Statutory Sex and Relationships Education

Paula Sherriff Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for securing this important and timely debate. I know that the Government and the Opposition share the common goal of ensuring that our children can approach the world around them with the skills and resilience they need to thrive. Children need to understand what healthy, meaningful friendships look and feel like. They need to know that it is important to respect themselves and others and to be kind and thoughtful about other people’s feelings. Our common goal is underpinned by a desire not only to see children thrive, but to see them having the knowledge to contextualise some of the more harmful things they see in the world. They need to know explicitly that men and women are equal, to understand body autonomy and integrity and to know that pinching, groping or any form of sexual harassment is never okay.

Children need to be taught that if someone touches them without their permission, they can and should tell someone, and that no one—child or adult—should ever make them feel scared, frightened or exploited. My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) made representations on safe spaces, and I am confident that all Members in the Chamber would agree with her.

The Sex Education Forum survey of 2,000 young people found that more than half of them did not recognise the signs of grooming for sexual exploitation. We heard some powerful testimony from my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) this afternoon, and I applaud all his efforts on sexual exploitation in his constituency and across the country. More than four in 10 of those surveyed had not learned about healthy or abusive relationships. Half of the young people surveyed did not learn how to get help if they had been abused.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North suggested, children have to be taught in an age-appropriate and sensitive way how to build and maintain healthy friendships and relationships. The fact is that the lack of statutory sex and relationships education in primary schools and high schools is leaving our children vulnerable.

The Minister may claim today that many children are receiving good-quality SRE, but I challenge her ability to make that claim. We heard this afternoon that four in five teachers are not adequately trained to provide SRE. SRE is introduced at key stage 3, when a child is 11 years old, and is only statutory in state-maintained schools. At the time of the school census in January 2016, only 35% of high schools were still state-maintained. Furthermore, the only compulsory element of SRE that those schools must teach and a child must be present at is the biology of sex, which is provided as part of the science national curriculum.

The guidance that schools, whether state-maintained or academy, rely on to teach the non-compulsory elements of SRE is 17 years out of date. It was written well before the advent of social media and universal access to the internet. Ofsted has found that SRE required improvement in more than a third of schools, with primary pupils ill-prepared for the physical and emotional changes of puberty. It found that secondary education placed too much emphasis on the mechanics of reproduction. I was struck by the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) about conversations between young people that exposed their level of vulnerability.

A British Humanist Association report looking at how PSHE and SRE are inspected in English schools was published this month. It found that SRE was mentioned by inspectors in less than 1% of the 2,000 Ofsted reports it analysed. Many schools may be providing good-quality SRE, but we need certainty that every school, regardless of their governance and how they are funded, is giving children the knowledge and confidence they need to thrive. I know that the Government recognise those problems. Ministers have been honest with the House that SRE requires considerable improvement, and I welcome their desire to ensure that that is done well, rather than being rushed.

I hope, however, that the Minister will recognise that the Government are running out of time to amend the Children and Social Work Bill. Can she reconfirm, as she said at last Monday’s Adjournment debate, that the Minister of State for Vulnerable Children and Families will definitely bring measures on SRE forward as part of the Bill? I want her to know that if those amendments pave the way for good-quality, age-appropriate, statutory SRE, the Opposition will be minded to support those amendments and seek consensus across the House. Can she tell us more about the Government’s plans to ensure that all children, not just those who attend a state-maintained high school, have access to high-quality, age-appropriate SRE? I hope she can understand why Members from all parts of the House are so passionate about the issue.