should be able to see “examples of the resources” that schools will use. Many schools should ask parents and carers to come in, view the materials and have a chat about the context in which they will be used. That is there in black and white, so if that is not happening, it absolutely should be called out. I do not think anyone would disagree that parents have a right to know.

With regard to the accusations of extreme, inappropriate, highly sexual material or similar, there simply is not the data to back up many of those claims, and that includes a lack of statistical data on complaints that have been escalated to the Department for Education. Many teaching organisations and people representing education unions, for example, have said that they have struggled to find any evidence of a widespread problem.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

rose—

[Elliot Colburn]

I suspect that I will come on to both Members’ points. I will finish this point, and if they still want to intervene, I will gladly give way.

Many of the examples that have been used come from other jurisdictions—one is from the Isle of Man, and many are from the United States of America—and others are anecdotal claims that have not been backed up with any evidence. Indeed, in the case of the protests outside schools in Birmingham, a High Court judge ruled that what was being taught in schools was being grossly misrepresented.

That is not to say that sometimes things do not go wrong, and I will come to that, but the research suggests that the opposite is often the case: schools are not teaching young people key aspects of the curriculum, rather than going to the other extreme. The Sex Education Forum’s polling of young people aged 16 and 17 found that basic mandatory aspects of the curriculum, such as healthy relationships and how to access sexual health services, are frequently missed, with close to three in 10 young people saying they had not learned how to tell, for example, whether a relationship is healthy.

When providing a universal service such as education, it is naive to think that things sometimes do not go wrong, and I acknowledge the comments from the chief inspector of Ofsted that that has happened on occasion. There may well have been occasions where inappropriate things have been said or brought into classrooms, which is not acceptable, but there is a framework in place to deal with that, and we do not have to jump to erasing LGBT people entirely.

[Stephen Doughty]

The hon. Member is giving a characteristically powerful and important speech. I, too, have seen myths going around in my own constituency, in Wales, about what is allegedly being taught in schools, and they are simply not borne out by the facts. Does he agree that the important thing is for parents, or indeed anybody else, to speak with schools? My schools have been working with families and across school clusters to ensure that parents are involved and understand what is going on. Of course, parents can also often access the information online—for example, the Welsh Government’s curriculum is there for everybody to read online. It is important to base discussions on the facts, not on the myths that are circulating.

[Elliot Colburn]

The hon. Member is absolutely right. It comes back to the point I have been trying to make throughout: there may well have been occasions where things have gone wrong, but that is where we need to ensure that schools engage with parents and carers, fulfilling the statutory guidelines and allowing parents and carers to see the curriculum and help develop it. We also need to have these discussions based on fact.

[Nick Fletcher]

I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said so far. He has said that there is not enough evidence of this material. Will he meet me later this week so that I can set out all the evidence we have? I have also shared it with the Department for Education, because to say it is not out there is completely and utterly wrong. It is out there, and in my speech I will be mentioning all the different companies that are sharing it. I am afraid some it is completely abhorrent.

[Elliot Colburn]

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend. We sit on the Petitions Committee together and I am sure we can happily have that chat. To clarify, I am not saying that the material is not out there. I think I have made that clear in my speech so far, but I apologise if I have not. I want to be crystal clear that with a universal service that everybody gets, such as education or health, it is inevitable that sometimes things go wrong. What I am saying is that there is no statistical data to back up the idea that this is a widespread problem, so rather than trying to erase LGBT people from existence in schools, we need to look at why teachers do not feel confident delivering such material and why, on occasion, people sometimes invite inappropriate stuff into the classroom. I agree with my hon. Friend that if material is not age-appropriate, it should absolutely not be in our classrooms. The point I was trying to make was about ensuring that schools feel confident delivering the information and that parents feel empowered, but I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is often a conflation between all the material an organisation might produce and the material that is used in schools? Disney produces adult movies as well as children’s movies; the children’s movies have children’s content and the adult movies have adult content. An organisation might produce adult materials and children’s materials. Just because an organisation produces a range of materials does not mean that is evidence they are being used in schools. The evidence is what teachers are doing and what children are reporting, which is broadly positive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elliot Colburn]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member, who makes a good point. Many people who produce children’s content might also produce adult content. For example, many authors write books that are aimed at adults and books that are aimed at children; that it is not unusual. Any assessment needs to reflect what is going on inside the classroom. We need the DFE to be well equipped so it has the expertise needed to ensure that any complaints that come forward can be thoroughly investigated, and that it has adequate resources in place to deal with issues when things go wrong, which is inevitable in a universal service. I would like to hear more from the Minister about that.

I will bring my remarks to an end by focusing on the societal change from the days of section 28 to where we are now. Section 28 was the ban on the teaching or “promotion”, as it was called, of LGBT+ issues. Since those days, we have been allowed to marry, to obtain a gender recognition certificate and to adopt, and we have gained many other hard-won rights. What does that mean in practice? It means there will be LGBT+ people at the school gates dropping off their much-loved children. Are we seriously suggesting to the Government that a child will have no ability to discuss why someone has been dropped off by two mums or two dads at the school gate? Of course not. Are we seriously suggesting in a digital age, when LGBT+ people are allowed to go about their lives out of the closet and in the knowledge that the state has protections against discrimination in place, that there is a way of preventing children from finding out that LGBT+ people exist? As we saw in the data, more children find out from social media than they do from schools or their parents.

It would be next to impossible to hide from children the fact that LGBT+ people exist. The Government think so, too. Their guidance for gender-questioning pupils explicitly said that it was not appropriate to continue to ask schools to hide a student who was questioning their gender from a parent because it would be next to impossible for that parent not to find out anyway in the digital age. If the Government agree with that when it comes to gender-questioning pupils, they have to be consistent and agree with that when it comes to LGBT content in the RSE curriculum.

When such content is done right, it has benefits for all. It tackles discrimination, promotes healthy relationships and reduces poor mental health. In his reply, I hope the Minister will offer a categorical assurance that the review will be focused on materials and training, and not on erasing LGBT+ people from existence. I can tell the Minister and the House quite clearly, as I am sure many others will, that no matter how hard some people might try, we are not going back in the closet. We exist, and there is nothing extreme about knowing we exist. In the RSE review, the Government should commit to examining why teachers lack the confidence to teach the subject, invest in materials to support the teaching of the subject, and not try to erase LGBT+ people from existence in the eyes of the students that teachers are there to look after.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. I also ask Members to address the Chair.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elliot Colburn]

I thank you, Mr Dowd, the petitioners and, of course, every colleague who has contributed today. You will be happy to hear that I will not take us through to 7.30 pm. I thank the Minister for his considered response and all colleagues for the calm way in which we have held this debate. I just want to reiterate, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) said, that it is important that we know about healthy but boring, although “boring” is not an adjective I would ever use to describe the hon. Member, despite the many other things we may have called each other. There is nothing extreme about knowing that different people and different kinds of healthy relationships exist.

I look forward to the Government engaging with all stakeholder groups as part of the RSE review, because it is clear from the pupils, teachers and parents who have engaged so far, in the short time mandatory RSE has been on the statute book, that there is a need to review these policies. It is good to review them and to keep them up to date, but it is clear from teachers, pupils and parents that there is dissatisfaction about how they are being implemented or not implemented. There is clearly still a lot to work through, as we would expect with any new guidance going through a teething process. I look forward to that, and to engaging with the Government on it. I will not detain us any longer, Mr Dowd.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered e-petitions 630932 and 631529 relating to LGBT content in relationships education.