Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

It is always nice to have friendly fire from one’s own side, isn’t it? I can absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that I was delighted to see the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions introduce transitional arrangements to support children and families in difficult situations.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

14. When he plans to publish a report of his review of sex and relationship education.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

We are considering sex and relationship education as part of our review of personal, social, health and economic education. We are currently analysing consultation responses received online and from stakeholder engagement meetings and the evidence from national and international research. We intend to announce proposals for public consultation on these findings in the summer term.

[John Glen]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Given the wide range of successful sex and relationship education programmes across the country, including the APAUSE—Added Power and Understanding in Sex Education—programme, will the Minister confirm that the Government are committed to preserving autonomy for individual schools in deciding which programmes they adopt?

[Tim Loughton]

It is of course this Government’s policy to make sure that we give schools more freedoms and more time within the curriculum to teach pupils in the ways they think most appropriate for maximising the effect, but we also want to see a change of emphasis, with a much stronger focus on respect for others in sex and relationship education, building young people’s capacity to say no to things they do not feel are right, and making sense of the portrayals of sex and relationships to which they are exposed through the media. I hope that innovative schools will do that in a way that best gets that message across to their pupils.