Relationship Education Lessons in Schools

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement.

On 25 February, the Government announced the new regulations and guidance on relationships education, relationships and sex education, and health education. As the Minister said, they were warmly welcomed by all sides of both your Lordships’ House and the other place, but words of caution were part of that welcome.

It was clear that in some schools, the guidelines could be controversial. I asked the Minister for an indication of how many teachers were to be trained in the new subjects, and how many schools he expected to be teaching them by September 2019. I am afraid I did not receive answers to that, nor to my question on what he expected schools to do with the £6 million we made available for training and resources in the new subjects, averaging out at around £250 per school.

Events since have shown that these were key questions because, with the best will in the world, head teachers and classroom teachers simply were not prepared for the onslaught of protests, abuse and trolling that some have since received. In part at least, those disgraceful reactions to the teaching of the “No Outsiders” part of the new guidelines are the result of the Government leaving schools, teachers, head teachers and parents ill prepared for the introduction of the new subjects. Even worse was the Secretary of State being much too slow to speak out in support of those head teachers under duress. He did so, but belatedly. Why did he not demonstrate that support by appearing at those schools worst affected by parental protests, which are often fuelled by people whose interests are not focused on education at all?

Some of those opposed to the new curriculum have argued mendaciously that young children in primary schools are learning about sex or being encouraged to adopt LGBT lifestyles. Will the Minister take this opportunity to state categorically that this is not the case and that anyone suggesting otherwise is wilfully misrepresenting the curriculum? Will he join me in signifying his full support for the brave teachers at those schools in Birmingham who face repeated protests and intimidation, simply for following the law and teaching the curriculum? Finally—I hope it will not be “finally”, although we have a new Prime Minister and new Front Bench in the offing—will the Minister confirm that while schools have flexibility in how they teach the curriculum, complying with the Equality Act is not optional or something that parents can have a veto over, but the law of the land and the will of both Houses of Parliament?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord asks a number of questions. The first was on how many schools we envisage will start teaching this voluntarily this autumn. We are up to about 1,500 schools having registered as early adopters; when I took the regulations through in April we had about 1,000, so the number has gone up quite dramatically even in a couple of months. It has spread among primary schools as well.

On the teaching of sex education, the noble Lord is entirely right. At primary level, parents are able to withdraw their children from specific sex education. That is not relationship education and it is important to discern the difference, but they have that right. As I mentioned when we debated the regulations in April, they have the right to withdraw their child up to the age of 16 minus three terms, for the reasons we discussed at that time.

The Government give their unequivocal support to teachers and absolutely condemn the aggressive behaviour. It is worth pointing out that a lot of this behaviour is nothing less than misogynism on the part of some of these protesters, and that they are protesting against the teaching going on at the moment, not the teaching that will come in under the new regulations in September 2020.

The noble Lord’s last question was about whether teaching under the Equality Act is voluntary. I can confirm that that is absolutely not the case. The original provisions of that Act insisted that teaching advances equality of opportunity and fosters,

“good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic”.

Those relevant characteristics include sex, race, disability, religion or belief, sexual orientation, gender reassignment, or pregnancy and maternity.