Sex and Relationship Education

Debate between Pamela Nash and Stephen Gilbert

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Pamela Nash]

I thank the hon. Lady for that explanation. I am talking about relationships. I suggest that no images of sex between a man and a woman, between two men or between two women should be shown to very young children, of four or five. However, I do think that it is appropriate to teach young children about relationships, including same-sex relationships.

[Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

[Stephen Gilbert]

Without wishing to continue the love-in, I agree absolutely with everything that the hon. Lady is saying. As I said earlier, I have a four-year-old nephew who, from what he has said to me, is aware or beginning to become aware of sex as well as relationships. Does the hon. Lady agree that we need to deal with the world in which we live, not the world in which we would like to live?

[Pamela Nash]

I entirely agree. I have had similar experiences with the young children in my family. I have stories about comments on sex and relationships that they have made, even at the ages of three and four, that it would not be appropriate to tell here. They are inquisitive and they have that knowledge. They watch television and hear people speaking. They see people around them who are in relationships that might be different from what they see at home, and they should be taught that that is okay and why it exists.

I have been looking this morning at the UN convention on the rights of the child. Article 29 refers to the following:

“The preparation of the child for responsible life in a free society, in the spirit of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes, and friendship among all peoples, ethnic, national and religious groups and persons of indigenous origin”.

That is one of the rights of the child, and I believe that good relationship education is part of it and will prepare young people for a normal life.

Children must also be prepared to deal with their own sexuality. The high levels of self-harm among homosexual teenagers have been well documented. Again, high-quality and age-appropriate sex and relationship education will help to tackle that heartbreaking problem.

Let us be clear: sex education is not about the sexualisation of children, nor is it intended to promote promiscuity or a certain kind of lifestyle above another. Taught well, sex education is about teaching children the facts of life and how to handle their personal relationships.

The challenge we face is that SRE is patchy and inadequate. An Ofsted report in 2010 said that the quality of PSHE is poor in a quarter of schools and that teachers lack the knowledge and skills to teach pupils the subject effectively. My experience of sex education, which was not so long ago, involved an expert visiting my school and telling the 14-year-old girls in my class that they should not let boys touch them from the neck down. That was the message in its entirety, and I do not believe it was entirely adequate.

There is strong support from parents for teaching SRE in schools. A poll run by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2009—I am sorry these are the most recent figures I could get—showed that eight in 10 parents thought their children should receive SRE lessons, while only 0.04% had withdrawn their children from SRE. To conclude, we need high-quality, age-appropriate and mandatory SRE in all primary and secondary schools throughout the United Kingdom.