Why is the government giving preferential treatment to those backing compulsory sex education in schools?

Campaigners are pushing for sex and relationship education (SRE) to be made compulsory in all English schools (see here, here and here).

Currently local authority maintained schools in England are obliged (See House of Commons briefing) to teach SRE from age 11 (year 7) upwards, and must have regard to the Government’s SRE guidance.

Academies and free schools, the majority in secondary education in England, do not have to follow the National Curriculum and so are not under this obligation. But if they do decide to teach SRE, they must also have regard to the guidance.

Parents are free to withdraw their children from SRE if they wish to do so, although few do so in practice. The only exceptions to this are the biological aspects of human growth and reproduction that are essential elements of National Curriculum Science.

But this could all soon change if government-funded campaigners have their way.

During the 2010 Parliament concerns were frequently raised about the content, status and quality of SRE. 

Private Member’s Bills have been tabled during both the 2010 and 2015 Parliaments to introduce compulsory SRE (sometimes within proposed statutory PSHE) and both Labour and Green Party MPs tabled amendments with this aim during the passage of the Children and Families Act 2014.

However these measures have all so far failed.

There have also been calls from across parties for the Government’s SRE guidance, which has been in place since 2000, to be updated to equip teachers better.

In February 2015 (before the general election) the Commons Education Select Committee recommended that ‘age-appropriate SRE’ should become a statutory subject in primary and secondary schools, albeit with parents retaining their right to withdraw children.

Advocates argued that such a move would help address ‘problems’ in society including ‘teenage pregnancy, STI rates, drug and alcohol abuse, cyberbullying, and child sexual exploitation’.

However, the Government response published in July 2015 did not take forward this recommendation, although it stated that it would be giving further consideration to the Committee’s arguments.

In answer to a parliamentary question earlier this month, Edward Timpson MP said that the government was ‘currently working with a group of leading head teachers’ on this and would ‘provide a progress update later this year’.

The Commons Education Select Committee, in compiling its report (Life lessons: PSHE and SRE in schools), received 431 written submissions including one from Christian Medical Fellowship.

But in coming to its conclusions it appears to have drawn very heavily on three specific groups, which appear to have the privileged ear of government and also receive a not inconsiderable sum of regular government funding: Brook, the PSHE Association (PSHEA) and the Sex Education Forum (SEF). 

Brook is itself a member of SEF and almost certainly of PSHEA (although the latter seems to keep its membership list secret).

SEF seems to be neither a registered company nor a registered charity and it is difficult to find out much about either its governance structure or funding from its website.

But PSHEA and Brook are both registered charities.

In 2014 PSHEA received a grant of £100,000 from the (government) Department of Children Schools and Families, just under a third of its annual running costs. This is of particular interest, given that this department, as I understand, ceased to exist in 2010. I wonder where that money actually came from: probably worth a parliamentary question, especially in the light of the recent controversy over Kid’s Company.

In the same year, Brook’s funding sources included ‘government’ (£143,227), ‘PCT’ (£1,585,833) and ‘local authority’ (£7,854,702) – mainly central government funding – towards its annual turnover of £14,326,431. So well in excess of £9million annually – going back it seems over many years – quite a lot more even than Kid’s Company!

Not surprisingly Brook, PSHEA and SEF all back compulsory sex education in all English schools and seem to receive a large amount of government funding to help them make their case. 

But why should we be concerned about SRE being made statutory and thereby compulsory?

Primarily it would mean an imposed national curriculum – but specifically one based on the recommendations of Brook, PSHEA and SEF. And it is precisely concerns about the kind of material that teachers would be required to teach that has raised concerns.

The House of Lords voted down Labour’s proposals to introduce compulsory SRE by 209 votes to 142 in 2014 on the basis that it would increase the likelihood of children being exposed to unsuitable materials (See this booklet produced by the Christian Institute to see what I mean).

A quick browse through the membership list of SEF does not reassure – it reads like a who’s who of groups espousing liberal secular humanist values – IPPF, BPAS, Marie Stopes, Brook, British Humanist Association, National Secular Society, Diversity Role Models, FPA etc .

Britain is, of course, a free democratic society and such groups have every right to make their contribution to debates about public policy and to collaborate in doing so – but should they receive government funding and be given privileged input into the ear of government? That is the key question.

It might be objected that SEF also includes amongst its members faith-linked groups like Childnet, Romance Academy, the Methodist  Church and the Church of England. And it does. But my point is that SEF also explicitly campaigns for compulsory sex education in primary schools, so unless these groups have already bought into that agenda, they have little influence over what the wider body is campaigning for and have effectively been implicated in its stance. 

CMF’s submission, amongst the majority expressing similar views which were effectively side-lined by the Commons Education Select Committee, made points that need to be given equal consideration in this whole debate. We supported this principle from the previous DfEE SRE Guidance (See Para 5.3, page 25).  

Parents are the key people in: teaching their children about sex and relationships, maintaining the culture and ethos of the family, helping their children cope with the emotional and physical aspects of growing up; and preparing them for the challenges and responsibilities that sexual maturity brings.

Some of our principal concerns were as follows:

• Parents are ultimately responsible for their children’s moral maturity and, within broad limits, should be free to educate their children on moral matters, as they judge best.
• Personal, social, health and economic education should not be made a statutory part of the school curriculum. Primary school governing bodies should remain free to decide whether or not to provide sex and relationships education and secondary school governing bodies should remain free to formulate their own policies, in consultation with parents
• Many of the topics covered in PSHE, in particular SRE, are not morally neutral. We support the continued right of parents to withdraw their child(ren) from sex education lessons that they consider inappropriate for their child(ren).
• Schools should remain accountable to parents with regard to their PSHE and sex and relationships education provision
• A significant proportion of the UK population has a faith background, therefore adopting a faith sensitive approach will increase relevance, promote understanding and capitalise on common ground and common goals.
• Government should make funding available to organisations, both religious and non-religious, to produce materials which support parents, and faith groups, and do not expose children and teenagers to explicit sexual images and messages.

The education of our children is a crucial issue. This is why it is so important that a wide range of groups and individuals – and not just a few representing a specific ideological agenda – should be able to input into government policy in this key area.

Let’s try to ensure that government considers its sex education policy in an atmosphere which offers a level financial and ideological playing field to all stakeholders, rather than giving privileged place and financial help (with taxpayers’ money!) to a minority selected in a clandestine fashion on seemingly ideological grounds.

Currently it’s all a bit too Kid’s Company-esque. 

Resolution promoting abortion, undermining conscience and perverting sex education gets short shrift at European Parliament

The European Union voted last week to deny acceptance of a draft report which would have established abortion as a human right, and simultaneously squelched conscientious objection as well as established a perversion of sexual education for children.  

In a resounding victory for common sense, following a short but lively debate in the European Parliament, a majority of MEPs voted to refer the highly controversial resolution on the Estrela report back to the Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality.

The resolution on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights was presented by Portuguese MEP Edite Estrela (pictured) but her report is said to be the work of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in Brussels.

The fact that it has been referred back to committee implies, that a revised report cannot not be presented until early next year, thus, limiting the time available to the Parliament to deal with it, prior to the next European elections. In other words, this rejection may well be a fatal blow stopping the report’s progress.

The Estrela report  bemoaned the fact that many physicians even in Europe, refuse to participate in abortions:

‘There are cases reported from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Ireland and Italy where nearly 70 per cent of all gynaecologists and 40 per cent of all anaesthesiologists conscientiously object to providing abortion services… These barriers clearly contradict human rights standards and international medical standards.’

It also recommended that member states:

‘regulate and monitor the use of conscientious objection so as to ensure that reproductive health care is guaranteed as an individual’s right, while access to lawful services is ensured and appropriate and affordable referrals systems are in place’.

In addition to the war on rights of conscience, the defeated measure sought to establish abortion as a human right:  ‘[as a human rights concern, abortion should be made legal, safe and accessible to all’.

And finally, the report recommended that member-states ensure compulsory sex education consistent with the recommendations of the report by the WHO in 2010.  More information about the content of the sexuality standards is available here. I quote:   

‘(The European Parliament) calls on Member States to ensure compulsory, age-appropriate and gender-sensitive sexuality and relationship education, provided in a mixed-sex setting, for all children and adolescents (both in and out of school).’

The standards for sex education referred to include these:

‘ Children aged 0-4 should be informed about: “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body”, “early childhood masturbation”, “different family relationships”, “the right to explore gender identities”, “the right to explore nakedness and the body, to be curious”, etc. and they should develop “curiosity regarding own and others‘ bodies” and “a positive attitude towards different lifestyles”.’

‘Children aged 4-6 should be informed about “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body”, “early childhood masturbation”, “same-sex relationships”, “sexual feelings (closeness, enjoyment, excitement) as a part of all human feelings ”,“different kinds of (family) relationship”, “different concepts of a family”, and should develop “respect” for those different lifestyles and concepts.’

‘Children aged 6-9 should go on learning about “enjoyment and pleasure when touching one’s own body (masturbation/self-stimulation)”, but they also should be informed about “different methods of conception” and “the basic idea of contraception (it is possible to plan and decide about your family)”.’

‘Children aged 9-12 should be informed about “first sexual experience”, “orgasm”, “masturbation”, and should learn to “make a conscious decision to have sexual experiences or not” and “use condoms and contraceptives effectively”.’

The standards differentiate between ‘minimum’ and ‘optional’ achievements, but masturbation at age 0-4 is mandatory. In short, this is a programme for sexual initiation beginning at toddler age, and one seriously has to ask oneself whether this kind of sexual education is not in fact a form of systematic and structured child abuse, albeit under a pretext of ‘education’ or ‘skill development’.

There is a conspicuous absence of any genuinely moral attitudes towards sexuality that should be transmitted to the child: no reference to chastity, no reference to conjugal fidelity, only a vague sense that ‘everything is ok if it feels good, is consensual, and doesn’t entail an unwanted pregnancy’.

That attitude, however, appears to be compulsory in the sense that it would appear to be in violation of these ‘Standards’ if parents attempted to transmit to their children any genuine (and in particular Christian) moral values related to sexuality.

We can be hugely thankful to those who were alert to this measure and lobbied so effectively to defeat it. It was a rare victory but a reminder that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. For now, at least, children both born and unborn, have been protected from a great deal of harm.

I’m grateful to both AAPLOG and Patrick Buckley for this report

How could anyone object to a bill ensuring schools provide information and advice on the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity?

MPs have voted 67-61 in favour of a bill introduced by Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, which wants schools to ensure that sex education for girls includes ‘information and advice on the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity’.

The ten minute rule bill proceeds to a second reading next January but is unlikely to become law without Government support.

Dorries, MP for Mid Bedfordshire, said all schoolgirls should be given lessons in ‘how to say no’ as part of a new-style sex education curriculum.

Speaking in the Commons, she insisted society was ‘saturated in sex’, with pupils currently being shown how to put condoms on bananas and self-diagnose diseases but not to reject sexual advances altogether.

The early sexualisation of girls was being fuelled by television references to sex, newsagents stocking pornographic magazines and high street stores that sell provocative items such as padded bikinis for seven-year-olds, she added.

It is perhaps because of the poor quality of current teaching that 59% of parents in a recent survey said they do not want sex education taught in schools at all (also see BBC).

Labour MP Chris Bryant, who introduced his own Sex and Relationship Education Bill in 2010 which sought comprehensive Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) in schools, spoke in the House of Commons to oppose the abstinence bill.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) has described the vote as ‘disheartening’ and has stated that ‘abstinence education does not work’.

I note that the Family Planning Association guidance says the same:

‘There is no evidence that abstinence-only education programmes delay the initiation of sex, increase a return to abstinence or decrease the numbers of sexual partners.’

These sorts of claims have always struck me as rather bizarre. There are many faith-based and ethnic communities in the UK which have very low levels of unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease as the consequence of lower levels of promiscuity.

The FPA and BHA seem blind to this simple fact and instead cherry pick ‘evidence’ to back their ideological convictions that abstinence is impossible and that you cannot change behaviour through good education. All rather defeatist.

The passing of the bill sparked a storm of protest on Twitter, with many users attacking its focus on girls at the expense of boys. At one point, Dorries was among the top ten most discussed topics worldwide on the social networking website.

The full text of the bill read as follows:

‘Sex Education (Required Content): That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require schools to provide certain additional sex education to girls aged between 13 and 16; to provide that such education must include information and advice on the benefits of abstinence from sexual activity; and for connected purposes.’

The debate and result is reported on the BBC website and you can read the full debate in Hansard.

Nadine Dorries gives her own comments on her blog.

Health Minister Anne Milton courted controversy earlier this year when she was reported as not backing an abstinence approach. But she has since claimed that she was misrepresented.

There were very few MPs present at today’s vote so it will be interesting to see if the Cameron government supports the bill when it returns.

The last government’s policy on preventing teenage pregnancy (condoms and morning after pills) has left us with a legacy of unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, abortion and broken relationships.

In an instructive piece on the CMF website (titled ‘Quangos for the bonfire’) GP Trevor Stammers applauds the dissolution of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG) and the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV (IAGSH).

Since TPIAG was set up in 1998 to halve the national under-18 conception rate by 2010, it has put most of its efforts into the promotion and provision to teenagers of the very contraceptives which, when they fail, then constitute the commonest reason for requesting abortion.

The IAGSH (March 2003) equally adopted an ideological approach which consistently ignored evidence-based practice, such as studies indicating that abstinence-only education programmes can reduce both teenage conception, abortion and STI rates.

The vast majority of members of both TPIAG and IAGSH had declared interests in the contraception and abortion industries. Baroness Gould, the chair of both, was President of the fpa and chaired a pro-abortion lobby group in Parliament.

Like Baroness Gould, many of the members of one of these two 'independent' groups were also members of the other; whereas there were no representatives at all with any experience of alternative strategies such as the highly successful ABC programmes in Uganda or Love for Life programmes in Northern Ireland, Lovewise in Newcastle or Love2Last in Sheffield.

The Coalition Government says it wants to work with charities and churches across the whole spectrum. Supporting the work of these groups would be a good step in the right direction.

I wish Nadine Dorries well and hope that she finds the support she is seeking from the government.

I see that SPUC have launched a Safe at School campaign to advise and support parents and teachers who are concerned about the explicit nature of sex education in schools.

Was Anne Milton's denunciation of abstinence-based sex education a 'misreport' or a Clintonesque 'misspeak'?

I was amazed to see the volume of journalists’ ink spilt last week on the case of the student basketball star in Utah who was suspended from school for having pre-marital sex with his girlfriend (BBC News, Daily Mail)

Apparently his team has, as a result, slipped down the college rankings.

Some days ago there were 1,335 articles listed on google from all over the work that were listing the story.

Why such interest? I guess it is because pre-marital sex is so common nowadays that the media are surprised that an educational institution should take holding on to one’s virginity at all seriously.

And yet in the same week another story from across the pond ran with the headline ‘No sex please, we're American: More than a quarter of young men and women in the US say they're still virgins’.

Apparently promiscuity rates are falling in the US as a result of abstinence-based sex education.

Rather odd then that Health Minister Anne Milton (pictured) should be reported this week in a tweet from @BrookCharity (where she was speaking at a conference) as being opposed to abstinence based sex education: ‘Ann[e] Milton says the “Just say no” msg will not happen on her watch & we should contact her if we hear politicians say it.’ (Are the thought police about to discover a new ‘thought-crime’ I wonder – telling young people to wait before having sex?)

I wrote to her asking for an explanation but her office is now denying that she actually said it at all. So who is telling the truth?

The past government’s policy on preventing teenage pregnancy (condoms and morning after pills) has left us with a legacy of unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, abortion and broken relationships.

In an instructive piece on the CMF website (titled ‘Quangos for the bonfire’) GP Trevor Stammers applauds the dissolution of the Teenage Pregnancy Independent Advisory Group (TPIAG) and the Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV (IAGSH).

Since TPIAG was set up in 1998 to halve the national under-18 conception rate by 2010, it has put most of its efforts into the promotion and provision to teenagers of the very contraceptives which, when they fail, then constitute the commonest reason for requesting abortion.

The IAGSH (March 2003) equally adopted an ideological approach which consistently ignored evidence-based practice, such as studies indicating that abstinence-only education programmes can reduce both teenage conception, abortion and STI rates.

The IAGSH published many inaccuracies. In September 2003, they claimed those who took a US 'abstinence pledge' were 'at higher risk of STIs…because they have often had little or no information about contraception and safer sex'. Not only was no evidence presented to support the reason given, but even the purported 'higher risk' of STIs was not shown by the actual research which consistently showed lower rates of STIs (though not statistically significantly so) among pledgers.

The vast majority of members of both TPIAG and IAGSH had declared interests in the contraceptive and abortion industries. Baroness Gould, the chair of both, was President of the fpa and chaired a pro-abortion lobby group in Parliament.

Like Baroness Gould, many of the members of one of these two 'independent' groups were also members of the other; whereas there were no representatives at all with any experience of alternative strategies such as the highly successful ABC programmes in Uganda or Love for Life programmes in Northern Ireland, where teenage pregnancy and STI rates are far lower than in England, Wales and Scotland.

The Coalition Government says it wants to work with charities and churches across the whole sepctrum. Supporting the work of groups like Love for Life would be a good step in the right direction.

Let’s hope that Anne Milton’s reported statement this week was in fact a misreport (rather than a Clintonesque ‘misspeak’) and that she is not taking us back into the darkness from which, with the help of the quango bonfire, we were starting to emerge.

Current sexual health strategies are based on three false presuppositions

Can we imagine training young people how to drive without also instructing them in the laws of the road? Or teaching trainee surgeons how to remove an appendix without also training them in the proper indications for the procedure?

And yet when it comes to sex, an activity which, like driving and surgery, carries high risks in the wrong context, the prevailing wisdom is that education focusing primarily on the access and use of contraception will be sufficient.

We learn this week of a new GCSE sex course which allegedly will be available to children as young as 11. Nine secondary schools have apparently adopted the qualification – ‘Level One Award in Sexual Health Awareness’ – since it became available earlier this month. Another 30 are expected to follow in the coming weeks.

Topics covered include accessing advice on contraception and other sexual health services without the knowledge or consent of parents. Pupils are also told where to obtain free contraception and how to quickly obtain the morning-after pill.

A second story graphically illustrates just how good teenagers are at actually taking precautions. The headline ‘One in four young people have sex without contraception’ refers to a recent study by Marie Stopes International. 16 per cent of UK young people who admitted to unprotected sex said they did not use contraception with a new partner as they forgot, 13 per cent said their partner preferred not to use contraception and 19 per cent said they had been drunk and forgot.

Current sexual health strategies are based on three false presuppositions – that contraception is safe, that young people will actually use it and that abstinence is impossible. Perhaps this explains Britain’s burgeoning epidemic of sexually transmitted disease, unplanned pregnancy and abortion amongst young people.

By contrast the Creator’s model for sex is simple, safe and effective – save it for marriage.

What the Sunday Telegraph doesn’t tell you about repeat abortions

I was quoted on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph this morning in an article reporting that 89 teenage girls aged 17 or under had had their third abortion last year.

The article is accompanied by a strong editorial criticising government sex education policies and suggesting that we should actually be advocating sexual abstinence for teenagers as a way of dealing with what is now an unplanned teenage pregnancy epidemic.

As the article reports, the 2009 abortion statistics show that for the first time over a third (34%) of all abortions were performed on women who had already ended one or more previous pregnancies, that over 1,000 women who had abortions last year were on their fifth at least and almost 50 on their eighth or beyond.

What the Telegraph doesn’t tell you is that we are being denied information about the true level of the problem because the Department of Health has deliberately chosen to suppress information about the numbers of repeat abortions in teenagers (see the gaps in table 4b on page 13 of the report), presumably to avoid further criticism of its failed teenage pregnancy strategy. How many younger teenagers (or 18 to 24 year olds) were on their fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh or eighth abortion? We do not know because we are not being told.

It is increasingly clear that abortion is simply being used as a form of contraception by a growing percentage of women and that the government's tired policy of values-free sex education, condoms and morning after pills is not working in stemming the flow. Given the growing evidence of a link between past abortion and subsequent depression or premature birth (the severity of the latter being directly linked to the number of past abortions) it is clear that this is resulting in a legacy of mental and physical health problems for British women.

It is also profoundly ironic that 97% of abortions are being performed on spurious mental health grounds when there is in fact very little evidence to suggest that continuing with an unplanned pregnancy poses greater risk to a mother's mental health than having an abortion. In fact there is growing evidence to suggest that the very opposite is true.

After over seven million abortions in Britain, 94% of which are now funded by taxpayers' money, the new coalition government has a responsibility to come clean and admit that past strategies have failed to deliver. It is time to appoint better advisors and to have a radical rethink about strategies aimed at curbing promiscuity and its legacy of sexually transmitted disease, unplanned pregnancy and abortion.

There are ethnic, religious and cultural communities within the UK whose rates of unplanned pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease and abortion rates are considerably below the national average. If the new coalition government is really serious about addressing the problems of Britain's so-called broken society, then it should perhaps commission some serious research and seek their advice.

The current policy, by contrast, is based on two false presuppositions – that contraceptives are foolproof and that abstinence is impossible. Neither is true. The best ‘oral’ contraceptive is a word of one syllable – ‘no!’ It would be a refreshing change to see a public policy approach that includes teaching girls how to say it more often and teaching boys to respect it.