Relationship Education in Schools

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Yes, and I pay tribute to that headteacher. There are teachers in thousands of schools up and down the country that are teaching these issues with no protests from any group outside their school gates. The hon. Lady should realise that this is the first time that we are requiring schools to teach about LGBT issues. That will not affect the school she referred to, but it will affect many thousands of schools up and down the country that will for the first time be teaching their pupils about the need to respect difference and to understand that families come in different types, including single parents or parents of the same sex. So this is a very important piece of legislation—a very important piece of statutory guidance. We should all be doing more to support and welcome it, as the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who speaks for the Opposition, did in her response to this urgent question.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

In Bristol on Saturday the Pride event was a magnificent celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. I was there; it was wonderful. Many of the people in the parade and at the event afterwards were probably pupils at schools where they felt excluded or misunderstood. Most of the people marching either were parents or one day will be parents, and they, too, want to know that their children will have the security of having an educational experience that is better than theirs, where they feel included and wanted, and for them the word “encouraged” is not enough. I respect the Minister, but will he please reconsider that little word “encouraged”? Can he not see that the fear of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender parents in my constituency that their children will be left out of education about positive role models and positive relationships is real, not imaginary?

[Nick Gibb]

This is a transforming piece of legislation and statutory guidance. It will mean that in thousands of schools up and down the country—in fact, in every school up and down the country—there will be a change in the approach to teaching about relationships and teaching about RSE. And it will mean that in schools that have not been teaching about LGBT issues, those issues will be taught at some point during their pupils’ education. I also believe strongly that it will be taught in the vast majority of primary schools, because the Secretary of State and I have made it clear that we strongly encourage LGBT issues to be taught in primary schools and not to wait until children reach secondary school. However, had we taken the hon. Lady’s advice, this guidance would not be applying to the hundreds of faith schools in the private sector, and we took the view that pupils in those schools were equally deserving of being taught about LGBT issues and about modern life and respect for difference, which they would not be taught about had it not been for this guidance and the way that we have constructed it.