Women and Equalities Committee
Oral evidence: Relationships, Sex and Health Education review one-off session, HC 1309
Wednesday 10 May 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 10 May 2023.
Members present: Kate Osborne (in the Chair); Carolyn Harris; Mark Jenkinson; Kim Johnson and Ms Anum Qaisar.
Questions 1 - 97
Witnesses
I: Lottie Moore, Head of Biology Matters at Policy Exchange; Tanya Carter, Spokesperson at Safe Schools Alliance UK and Lucy Marsh, Communications and PR Officer at Family Education Trust.
II: Dr Sophie King-Hill, Senior Fellow, Health Services Management at University of Birmingham; Lucy Emmerson, Chief Executive at Sex Education Forum and Jonathan Baggaley, Chief Executive at PSHE Association.
Witnesses: Lottie Moore, Tanya Carter and Lucy Marsh.
Q1 Chair: Good afternoon, everyone. Today we are looking at relationships, sex and health education in schools. For anybody watching online or anyone in the room, some of the subject matter and things that may be discussed may be unsuitable for children of all ages.
No doubt our panellists will have a range of views, so please keep comments respectful today. We have two panels of witnesses, all appearing in person. Can I ask our first panel to introduce yourselves, and can you say whether you are happy to be referred to by your first name?
Tanya Carter: I am from Safe Schools Alliance, and I am perfectly happy for you to call me Tanya.
Lucy Marsh: I am from Family Education Trust, and you can call me Lucy.
Lottie Moore: I am from Policy Exchange, and you can call me Lottie.
Q2 Chair: Thank you. The first question is to all of you: what should be the objective of relationships and sex education, and does current teaching of RSE fulfil that objective?
Tanya Carter: The objective should be to give children accurate biological and legal information because children have a right to know accurate information. They have a right to know what their rights are. We need to be very clear that the most important part of relationships and sex education is that it is part of safeguarding. It is to ensure that children and young people have the information they need to allow them to grow up in the best circumstances possible into healthy and functional members of our society. We need to be very clear that the ultimate aim of this is child safeguarding. At the moment, that is not being fulfilled at all, and I am very concerned.
Lucy Marsh: I would agree with Tanya's comments that RSE has to be based on sound evidence in terms of teaching children about biology, changing bodies, safe relationships, and also what kinds of relationships are going to be healthy and the best for them as they become adults. I do not feel that this is being fulfilled in either primary school or secondary school at the moment.
Lottie Moore: I agree with both the panellists. RSE should be evidence-based, based in fact, and that is not happening. We are confusing facts and beliefs on these issues when it comes to teaching children.
Tanya Carter: Ultimately, it needs to be about ensuring that any education is for the benefit of the children it is being delivered to and not because some adults intend on spreading their worldview. It absolutely has to be for the benefit of children.
Chair: Thank you. I am going to bring in other members of the Committee. They will address their questions either to all or to some of you. Please, indicate if you want to come in.
Q3 Mark Jenkinson: Tanya, what do parents and young people need and want from RHSE?
Tanya Carter: What parents want is transparency. They want to work in partnership with schools, and it is incredibly important that all adults in a child's life work together for the benefit of that child. That is a philosophy that underpins our frameworks in this country; it is the basis of working together to keep children safe. All adults need to be working together, which means we need total transparency. Schools need to be explaining to parents exactly what they are teaching and why.
It is unfortunate for schools that it is a bit beyond their remit, but if parents are unaware of what children are being exposed to online, schools may have to educate parents as well about the sheer volume of pornography online these days, and the type of pornography children are dealing with. Some parents are very well aware. Lots of dads I have spoken to are very concerned and said it is not like when they were younger and would find a magazine in the hedge and laugh over a pair of boobs with your mates. This is really nasty, violent stuff, which is leading to an epidemic of erectile dysfunction in very young boys, and it is a public health issue.
Children want adults to talk to. They want adults to listen to them and adults who will help them. Children do seem to be able to recognise safe adults who are enforcing boundaries to help them. On safeguarding training, I was always taught that an adult trying to be cool and down with the children was a risk, and not a safe adult. Indeed, in another one of our legal documents, “Keeping children safe in education”, it is acknowledged that adults who cannot tell the difference between adults and children are a risk factor.
Children want to be listened to. They want adults they can talk to, and they want help and guidance. They want to know that the adults understand what they are being subjected to. When you talk to a lot of young women in their 20s about what they were exposed to online, they said the adults around them had no idea and no one tried to help them. That gap is closing a bit now.
From my own experiences with my daughters, I was aware as far back as 2009, 2010. They were being exposed to really shocking stuff in online places you would not expect it, like the Facebook feed. When I was raising this with the school, they were completely oblivious to how widespread these issues were. We all need to be open and honest. Parents need transparency. They need help and support. Children need to be listened to, and they need guidance.
Q4 Mark Jenkinson: On that social media piece, there has been a lot of work done by social media companies. For example, here, in trying to address some of that, do you feel that we are in a different place to where social media was? Are we worse, better?
Tanya Carter: No. If anything, we are worse. It is so hard these days for parents to monitor online. You are dealing with something like Snapchat, where once it has come through, you will never see it again. If you screenshot on Snapchat, it will send an alert to the person who sent it.
I always trained my four daughters that if something comes through to you that you were in any way unsure of, you do not open it until you found one of your sisters who is there with a phone to take a screenshot if you open something awful, but not everyone is in that situation. We have completely dropped the ball on child safeguarding. I do not think we can protect children online at all, and I certainly do not think it is getting any better.
Q5 Mark Jenkinson: We have a couple more questions to get through, so let me take you back to transparency. How do you feel transparency is working? There are a lot of stories about people not being able to get access to materials. Is that a regular occurrence, or is it just isolated incidents?
Tanya Carter: I do not know. I have certainly had issues getting access to materials from my own children's schools. When I have asked for them, and they have instantly been handed over, they have always been very good materials and I have said thank you very much. However, there were materials that I have really had to fight to get a look at, and there have been problems with them. Some things which I have tried to get to see in my children's school, I have never managed to get a sight of, and my children have told me they were concerning.
Obviously, we hear from lots of parents who cannot get access to materials, but we do not hear from the parents that schools are working well with. We have established that there is a problem, and we now need to see how widespread this is, and we do not just need a review. We need a public inquiry into how we got to this stage. I do not know how many people saw the transcript or heard the testimony in the case that went to—
Mark Jenkinson: I do not want to, if that is the same case that is—
Tanya Carter: Sorry, am I saying something I should not have? I will stop. Sorry about that.
Q6 Mark Jenkinson: No, it is fine. I was just conscious that I was maybe leading you down a path that I did not want to, if it is the same case. Should young people be taught RSE to 18?
Tanya Carter: The question is not: should they be taught it? It is: what should they be taught? Obviously, it is an important part of safeguarding, but it needs to be done in partnership with parents. It needs to be for the benefit of children, and yes, up to 18-year-olds are children, and they will need help and support for all that time.
Q7 Mark Jenkinson: Lastly, before I move on, are young people with SEND—special educational needs or other additional needs—receiving RSE in the right way?
Tanya Carter: No. They are in an even worse situation than other children. Some of the resources we have had sent to us have just been posted on school websites; some have been sent out to parents; and some have been used without specialists. When we have shown them to RSE teachers who work with special needs children, they have been really concerned and said, “This is far too busy, with all the little widgets, and it is not getting across what it should.” It could very much be used in the wrong way by a non-specialist.
Q8 Mark Jenkinson: Are these materials that are designed for kids with additional needs, or just general materials?
Tanya Carter: It is claimed they are designed for kids with additional needs, but people who work with children with additional needs are saying that they are not suitable. Obviously, children with SEND have a right to the same education as all other children, but that absolutely needs to be done properly with specialist support. It is not something that can be delivered by a non-specialist. Again, safeguarding has to be at the heart of that. It always has to be considered.
Q9 Mark Jenkinson: Lottie, I am going to come to you next with very similar questions. What do parents and young people want and need from RSHE?
Lottie Moore: We need to get back to basics. From our research looking at gender identity teaching, we have seen that gender identity is a contested belief system and schools are teaching this belief system as though it is fact, or the status quo. We really need to recognise that when we are dealing with these issues, they have implications, and we need to separate the facts from the beliefs, and that needs to be imparted to children in the context of a lesson.
Of the schools that responded to our freedom of information requests that we sent out, 72% were teaching that people can have a gender identity that is separate from their biological sex, and 25% responded that some children are born in the wrong body.
Parents should know what is going on, but as important as transparency is, parents are busy, and it is not always practical for many to go on site to look at materials. We should be able to trust the state to deliver an education that, as Tanya says, has safeguarding at its core. Currently, that is not happening.
Q10 Mark Jenkinson: What does that mean? Does that mean publishing materials more widely?
Lottie Moore: Yes, absolutely.
Q11 Mark Jenkinson: Should young people be taught RSE to 18?
Lottie Moore: Again, I go back to the point that whatever we are teaching, it needs to be grounded in evidence. Regardless of what is deemed age-appropriate or inappropriate at every age, it should always be about the evidence and based in science.
Q12 Mark Jenkinson: What about children with additional needs?
Lottie Moore: As part of our research, we discounted the special needs schools that came back to us on the basis that some of the issues that we were asking them about were not directly relevant. From the materials that I have seen, again, I do not think these children are being supported. We know that children with additional needs make up a higher proportion of the current cohort of children presenting with gender distress, and therefore it is a real issue.
Q13 Mark Jenkinson: Do you have a figure for the proportion?
Lottie Moore: I can find one.
Mark Jenkinson: Perhaps if you have something that could be forwarded to the Committee afterwards. It may even be in the report.
Lottie Moore: Yes, it is in here, I can get it out.
Q14 Mark Jenkinson: Super. Lucy, does the current RSE curriculum do enough to help tackle misogyny and violence against women and girls?
Lucy Marsh: No, not at all. We are seeing huge damage being done with children watching porn. You have probably seen from the recent report by the Children's Commissioner that the average age now for children to start watching porn is 10, and that some children are watching it a lot younger.
We also have to consider the amount of children who have access to smartphones. I read a statistic the other day that something like 20% of four-year-olds have smartphones, and so we are basically giving these children access to adult websites from a very young age. Schools are not addressing the harm that this does to children being able to form healthy relationships when they are adults. It is a known fact. The evidence shows that viewing pornography changes the make-up of the brain, so we are going to end up with a whole generation of young men who are unable to form a healthy relationship with a woman. They will have erectile dysfunction. We have seen increasing amounts of young boys trying to act out pornographic scenes that they have seen. The other day, in America, a six-year-old girl was assaulted by a group of her peers. The school did not tell her parents. There was a 13-year-old who had just gone to court in this country for attacking three women while trying to act out scenes he had seen in porn.
Until we address the fact that children are watching porn, we are never going to solve the problem of violence against women because children have access to smartphones, so they are going to be able to view it. We need to be looking at whether children should have access to smartphones, and if they should be in schools. I would say the answer is no. I do not think smartphones should be in schools.
Q15 Mark Jenkinson: The Children's Commissioner has highlighted an account of a girl who was strangled during a first kiss because the 12-year-old boyfriend thought it was normal.
When it comes to reviewing access to smartphones, what can schools do to tackle some of this? My kids have Apple smartphones, so we have all sorts of controls as Apple allows family control. I assume it works because I have limited everything, but I suppose I do not really know.
Lucy Marsh: That is the problem, is it not? A lot of kids these days are probably more tech-savvy than their parents, so that is the problem.
I know that the Government did a U-turn on banning smartphones in schools. I think we should look at completely banning children having them in school because that would solve some problems, like children being filmed getting changed or in toilets, upskirting, and things like that. That would solve some of it.
However, part of the remit of RSE should be discussing the harms of viewing pornography. At the minute, it seems to be that quite a few providers are saying not all porn is harmful and talking about explicit acts that are more usually seen on porn as if they are normal. They are not normal.
I have recently heard from a GP who has been a GP for over 30 years, and she said that over the last couple of years, she has seen a huge increase in the amount of young women in their late teens and early twenties coming in with injuries from sex, like anal tears or bruises on the neck from strangulation because they are saying this is normal. As you said about the girl that was strangled on her first kiss, these young women are being told that this kind of thing is normal, and they are getting injured because of it. This is a big problem, and this is something that schools need to be discussing.
Q16 Mark Jenkinson: On the flip side, if we want to discuss these things in RSE, that means we have to highlight them. Does that present a problem?
Tanya Carter: Obviously, we cannot put this all on parents or schools or the Government. Everyone needs to work together. At Safe Schools Alliance, we think smartphones absolutely should not be in schools. Once you have smartphones in schools, every child in that school is only as protected as the least protected child in that school. It does not matter what controls you have on your own child's smartphone. If another child in that school has no controls on their phone, your child can be exposed to hardcore porn at lunchtime. Smartphones should not be in schools. I think it is questionable whether we should be allowing children to have smartphones at all. We need to be educating on this in RSE.
Q17 Mark Jenkinson: Putting the genie back in the bottle is not going to happen, though, is it? Stopping children having smartphones now is very difficult.
Tanya Carter: It is a conversation we need to have. We used to let children drink alcohol but now we have laws on that. There are a lot of things we have laws on. We do not allow children to gamble. We have moved the age of consent up to protect children. It is a conversation we need to have as a society. Certainly, in the first instance, smartphones should not be in schools. Obviously, we need to be having conversations around porn in schools, but it is what conversations we are having.
We are reviewing some RSE materials at the moment that we are hoping to be able to recommend that are more porn-critical, and that look at the fact that the children who are being exposed to this are being exploited. Children are being targeted online by algorithms.
Some of the teachers we work with set up their own TikTok accounts, making the algorithm think that they are a child to see what sort of things algorithms are targeting children with on TikTok. They are saying that you are being targeted with porn when TikTok thinks you are 15, regardless of whether that is what you were looking at or not.
We need to teach children critical thinking skills, and to be savvy online. We need to explain that they are being targeted and exploited by algorithms, but it is not their fault. We also need to talk about the exploitation within the porn industry, how the performers are being exploited, and how that links with trafficking. Teachers I have spoken to teach that in a whole section on exploitation. It is not taught as RSE because porn has nothing to do with sex and relationships. It has more to do with exploitation, so they teach that as they are teaching about other forms of exploitation worldwide, like child labour and child marriage, that type of thing.
Lucy Marsh: Some schools will have sessions for parents on safeguarding. Certainly, my own children's school has had times when the parents can come in to discuss how they can protect their children online. Part of what schools could do to extend that is to actually have a speaker come in to speak to them about the dangers of porn.
I went to a conference last year. There was some research that was done; when parents were interviewed, three quarters of them thought that their child had not viewed porn. When the surveyors asked the same children, more than half of them had, while the parents were thinking that they had not. Some parents are probably in denial about their children looking at this. The conversation needs to be had more with parents so they are aware of what their children could potentially view or are already viewing.
As Tanya said, it does not matter if you have all the protections on your children's phones. Do you know what they are looking at when they are with their friends? Do you know what they are looking at when they are at school? We do not know that.
Q18 Mark Jenkinson: Lottie, just finally, is there anything you want to add on violence against women?
Lottie Moore: The current guidance stipulates that at the end of secondary school, pupils should know about equality law and how it works, particularly with regards to the protected characteristics. As we know from the Ofsted report in 2021, sexual assault by boys on girls at school is a real problem, and girls need to know the sex-based rights accorded to them by the law. Our current evidence suggests that that is not the case. 30% of schools said to us that if a person self-identifies as either sex, they should be treated as that sex in all circumstances, even if that does not match their biological sex. That is not what equality law says. That is absolutely relevant to the issue of violence against women and girls.
Q19 Chair: If you can, I want you to say a bit more about your last statement, and maybe explain to us how you think it impacts. You talk about the Equality Act 2010, and you mentioned protection, but I am not really sure what you meant.
Lottie Moore: In terms of how this links to violence against women and girls, our report does not touch on that explicitly. We asked schools how their provision relates to gender distressed children at school, and also what they are teaching with regards to gender identity.
Obviously, in the Equality Act 2010, it is very clear that sex is a protected characteristic. 30% of our schools came back to us and said that a person who self-identifies as a different gender to their sex should be treated as that in all circumstances, but that is not what the law says, particularly with regard to same sex spaces such as toilets, abuse shelters, and various exceptions that the Equality Act 2010 stipulates. It is really important within RHSE that girls know that as they go into the world where, as we know, they are exposed to violence.
Q20 Chair: The law does not say it, but equally, it does not say otherwise. We know that each generation has more and more people identifying as LGBTQ+ and young people are coming out at an early age. Is that not a natural and positive consequence of society becoming more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community?
Lottie Moore: I would say this is a very complex issue. With gender distressed children that come out at school or wish to change gender, it is not for schools to be making the decisions whether that is the right course of action for those children.
Q21 Chair: Should they not be supporting them?
Lottie Moore: Of course they should be supported. I do not think anyone would say that they should not be supported, but ultimately, there is a safeguarding blind spot when it comes to gender distressed children at school, and that is what we need to address. This is a safeguarding issue, and it is not being treated as one.
Q22 Chair: Okay. Can I just pick up something you said earlier, Lottie? You said gender belief. What do you mean by gender belief?
Lottie Moore: Gender identity is a contested belief system in the same way that there are other beliefs. It is not based on evidence; it is not based in fact. That is what I mean when I say a belief.
Q23 Kim Johnson: I wanted to pick you up on your survey, Lottie, because you said that you had surveyed schools and that 30% responded in a particular way. I just wanted to know how big the sample of schools that you actually surveyed was.
Lottie Moore: We sent freedom of information requests to over 300 maintained secondary schools’ representative local authority, and of that 300, 154 responded to either all or part of the questions that we asked.
Q24 Carolyn Harris: Tanya and Lucy, what would you define as being appropriate content for RSE?
Lucy Marsh: It depends on whether you are talking about primary or secondary, as obviously they are different for both. As Lottie said, we need to get back to basics. Certainly, in primary school, we need to get back to basics of what happens to children's bodies and the differences between what happens to boys and girls. Girls need to know about periods and how the body will change, and both boys and girls need to know that puberty is a very awkward and difficult age for most people who go through it. I do not think many would look back on puberty and think that was a really fun time. They need to know the basics and the biology about how their bodies are going to change. We need to go back to what they need to know under the law; they need to know about pregnancy, and they very much need to know about safeguarding and how to protect themselves.
Tanya Carter: Like I said at the beginning, they need biologically and legally accurate information. Primary school children need to know about puberty and the changes coming to their body, ideally before that happens. They need accurate information about reproduction, about how you get pregnant.
Once you get up to secondary school, you are learning about how you get pregnant, how you do not get pregnant, how you protect yourself from disease. They need to know what the laws are around sexual assault, what is rape, and that we have laws against that in this country.
I would just like to say at this point that in the Equality Act 2010 we do have exceptions that allow for single sex spaces for both adult women and in schools. The law does give provision for single sex spaces.
Q25 Carolyn Harris: Do you think the children should be taught about pornography and the dangers of watching pornography? Do you think the children should learn that you can get sexually transmitted diseases from having intercourse? Do you believe that children should learn that there are different types of sexual activity between two women or between two men? Do you believe that the children should be prepared for something which is inevitable when they leave school?
Tanya Carter: Yes, absolutely. We want children to have education that benefits them, but some of the materials we have seen are really not beneficial to children. It is not beneficial to children to be told that they may find participating in hardcore porn acts liberating. That is not beneficial to children in the slightest, and we really need to question the motivations of the person who wrote those materials.
Q26 Carolyn Harris: Yes, but is there not a central base where the information that the schools are giving out is checked?
Tanya Carter: No, it is not checked at all. This is the whole point. It is a complete wild west. There is no quality control.
Q27 Carolyn Harris: Schools do not actually give lessons on oral sex, or choking in relationships, for example, do they?
Tanya Carter: I think oral sex is covered in relationship and sex education. You are asking questions without taking on board the fact that we are raising very serious safeguarding concerns about what some children have been exposed to in their RSE. The issues being raised are that when these outside providers come into school, there is absolutely no regulation and no scrutiny. When children have looked them up online afterwards because they have further questions and think that is where they can get answers, they have then been subjected to really inappropriate content, as some of these individuals also run their own sex toys companies. While butt plugs are absolutely fine for adults, they are not something you want your 11-year-old finding when they look up who came to teach them RSE.
Q28 Carolyn Harris: At what age should we be teaching children that oral sex can cause sexually transmitted diseases? When should we be warning children of that potential?
Tanya Carter: That is a secondary school thing, is it not? Of course, we should be explaining—
Q29 Carolyn Harris: Do you think they should learn that oral sex can, in some cases, cause sexually transmitted disease when they are older?
Tanya Carter: Yes, of course we do. I am not sure—
Lucy Marsh: We should when it is developmentally appropriate, but the problem is that what is developmentally appropriate for one 15-year-old may not be for another 15-year-old. This is why we need to bring it back to the parents as they are the primary educators of the children. They know their children better than any teacher. They need to approve of what their child is being taught as they have the information to say whether they feel the subject is appropriate for their child.
Q30 Carolyn Harris: Do you believe that there are risks in not giving children information about the dangers of sexually transmitted disease, or of looking at pornography? Are we going to deny them a structured, approved lesson and give them information to safeguard them in future life? Is it not important that we give them that information?
Tanya Carter: We are talking at cross purposes here. What you are describing is what I consider to be appropriate education. The concerns I am raising is that this is not what some of the RSE going into schools is these days. What you are describing is what I would expect to be going into schools, but that is not what is going into schools. Of course, children should be told what the age of consent is and that, after the age of consent, if they engage in oral sex, yes, there is a risk of STI, but we are talking about providers who are graphically describing online to 14-year-olds how to deep throat.
Q31 Carolyn Harris: Is that fact? Do you have factual information, and where does that come from?
Tanya Carter: That came from BISH. It was on their website.
Carolyn Harris: From?
Tanya Carter: An organisation called BISH.
Q32 Carolyn Harris: Is that used in schools?
Tanya Carter: They are directed to it in schools.
Q33 Carolyn Harris: Are they taught it in schools? Is that school actually delivering what BISH are offering?
Tanya Carter: I do not think you understand the safeguarding implications of schools directing children to sites where they are told this.
Carolyn Harris: No more questions for now. Thank you.
Chair: Thank you. Kim.
Q34 Kim Johnson: Thanks. You have all talked about getting back to basics, but we have to understand we are not in the 1950s; we are in the 21st century, where young people have access to a wider range of information than at any time in history. Do you not believe that the classroom is the best place to discuss issues around sex and relationships? Lottie, the question for you is: what qualifications, training or expertise should teachers and external providers have to deliver RSE?
Lottie Moore: First, there needs to be, as with every adult that interacts with children at school, a real awareness of what safeguarding principles are. There needs to be an understanding of the obligations for schools to be politically impartial, and when they are teaching about different belief systems, they should give a balanced view.
Q35 Kim Johnson: Can I just pick you up on “politically impartial”? All schools have to operate to those standards under legislation, so that already exists.
Lottie Moore: The legislation does already exist, but the issue is whether the legislation is being adhered to when it comes to these external agencies. In many circumstances, it is not.
Q36 Kim Johnson: I was not talking about external agencies; I was talking specifically about qualifications and training that is needed for teachers in schools to deliver these lessons. We all know that teachers at the moment are overstretched. We know that the Government have provided some funding for RSE, but it is not enough. We know that schools are under pressure in terms of the national curriculum at the best of times. What should be available in schools to enable teachers to deliver RSE in a way that meets the needs of all children at all age groups?
Lottie Moore: I completely share the concern with how difficult the situation is for teachers. I have spoken to teachers who are tearing their hair out about the current status and what is expected of them. I completely welcome that, but what we really need to focus on here is that, with the guidance and with the review, it needs to be timely. It needs to be robust, and it needs to be really clear about what the boundaries are that need to be set as to what teachers should and should not be saying when it comes to RSHE.
Q37 Kim Johnson: Why are schools using external providers to deliver RSE at the moment?
Lottie Moore: As you say, teachers are overstretched, and it seems like it is a place to go to get the help. These external agencies have also been incredibly influential in operating under different guises, really noble guises, such as equality and anti-bullying, which is great. They have often come into schools under those guises and then end up with a slightly different agenda, which has gone under the radar.
Q38 Kim Johnson: Do you know whether the Oak National Academy deliver any type of RSE at all? If so, how would you rate it?
Lottie Moore: I cannot speak to the Oak National Academy. That is not one of the schools that we dealt with.
Kim Johnson: It is an online platform.
Lucy Marsh: The Oak National Academy have been instructed by the DfE to bring in more evidence-based materials.
Lottie Moore: I am sorry; I cannot speak to that.
Q39 Kim Johnson: Going back to external providers, you have mentioned that schools procure an awful lot of services to deliver a range of different things. How do you think that schools should judge external providers who are delivering RSE?
Lottie Moore: Again, it is a really good question. There needs to be a focus and schools need to have full access to the materials the external agencies are providing, and those external agencies need to understand that parents also need to have full access to those materials. If there is any kind of intellectual property rights or confidentiality in terms of not being able to provide those materials, then agencies will just have to accept that unfortunately they cannot be used in school.
Q40 Kim Johnson: Are you saying that most schools are not providing information to parents in terms of the resources that are used to deliver RSE in schools, or is it just a drop in the ocean, and do you have an evidence base to support that?
Lottie Moore: In terms of my research, when I asked for RSHE materials, and I appreciate that I was not asking as a parent, several schools came back to me and said that they could not give them to me because of the commercial obligations they had to their provider. I am sure the other panellists can speak to this; there have been instances where parents have been refused access and all parents have been told that they have to go on site to see the materials, which, obviously, as busy parents, is just not always feasible.
Kim Johnson: They are all my questions. Thanks Lottie. Thanks Chair.
Q41 Chair: Can I ask Lucy and Lottie, because you have both made the same point around parents being given the opportunity to see the materials, do you think that is realistic, given the challenges around resources and so on? It does not happen in any other area of education, does it?
Lucy Marsh: If these materials were published on the school's website, then the parents would be able to read them.
Q42 Chair: Are they published in every subject?
Lucy Marsh: Other subjects are not as contested as this. You are not sending your child into a geography lesson and being worried that they might be taught about strangulation and anal sex. That is not the question, is it? This is a really important area of safeguarding, and parents want to know, and have a right to know, if their children are being kept safe in school.
Tanya Carter: There is a massive difference between teaching maths and teaching about sex. We need to go back to safeguarding and safer recruitment; safer recruitment was introduced to scrutinise the motivations of anybody wanting access to children because, sadly, we know that anywhere there are children or vulnerable people, it will attract predators. This is why we are asking for a public inquiry, because we are not sure people understand the seriousness. This is a very serious medical safeguarding and lobbying scandal that has unfolded under the Conservative Government. As far as I can see, the Opposition, rather than challenging the Government for their severe failures, are challenging the whistleblowers who are trying to draw attention to this. Have the panel all read our report into WHO and UNESCO, which I asked to be circulated?
Chair: We are not here to answer questions; we are here to ask questions.
Tanya Carter: No, that is fair enough, but we have produced that report—which is on our website—and it has forensically taken apart how shaky the foundations of what we are currently teaching children are. We want a public inquiry because this is a national safeguarding failure, and we need to get this right for children. Of course, children should receive this education in school, but what we are saying is that the education they are receiving in school has been infiltrated. A lot of the motivations behind it and a lot of the materials need to be scrutinised, and this needs to be done transparently and independently. People need to be asking questions about this, rather than silencing whistleblowers, which has happened in every previous safeguarding scandal we have seen.
Chair: As you know, there is an RSHE review.
Tanya Carter: Yes, and I want a public inquiry.
Chair: We will move on to questions around that.
Lucy Marsh: If we go back to what you were saying about the transparency, in 2014, the Government were consulting on making RSE compulsory. One of our trustees gave evidence to the Education Select Committee about what was going on back then. In the report, which was written by Nicky Morgan in 2015, one of the Education Select Committee’s recommendations was that schools publish the curriculum for RHSE on their website, and the Education Secretary had responded saying that the DfE was going to look into this to make sure schools were complying with it. Evidently, we are now at the stage where this has not happened. We have got to the stage where we are contacted frequently, and I know Tanya is, by parents saying that they cannot see what the children are being taught, and asking us whether we have examples of what is being taught by these external providers. Clearly, the transparency has not happened.
Q43 Chair: Thank you. Do you think RSHE should be compulsory in schools?
Lucy Marsh: Parents should be able to have the right to fully withdraw their child if they want to, because it should be the parents' choice what they want their children to be taught. We should restore the right for them to be able to withdraw their children if they feel that that is the right thing to do.
Q44 Chair: What about the children's right?
Lucy Marsh: Very young children—
Q45 Chair: Do they not have a right to be educated in the same way as all their peers?
Lucy Marsh: The parents are the primary educators of their children, and parents are the ones who should have the say over their children. If we are going to child-led education, that is a whole other conversation.
Q46 Chair: Should the focus be on the child and not the parent?
Lucy Marsh: The focus should be on the family unit, and part of the problem—
Q47 Chair: Not the child’s education, and getting them ready for life?
Lucy Marsh: Yes, but if the parent does not agree with what is being taught, has a problem with safeguarding and is very worried that what their child is being taught is inappropriate, then the parent should have a say.
Q48 Chair: If I can stay with you, Lucy, how do you think the RSHE review should be conducted?
Lucy Marsh: I feel we are past the point of the Department for Education being able to do this review, because the actions of the DfE are the reason why we have got to this stage in the first place. I agree with Tanya that it is at the point where we need a fully independent inquiry.
Q49 Chair: Do you have anyone in mind?
Lucy Marsh: No, but I can keep you posted on that if anybody springs to mind.
Q50 Chair: I am just wondering how you ensure independence. The DfE would argue that they are independent.
Lucy Marsh: I would not agree with that. I would want it to operate in the manner of the Cass review, where we have a fully independent person coming in to look at all the evidence.
Q51 Chair: With your view and what you have just said in mind, what steps do you think the Government need to take to satisfy stakeholders that the review is impartial, and for the outcome to be accepted?
Lucy Marsh: Steps need to be taken now as we are so concerned, and the alarm has been raised so many times. We have had Miriam Cate’s report and Lottie’s report and, as an organisation, we are getting a lot of contact from parents who are very worried about what is going on. I am sure Tanya will say the same thing in terms of what they are doing. We need to pause RSE pending an independent inquiry because there is no safeguarding going on at the moment. As Amanda Spielman from Ofsted said, there is a wild west situation, because anybody can set themselves up as an expert in RSE; there is no legislation; there is no oversight. Ofsted have said they are not looking at these materials. We need to press pause pending an independent inquiry, and the Government need to make sure they get somebody completely neutral with the required expertise to oversee this.
Q52 Carolyn Harris: I am interested in this inquiry that you talk about. You may know that, quite recently, Baroness Casey has done a review into the Met police. What if you were to get this review, and somebody like Baroness Casey reports back that what is existing is fine, and there is no problem with it? How would you feel then?
Lucy Marsh: I would worry she had not been on a safeguarding course if she thought what exists in schools now is appropriate.
Q53 Carolyn Harris: Someone like Baroness Casey has a reputation for doing independent review. I am just playing devil’s advocate here.
Tanya Carter: We need someone with a thorough understanding of child protection and safeguarding.
Q54 Carolyn Harris: You have that person; they do a review; and they come back and say that, as far as they are concerned, there are no problems with the current system. How would you then, as campaigners, feel?
Tanya Carter: No one with a thorough understanding of child protection and safeguarding is going to—
Carolyn Harris: But what if they did?
Tanya Carter: They will not.
Lucy Marsh: We would present the evidence and say look at the evidence.
Q55 Carolyn Harris: If they are independent but it does not say what you want it to say, you are not going to be satisfied.
Tanya Carter: Anybody who fully understands child protection and safeguarding will pull concerns out of this.
Carolyn Harris: Yes, I am purely playing devil's advocate here. We have seen public inquiries which have come back and not gone the way that one side wants in the argument. I have said if that person is appointed who you have all agreed is independent, they do the review, they come back, and they say we consider the current system to be appropriate, how would you then feel? Would you then accept the system?
Lucy Marsh: No, we would keep going back to the evidence. Policy decision has to be based on evidence.
Carolyn Harris: That is fine. I have no more questions.
Q56 Chair: Thank you. In reviewing the teaching of RSE, and gender issues in particular, is there a risk that we are repeating the failings of section 28? My campaigning life started in the ’80s—giving my age away now—pushing back on section 28 and the damage it did. To me, it feels like we are just going backwards a little bit, so do you think there is a risk there?
Tanya Carter: What I find really sad is that I have had lesbians say to me that they think that young lesbians in school today are now in a worse situation than they were when they went to their convent school where nothing was mentioned to it at all. For example, my daughter and her girlfriend were out when they were at secondary school, from year 10 onwards. Initially, there were some issues and I supported them by speaking to the school and it was all dealt with, and they were able to be out. When they went up to the sixth form that had a pride club which was completely stonewalled and was basically teaching lies about the Equality Act, they were then back in the closet because of the things the other children were saying as they were reacting so badly to how it was being mishandled in the sixth form.
I have spoken to gay men who, as children, liked dressing up or liked pink but also some gay men who were not like that—they were just like any other boy, but they were gay. They are very concerned that what we are looking at with all these transitioning children at the moment is in fact medical conversion therapy of children who would otherwise grow up to be gay and lesbian. I am incredibly concerned about what children who would grow up to be gay and lesbian are exposed to these days, not only online but in schools. Schools should be challenging the misinformation that children are subjected to online when they are reading that discovering a same-sex attraction may mean they are really the opposite sex. Schools should be challenging this misinformation, not reinforcing it.
Q57 Chair: Teaching young people about LGBT people does not make the LGBT community not exist, does it? Surely it opens that conversation.
Tanya Carter: Where did I say that?
Chair: No, I am just putting that to you.
Tanya Carter: You are saying something I have not said. My children have always known gay people exist. Some of their mates at schools had two mums. As I have said, my daughter's out; she is lesbian. I want these conversations to happen, but I want open and honest conversations about what same-sex attraction is, and that it certainly does not mean that you have been born in the wrong body, that you might be the opposite sex or that you might want to be put on a pathway to a lifetime of medication, unnecessary surgery and body hatred.
Q58 Chair: Do you believe that trans people exist?
Tanya Carter: What do you mean by trans people?
Chair: I think you know what a trans person is.
Tanya Carter: I am asking you to tell me what you think a trans person is.
Chair: No, I am asking you if you believe that trans people exist. Do you think that there are people that believe they are born in the wrong body?
Tanya Carter: There are people who believe they are born in the wrong body, but we certainly should not be teaching small children that they may be in the wrong body. How is that helping them with self-acceptance or to grow up and be healthy?
Q59 Chair: But if they do grow up thinking that, is it not better that they have had that conversation and understand the issues around it and where to go if they need to talk about it and that there is acceptance?
Tanya Carter: Where can they go that will support them with watchful waiting rather than instantly going to affirmation? We would like children supported in school in line with what is coming out of the Cass review. We certainly do not want children lied to and told they have been born in the wrong body. The research tells us that most children who are left alone, just supported, allowed to pursue their own interests, dress how they like, be friends with who they want to and not put in boxes for the stereotypes for their sex, grow up and become lesbian and gay adults. The way in which we are treating children at the moment means we are robbing some of them of the opportunity to grow up healthy and even robbing them of sexual function. It is heart breaking hearing the stories coming from detransitioners. How many detransitioners have you spoken to?
Chair: I thank you all for coming and giving your evidence today.
Witnesses: Dr Sophie King-Hill, Lucy Emmerson, and Jonathan Baggaley.
Q60 Chair: Thank you all for coming here today. If I can start by asking you to introduce yourselves and to say how you would like to be addressed, please.
Dr King-Hill: Hi, please call me Sophie.
Jonathan Baggaley: I am very happy for you to call me Jonathan. I am chief executive of the PSHE Association, which is the national subject association for personal, social, health and economic education, which is quite a mouthful. Just for context, that is the school subject through which the RSHE statutory requirements tend to be delivered in schools.
Lucy Emmerson: Hello, I am chief executive of the Sex Education Forum.
Q61 Chair: Can I start off by asking all of you: what should be the objective of relationship and sex education, and does current teaching of RSE fulfil that objective? I am going to start with Sophie, if I can.
Dr King-Hill: In terms of the current teaching of relationships and sex education, it should be so that young people can go on to live happy and healthy lives, however they want, which is vitally important. The robust evidence suggests that young people want to be involved in the design of relationships and sex education; they need to be a part of that so that we know what we are building on. The same goes for parents: they want to be involved, they want schools to be able to educate our young people together and to play a valuable role in that. It is vital to the outcomes of children and young people that this is built from the outset by talking to them and delivered in a very pedagogical way that is both sensible and appropriate to the needs of the young people. It needs to be incremental and built sensibly within the context into which they are situated, which is something that is vitally important in relationships and sex education.
Jonathan Baggaley: The clear objective for RSHE is to ensure that children can thrive in a fast-changing world, that they can be safe, happy, and healthy. It is worth reiterating the consensus around this; we led efforts to build the case for statutory PSHE which was supported by over 100 organisations: five education unions, five Committees, six royal medical colleges, and a broad range of experts, particularly around safeguarding. I absolutely agree with the previous panel that safeguarding is fundamental here, and the role of RSHE in supporting safeguarding is very much recognised and supported by the National Police Lead for Child Protection, the Association of Independent Local Safeguarding Children Boards, and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.
We know that teaching young people about healthy relationships and what good relationships look like helps them to recognise unhealthy relationships and also gives them the confidence to speak out and seek support should they encounter issues; the social science evidence around that is extremely clear. We should also say that whilst safeguarding is vital, we want so much more for our children than simply being safe; we also want them to be healthy and to thrive. There is clear evidence around the role of RSHE in supporting physical health, influencing diet and lifestyle choices, reducing substance use and positively supporting mental health and emotional wellbeing. It can also reduce issues which can negatively affect mental health, like bullying.
Finally, if you do all of that right, you create a virtuous circle where it also supports academic attainment. Again, the evidence suggests that it is removing barriers to learning because children are thriving in their environments, they have agency and are prepared for life, but it also develops the social and emotional skills they need to thrive academically. In sum, RSHE is absolutely vital for safeguarding; this is also about enabling all children to thrive.
Lucy Emmerson: The objectives of relationships, sex and health education are about contributing to healthy, happy, safe children, young people, and future adults. The safety aspect of that is about protecting and preventing, for example, being able to recognise something that is abusive or harmful, and knowing that you have a right, as a child, to ask for and to get help; those rights include mental and physical health. We know from the research evidence that this conclusively contributes to a delay in sexual debut—starting to have sex later, not earlier—and to increase use of contraception and reduced unplanned teenage pregnancy. We know from evidence in recent years that RSHE contributes to reduced relationship violence. In 2019, the RSHE guidance came in with the healthy, happy, safe trio, which are very much the shared societal objectives shared by parents, children and teachers. The majority of parents were incredibly supportive about the introduction of RSHE as a school subject.
Q62 Mark Jenkinson: I have some very similar questions to those I asked the first panel. Sophie, what do parents and young people want and need from RHSE?
Dr King-Hill: It is vital that the RSHE given is contextualised in terms of the school, the young people, and the religiosity and ethnicity of the local community; all of these complex factors need to be taken into account when looking at what parents want, and especially what children and young people want. I have been working in this field for 20 years, currently as an academic but prior to that I was teaching relationships and sex education to young people. I have worked with some really diverse and fantastic groups, including teenage parents and ex-offenders. Time and time again—I saw this in the Cates dossier, in the Sexuality in Education document and the Falling Asleep at the Wheel document—where are the voices of young people? We really do need to be listening because they are the experts in what they need. We need a stakeholder group of young people involved in this because it is as if we are talking over their heads at the moment.
Young people live in a completely different world to the one that we live in. I am 43, and it might as well be an alien planet where children and young people are situated; we need to get them on board. Recent research from the NSPCC, research I have carried out myself and a plethora of rigorous academic research says that we need to engage with young people. They are not passive in this; they are not receptacles for us to fill with information. Time and time again in my research I see young people telling us, “You are teaching us things that we already know. You are telling us about things we have seen online.” What they do say, which is crucial, is that they want to get their relationships, health and sex education in a school setting, from a trusted adult in a trusted environment.
I agree that there is a real safeguarding risk; my heart sank when I read the Cates dossier. Never in my 20-year career have I been as concerned as I am now. It has, however, led to the discussions we are having today, which are necessary and useful. As an academic we are rigorous about evidence and to see something presented to Parliament with such a shaky evidence base was very misleading. It is emotive and scaremongering and there are no voices of young people. A pedagogical position to teach and learn with children and young people is not mentioned in there; there is sensationalism in terms of—
Q63 Mark Jenkinson: Are you saying that those sensationalist bits do not exist?
Dr King-Hill: I am saying I would like to see them and the way they work in the pedagogical environment within the context that they are in. Given that it is so poorly written, it is very hard for me, as an academic, to make an accurate judgment on that. If somebody wanted to give me—
Q64 Mark Jenkinson: There is, however, a context in which we should be teaching children about anal sex, for example?
Dr King-Hill: Yes; we really need to look at the context that they are in. I cannot emphasise enough to this Committee that it is incredibly dangerous for someone to put parameters on relationships and sex education. We cannot put age parameters on what we are teaching our children; what if somebody is sharing extreme pornography with their classmates at 11, but the parameters say you cannot teach it until they are 13? The educators are bound to a policy, but also they need to safeguard the children.
Q65 Mark Jenkinson: If I ask a group of children what they want, it will not necessarily tell me what those children need.
Dr King-Hill: I would respectfully disagree with some of that statement. In my experience working with and talking to young people as well as in research carried out in academia and professional settings, young people want to talk, to engage and to help. This is a huge part of their life now that they really want to be a part of and to negotiate. We can bring our expertise to this with them in a co-designed participatory way working in their best interests. This is not anecdotal, there is a wealth of research from social scientists, social policy, educationalists, criminologists, psychologists, mathematicians, colleagues from the PSHE Association, Sex Education Forum, and the Brook charity. People who have been in this field for a very long time are looking at this through very different professional lenses and are all saying the same thing, and it is vitally important that we get this right for young people.
Q66 Mark Jenkinson: At the very start you talked about context and religiosity; how does that fit with, for example, contraception and abortion in Catholic or Islamic schools?
Dr King-Hill: Yes, there is a complexity to it, I am not saying this is simple. Sometimes there is a real wicked problem around it. The best thing is communication; involving our stakeholders—the schools, parents, carers, and young people—talking to them and really negotiating the context into which we are situated in the moment. Transparency really is key with this, but also being realistic.
Q67 Mark Jenkinson: Does transparency mean schools being transparent with materials as well?
Dr King-Hill: Yes, as an academic we are all about transparency. I completely see why schools would want to invite people in to look at resources; you need that pedagogical lens on it, rather than looking at something that you pick up and read without the context being given.
Q68 Mark Jenkinson: Can I maybe push on children with additional needs?
Dr King-Hill: Before we even begin this discussion, we have to acknowledge and fully accept that every child and young person has a right to have a happy and healthy relationship throughout their lives. Young people with additional needs have the same right to good relationship, sex, and health education as everybody else. Yes, there is a complexity to this, but there is a complexity to special educational needs; you could have someone with very, very profound needs and somebody who does not have such profound needs. Again, this is where age parameters would be very dangerous. It is vitally important to use context and build on what they already know to work with them and think about how they can have really happy, valuable lives where they go on to flourish. This should not be compartmentalised; we need to bring in special educational needs experts and teachers and be steered by them; take their advice and see where they are positioned with it. We need the different perspectives from lots of different professional positions and careers and experience, but it has to be robust, evidence-based, valid, and reliable.
Q69 Carolyn Harris: Dr King-Hill, you talked about transparency, but surely that is what the parents are asking for: transparency in what their children are actually being taught.
Dr King-Hill: Yes, and I do not think there is anything wrong with that. We have to get key stakeholders on board. Parents are notoriously difficult to engage, but getting a steering group of parents, of young people, of teachers and school leadership working together is one of the key aspects of it.
Q70 Carolyn Harris: You can understand that as a parent you would want to protect your child from the inappropriate.
Dr King-Hill: Yes, but how do you define what inappropriate means?
Q71 Carolyn Harris: I am not saying that it is inappropriate—just that you can understand.
Dr King-Hill: Yes, I can completely understand, and this comes from years and years of convergence of lots of different factors, including why people are so embarrassed, worried, and concerned when somebody brings up sex, especially sex and young people; the two are mutually exclusive within today’s culture. This is not a blame game; this is not saying that parents who think this is bad are bad. They are in this position because this is where they have been led societally, and it needs unpacking and unpicking with them.
Q72 Chair: Can I just ask you, before I bring Mark back in, do you share the view that the content and materials et cetera should be shared with parents?
Dr King-Hill: Yes, I cannot see anything wrong with that, as long as it is contextualised correctly within how it is taught with the experts in the classroom in a pedagogical way. It is very difficult to pick up and read a lesson plan designed to teach somebody about oral sex, especially if you work as an accountant and do not generally talk about sex. If you go into school, have a meeting with the people that are teaching, and they say, “This is why; here is the social context. This is why we are doing this. Here are our aims and objectives. These are the benefits to the children and young people learning about this, to keep themselves safe.”
Q73 Chair: I think one of the previous panellists made reference to educating parents. Do you think that needs to happen to some degree?
Dr King-Hill: Yes. Again, there is nothing wrong with education; working with parents and carers is from one point of learning to the next. I cannot see any huge issues with getting parents on board, educating them and demonstrating to them through very valid, robust evidence—I cannot emphasise that enough, that evidence has to be robust and reliable—and giving them the context that we all want to keep children safe. It is a really big issue in terms of safeguarding of how we work with children that might be abused. I was the lead for one half of the national sibling sexual abuse project that was Government funded through the Home Office, and we saw that sibling sexual abuse is one of the most common familial types of abuse. However, because it is situated within a dysfunctional family unit a lot of the time, young people tend not to disclose until they are a lot older. If we were giving really robust, clear, transparent information to children and young people, then they can recognise when harm is being done to them and speak up sooner. There is a huge safeguarding issue here if we are going to start rolling back.
Jonathan Baggaley: Just to add to that, high quality PSHE has always been a partnership between schools and parents; the question of transparency is absolutely critical. Of course schools should be helping parents to understand the resources that are being used and making those available. As Dr King-Hill said, we have always recommended bringing parents in, not to make it inconvenient, but to enable that conversation. It is one thing to have the content of the lessons, but it is also about how this is being taught. It is about education and what that actually looks like in the classroom. How are discussions being managed; what are your policies around the ways you will handle questions? Ensuring that parents feel really confident in that.
We also recognise, of course, that it is not always convenient for parents to come in; we provide parents copies of our materials to be shared and see no issue with that. There is a conversation that we are not having, beyond simply providing parents with a huge number of lesson plans; how are we supporting them to engage in their child's RSHE curriculum? How are we supporting that relationship between schools and parents? This is an opportunity for schools and parents to support children in a structured, developmental and progressive way so that they can have those conversations and schools can say, “Next term, we are going to be talking about consent, here are some materials about it.” We know that when parents are given a really clear sense—not only of the materials being used, but the rationale for it and how these conversations are safely managed in the classroom—that almost unfailingly, they are absolutely supportive of what schools are doing. That relationship is critical, but it goes far beyond simply making lesson plans available.
Q74 Mark Jenkinson: Lucy, I want to take you back to the original question: what do parents and young people want and need from RSE?
Lucy Emmerson: There are different dimensions to that, one of which is the content or the topics, and the RSHE guidance maps out quite a comprehensive range of topics which are broadly supported by parents, children, and young people. These are things like knowing about privacy, boundaries, appropriate and inappropriate behaviour, and body changes: the classic puberty education which is something that obviously impacts on everybody. Also about families, respect for diversity, healthy and unhealthy relationships—and an LGBT inclusive approach to that—power imbalances and more nuanced work around consent.
We independently commissioned a survey of 1,000 young people, which told us that they are learning and understanding sexual consent, but the more nuanced aspects like power imbalances and relationships are not being touched on as much; pornography is one of the most neglected topics. This brings me on to the gap in teacher training, which is something I will perhaps be able to talk about later.
The content is broad and comprehensive and there is guidance, but there is a gap between what is mapped out, what parents, children and young people might be expecting to get, and what is actually happening. Our survey showed a lot of variability on topics such as healthy relationships that we might assume are happening in all secondary schools across the country, are unfortunately not being covered in around 50% of cases: 16- and 17-year-olds were reporting that was not covered or was not covered adequately by the time they left secondary school. We have to be mindful of the fact that we are not yet covering what is listed.
Aside from the content, how RSE is taught is absolutely fundamental. Young people are saying that they want more open discussions, with proper lesson time; these topics are perhaps being squeezed into tutor time, or entirely neglected from their education. They want factual information, but they also want to explore attitudes and values to develop skills around communication; they want to address things like cultural and faith perspectives. It takes time and they want competent teachers who have had the right training; they want to see a timetable where there is space to do this work. We find that when we talk to parents they are supportive of the content, but sometimes confused about aspects of it; they do want to have some of those misunderstandings unpacked. We have heard from primary schools where parents came in asking about the acronym LGBT; once it was explained what it stood for and how it would be approached in the classroom, the parents were fine. We do take a lot for granted about people’s understanding of the content and delivery, because a lot of parents have not had the benefit of a good sex education. These pedagogical aspects about what an open discussion looks like need to be explained, but also both parents and children deserve trained, competent teachers to be able to provide this content.
Q75 Mark Jenkinson: Are children with additional needs getting what they need?
Lucy Emmerson: I would just like to stress that children with additional needs are more likely to have been sexually and physically abused, compared to the wider population. They are also less likely to receive relationships and sex education, so we really need to prioritise meeting their needs. The Sex Education Forum provides training for special schools and teachers; when we train, they are very grateful because they often say it is the first training they have had as there is not much specialist training available.
The spectrum of additional needs is so wide that every individual learner needs to be understood and catered for. We have to support schools in understanding the resources and the language to choose because any ambiguity around sex in this context is very, very risky. As a society, we rely on a lot of ambiguity for talking about sex and relationships. There is certainly a long way to go, but I would also say that special schools tend to be very proactive about their provision of RSHE. They can see how important it is in the daily life of the school. They have to address inappropriate sexual behaviour very, very regularly, dealing with things like toileting and learning boundaries such as closing the toilet door. These are things we may take for granted, but actually need to be taught, taught early and be repeated and repeated; the timeliness and the repetition is very important. We can learn a lot by looking at how special schools are handling this, and we need to give it even more priority than it has had in the past.
Q76 Mark Jenkinson: Does the current RSE curriculum do enough to tackle misogyny and violence against women and girls? You mentioned pornography in the last answer.
Lucy Emmerson: The potential is there by following the guidance to address violence against women and girls. However, from what we have heard by surveying large numbers of young people, there is a cluster of issues in secondary RSHE that seem to be repeatedly neglected. We are finding that things like learning about the attitudes of boys and men towards women and girls are often not tackled, along with power imbalances in relationships. This comes back to the fact that this is not something you can just reel off some facts about, it relies on the confidence of the teacher to open up discussion to a diverse group and to manage some of those complexities. The teacher needs to have boundaries in place and to progress those conversations and not to put a video on and think that is going to do the job, which unfortunately is what young people are complaining their lessons sometimes are. Teachers are not treating them with the maturity to participate in those discussions, to reflect on their views and know that they may change their minds.
The Government strategy on violence against women and girls is absolutely clear: inequitable gender beliefs and permissive attitudes about violence against women are important risk factors for male perpetrators. That is in the Government strategy as is putting education at the forefront to prevent violence against women and girls. It is in the Istanbul convention—which we signed— that there is a right for children to have education about gender equality, sexuality, and healthy relationships. Our statutory guidance gives us that opportunity; the Sex Education Forum wants to see the Government really monitoring their own provision on this, and making sure that right is fulfilled for all children and young people in future.
Q77 Mark Jenkinson: Could I just open up that last question on the curriculum to you as well, Jonathan?
Jonathan Baggaley: Absolutely. In relation to how it should be tackling issues of misogyny, of violence against women and girls, I think Lucy is absolutely right: the structure is there in the guidance, but there is a huge amount more to be done, particularly on tackling specific issues like the dangers of online pornography, influencers, and toxic influences. We produced a report a few years ago called Pornography and Human Futures, really unpacking some of the issues that impact young people, but also exploring a far wider set of questions about why this might be the case and what we could do to tackle that. We have done a lot of work on these issues over the years, but there is a need for further resources on this as well as a need to recognise that this is not just something that we tackle in secondary schools.
In PSHE, like in any subject, you put the building blocks in place in primary school; you do not start teaching maths with compound interest, you start with basic numeracy. If we are thinking about nude image sharing in secondary school, in primary school you would be talking about personal boundaries and understanding that our behaviour can affect other people; that if you see something that upsets you, you seek help. You are setting those building blocks in place. The guidance sets out the broad parameters of how we should be doing this and, as Lucy has pointed to, we need to listen to children and young people about their experiences of the curriculum and what they are experiencing in the real world.
By way of example, we supported a piece of research which was one of the largest quantitative studies into nude image sharing amongst young people, with over 5,000 responses. One of the things that came out really starkly was the gendered nature of the experiences of both girls and boys, but also the expectations. By understanding the social norms around image sharing, we were able to develop lesson plans that really responded to that gender dynamic. We need to be engaging with the subject matter at this level in terms of teaching power dynamics and ensuring that this is a programme that recognises that while these issues pose huge risk for women and girls, they are also huge restrictions for boys and young men. The framework is there, but there is more to be done. It comes back to support for teacher training and for schools to feel confident in delivering this material.
Q78 Mark Jenkinson: Sorry, if you will indulge me, Chair, I would like to ask Jonathan this: you mentioned influencers; how much of a problem are people like Andrew Tate?
Jonathan Baggaley: If I can answer in terms of how we should be addressing that in schools, clearly many, many young people are aware—
Mark Jenkinson: It is a widespread issue.
Jonathan Baggaley: Unquestionably; this is clear both from children and young people's reporting, from media and probably, if we had the data, from TikTok. In terms of how we address this, again, like all things in PSHE, this has to be put in the broad context of understanding the media environment that they are operating in. Creating that understanding, starting from a really early age, that people can lie online and can present themselves online as thinking about values. One of the critical things here is that we have the presentation of not only misogynistic values but get-rich-quick schemes. We certainly do need to address the issues of toxic influences, but also financial education, careers and aspirations. It has to be in a planned developmental and sequenced curriculum that is drawing on all of these different aspects.
I think one of the previous panellists talked about the role of algorithms and data; we need young people to understand those parts of how content is served to them. Why is it that this person seems so popular; how are they gaming the algorithm; in what ways is the content that they are designing trying to appear authentic in that space? It is complicated, but imminently doable. The guidance sets out broad terms of what children should be taught. Yes, it is a prevalent problem, but one that can be tackled through education, which can only ever be part of these solutions.
Q79 Carolyn Harris: How would you define what is not suitable or appropriate for RSE?
Jonathan Baggaley: Again, it comes back to this question of: what are the aims of RSE? We are looking to ensure that young people have an understanding of healthy, safe relationships, of sex, the basics of contraception and of STIs but fundamentally, ensuring that they have an understanding of sexual ethics and values, so this is about teaching consent, expectations, and power dynamics. There would be a question about RSE which was not coming from a perspective of trying to have a set ethical base for what it was thinking about.
I would broaden the question about what I would see as problematic to make this more about a pedagogical question, because actually the materials that we see as being potentially problematic in RSHE more broadly are those which are not adhering to best practise principles of how you tackle these sensitive issues with children and young people. By way of example, if we are teaching about self-harm, for instance, which can be done safely and effectively, there are ways to do that which could be damaging, in which you might instruct or even inspire practices of self-harm; this is also true in the context of eating disorders yet there are ways to do this incredibly safely and effectively. It comes back to, if teachers are not trained in best practise pedagogy to have these conversations safely, they are not going to be able to choose materials which meet those principles as well.
Q80 Carolyn Harris: Do you think it is appropriate to teach children about pornography, sexually transmitted diseases, and different types of sexual activity? If so, from what age is it appropriate to do that?
Jonathan Baggaley: Of course it is appropriate to teach young people about the dangers of online pornography. To come back to this question of age, we need to be putting the building blocks in place. If we are talking about pornography at key stage one, we need to be teaching young people about the rules and restrictions that keep them safe, for example, that sometimes people may behave differently online. That not everything you see online is true. We need to set those building blocks so that when we have to start talking about things that they may be exposed to, we have that framework in place.
When should we do this? The critical question, as has been mentioned before, is about developmental appropriateness. There is, of course, a question about age; when do we think young people might encounter these issues? If we think about developmental appropriateness, is this an issue that children might have questions about? Are these questions that deserve answers right now, or is it an issue that adults might reasonably think that children need answers to at this point? To establish that on any issue, we would need prevalence data about the extent to which young people are being exposed but we also need to know that local data at a school level. PSHE is unlike French; you do not know what young people have learned about the topic before they come into a classroom. We need to establish a sense of where young people are at, and we have loads of ways to do that through baseline assessments.
Q81 Carolyn Harris: What about the content that campaigners are concerned is inappropriate to be seen by children? Are you aware of this content?
Jonathan Baggaley: There is a huge range of materials to teach PSHE from a wide range of trusted sources. Within that, problematic materials do surely exist. We have members in over 8,500 schools, we work closely with the school leaders, unions, ASCL NHT who represent the vast majority of schools, and we do not recognise a widespread landscape of poor practice.
Q82 Carolyn Harris: Do the negative cases get far more publicity than the good practice that goes on?
Jonathan Baggaley: I think that is the case, but if we want to tackle problematic materials, the place to do it is through training teachers. We have a subject which has only been statutory for three years, and because of its lack of statutory status it was not prioritised and teachers were not given the training that they needed or the time. We are in a place now where the statutory guidance has made a real difference to schools. We need to take advantage of that opportunity to give teachers the training so that if there are problematic materials—again, I would say this is not simply in the case of RSE, I would want to look at that from best practice pedagogy across the board—they will not get into the classroom because the teachers will know how to choose them.
Q83 Carolyn Harris: Thank you, Jonathan. Lucy, same question: what do you believe is not appropriate to teach in schools?
Lucy Emmerson: There is a process to designing really high-quality education, and that needs to be owned by schools. That is our system, that we have schools and we trust teachers; we should trust teachers to design the curriculum. With RSHE being relatively new, there have not been specialist teachers in the numbers that we need. There has not always been space on the timetable or the planning time to do that, or the leadership support. With those things in place, a teacher can lead the subject; they can go through steps thinking about what the learning objectives are going to be. What is the intention of this learning; what is the goal with this? Planning a curriculum across all the years so you can see a nicely graduated developmental programme with a logical sequence to it that also considers respected tools like UNESCO and child development frameworks, such as from the NSPCC.
We are looking at observations about how children grow up, at the realities of their lives. We are looking at what those ages and stages look like in the local community and asking what the important issues are for parents locally. Are there important faith and cultural perspectives that we need to reflect in this curriculum, in this school? What does that look like and what are the live issues; is it influencers this week? The curriculum also needs to be responsive when things crop up. At this point, the teacher can say, “I have designed my learning objectives, what other resources could enhance this learning, and do I need to adapt them?” Maybe that teacher is fine without getting in those additional external resources; perhaps they can bring in some things to do with puberty, some menstrual products to look at and discuss rather than using an external resource. It is about a process and us believing that it is worth investing in those teachers’ time and training to underpin that we have to go through those sequences before we can say this isolation is appropriate.
Q84 Carolyn Harris: Are you comfortable with the resources that are available to teachers to teach RSE? Are you concerned about any of these resources or are you with Jonathan and think there is far more good than bad?
Lucy Emmerson: I believe that the teachers are the main resource. If they are properly equipped to design lessons, they can select from a range of resources and make appropriate decisions about whether that is right in that class at that age or not, and not depend on external resources as the solution to good relationships and sex education. The evidence says that is not the solution. Young people have not been asking for different resources; they have been asking for teachers to hold these live conversations with them. I am always interested in what a resource looks like. We want to make sure that resources are the best quality they can be and relate to the evidence base. Occasionally, we may come across something that does not look quite right. As a sector, we need to look at that and interrogate it, but in the vast majority of cases, schools are able to make a selection from the resources available. I am sorry to say that there has not been the investment in teacher training to really say to parents or children and young people, “You are going to get a good, well-trained, competent teacher.” We are handing this complex task to teachers who do not have the time to develop their own PowerPoints, discussions, or scenarios to use with their students.
Q85 Carolyn Harris: The teachers lack the skills?
Lucy Emmerson: Some teachers have the skills because they have educated themselves; over the years, they have found training to go on. There has not been investment in a generation of teachers, but now we have this opportunity. We are a few years into the statutory guidance and implementation, so we have an opportunity to do that. Schools need to be trusted with budget, with resource, to know where the gaps are for them and to build that up. They also need for us to treat it with status, like other subjects. It will take time, but there is a roadmap.
Q86 Carolyn Harris: What is the barrier to that at the moment?
Lucy Emmerson: A mixture of things: funding, for sure, and leadership in schools, being able to say that we have to carve out the time for this. It would be helpful to have a communication from the Government to say that the starting point to get this right is investing in your staff cohort and having some stability to that cohort so that there are not different people teaching RSE every year. Also, to see Ofsted commenting when we see really good practise in that trained cohort, where there is stability in the teaching and you have teachers building their career pathway. A professionalisation of the teaching of RSE, which has been lacking to date because we do not see a funnel of people coming through initial teacher training as experts in this subject. We have to look at the whole supply chain for this if we want a generation that will get that quality provision.
Jonathan Baggaley: Can I just add one small point to that? We have been doing quite a lot of work in ITE to support initial teachers coming through, and some higher education providers we have spoken to say that up to 40% of their young students actually want to specialise in PSHE. The desire is there. We have a generation who are acutely aware of issues around mental health and relationships and they want to go into schools and specialise, but there are real challenges to prioritise the continuing professional development of teachers due to the time in the ITE curriculum and the funding issues schools face across the board.
Q87 Chair: Thank you. There are a few different aspects of RSHE that were mentioned there, sex education, pornography, and relationships more generally, but one thing that was not mentioned was around diversity. How important do you think it is that we teach our young people about the diversity of our communities?
Dr King-Hill: For me, from an academic point of view, based on all the research evidence that is out there, research that I have done myself, from past experience in working with very diverse groups such as teenage parents, youth offenders, very young people, and teenagers, it is vital that we teach them about diversity. It is vital that we teach them about gender, LGBTQ+ issues and acceptance. It is vital we tell them and teach them and work with them to understand, as Jonathan alluded to earlier, that this is about human flourishing. This is about acceptance and realising we are more the same than we are different in terms of who we are as human beings.
Some of the work that I have done in terms of masculinity in boys, and a current research project that builds off the back of another one I did, links to the points about Andrew Tate, the incel culture and the manosphere. It shows us that educating and working with young people in terms of gender is crucial. It would be incredibly dangerous to take it out of the curriculum.
Chair: Thank you. Jonathan, did you want to come in?
Jonathan Baggaley: This is about children and young people's real lives, and they are living in our communities. One point is around ensuring everyone is represented in the curriculum, that it feels relevant and engaging because they see people like them, wherever they are from, whatever religious or cultural background, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. That is a big part of what you are teaching, whether it is drugs and alcohol education or careers education, ensuring that our diverse communities are represented throughout, whether through the scenarios that you are using or the types of issues that you are addressing. It is absolutely fundamental. Specific teaching from a very early age to ensure that we are teaching young people about respect for all, irrespective of difference and the celebration of that is vital. It cannot just be seen as a series or a couple of lessons. This is something that has to be threaded through the whole curriculum.
Q88 Kim Johnson: Good afternoon, panel. The first panel talked about how schools procured RSE services, but they painted a picture that it was widely delivered nationally. I wanted to know, from your point of view, whether that was something you were familiar with?
Lucy Emmerson: We are not familiar with extreme problems with RSE across the country. The proportionality we are responding to at the moment in discussions about this review do not seem right, they do not seem reflective. Something that we feel is essential in order to get this RSHE review right is to use evidence correctly, to take samples, to hear from teachers, parents, and young people, not to just react to sensationalised examples that are very often taken out of context and then become misleading.
While not wanting to comment on particular cases, because often we cannot see the context around them, let us go back to proper research, samples of young people, hearing young people's voices about their real experiences in the classroom, the needs and experiences of teachers, and a wide range of parents. When we do, we will hear the wide-ranging support we have for RSE as well.
Q89 Kim Johnson: Clearly, some schools do procure services externally to deliver RSE, so, in your opinion, what should the Government do to ensure that they are delivering it appropriately, and how should they be regulated?
Lucy Emmerson: Something we have as a free tool at the Sex Education Forum is a checklist of considerations for a school working with an external provider. There are things on there about safeguarding and confidentiality policies, about looking at expectations and roles, about making sure the external provider is adding value to a curriculum designed and managed by the school, knowing that you should do practical things like have a teacher in the classroom with the external provider, and thinking about what the school is going to learn and take away from that relationship with an external provider that might sustain their own practice for the long term. Is there a match in values? What is their evidence base? How is the external provider funded?
Perhaps the Government could provide a checklist like that in the updated RSHE guidance and then refer schools to it, so they can take that decision-making process on board? They will need to go through that every time they are working with an external provider rather than just feeling that the external provider is a solution to the problem that they do not have the competence in-house to deliver the lessons. It is a checklist rather than a register. A register would bring about a different set of complexities. I can certainly signpost you to our example of a checklist.
Q90 Kim Johnson: Thanks, Lucy. In your opinion, the problem with the content used by external providers that was discussed in the first panel is not as widespread as that panel thinks it is.
Lucy Emmerson: Very rarely is it problematic. Schools tell us they are generally very happy with their relationship with external providers. They value it and find there is transparency in the relationship. The external provider often helps when they are liaising with parents who are unsure about how something is being used. Sometimes the external provider holds meetings with parents directly. It is part of a relationship between all those stakeholders, and that is how it should be if there is an external provider involved.
Jonathan Baggaley: I absolutely agree with Lucy about the importance of an external provider complimenting a curriculum if they are used, not replacing it. As Lucy was saying, schools need to ensure they are using a checklist to make sure that the external providers are going to provide a robust educational experience for young people.
Just to give an example, sometimes those external providers are police officers. We have done a lot of work with policing on that. When we think about what some of the problems are, it is not simply about content, it is also about how things are presented. We have done a lot of work to try to ensure that when police officers are coming in, they are bringing their experience and expertise that is relevant and can be brought to a topic, rather than simply coming in to address a topic that ought to be delivered by the teacher. That has to be done in a way that is book-ended with lessons, so a teacher is preparing for that visit—whoever it is—the visitor comes in and then there is a follow-up visit to ensure any issues that have come up can be addressed by the teacher, but also, critically, that the teacher can assess whether any learning has happened.
That is one of the reasons why it is really important teachers are in the lessons and they are integrating it into a curriculum because this is about education. If you just have a series of external providers coming in, how do you know that anything is actually being learnt? That is not to say that they cannot be a useful augmentation to a high-quality PSHE curriculum.
Dr King-Hill: Just to add onto my professional colleagues' perspectives, from an academic point of view, in terms of teachers and in schools, it is not the most comfortable topic for some people to talk about. That is where we are situated within the current social context and the frameworks we live within. To have external providers come in that are robust, evidence-based, work really well with the children and young people and involve the children and young people can be a supportive infrastructure for teachers and for schools.
Young people have told me and other research projects, such as the recent NSPCC project, have shown time and time again that it is awful if somebody is uncomfortable teaching RSE and nobody gets any benefit from it. There have to be structures in place to give permission for teachers to speak to their school leadership team if it is something they feel uncomfortable about, and to work really well with external providers to provide that holistic approach to education.
Q91 Kim Johnson: Both panels have talked about the importance of parents in RSE, but we know that once children go to secondary school it is almost like a closed-door process for parents, and they do not have the same level of engagement as they would ordinarily have in primary school. What is your opinion about the sharing of RSE materials with parents?
Jonathan Baggaley: As I said before, transparency with parents is absolutely critical. Of course parents should be able to see the materials that are being used. There is obviously complexity, and we provide parental versions of our materials that can be shared with parents, but more fundamentally, for many parents, there is a question that goes beyond content. How helpful is it for them to get 40 lesson plans on a Monday morning to go through alone versus what conversation are we having about the support they really need to engage in the curriculum, and how can we work together to ensure that what we are doing is helping our children and young people thrive? I know a large number of secondary schools who are really trying to do a huge amount to engage parents in topics. Prior to the PSHE Association, I was at the National Crime Agency leading education work on child exploitation online and loads of schools were trying to get parents through the door on issues of online safety and often struggling.
This is actually an opportunity for engaging parents in fundamental issues of their lives. Whilst parents are the prime educators of their children, they are crying out for support on many of these issues, from online pornography to toxic misogyny, or aspects of careers in this fast-changing world.
Q92 Kim Johnson: Do you think there is enough guidance to help that process between teachers and parents?
Jonathan Baggaley: There is existing guidance, absolutely. There is guidance from the DfE and the NAHT on consultation between parents and primary schools. There are statements in the statutory guidance already. I think there is almost certainly the need for more support. Bearing in mind this came into force over the pandemic, which caused some challenges in parental consultation, anything to remind schools of the importance of how to consult is vital. However, there are lots of different ways that schools are already engaging with parents and those mechanisms should also be used.
Kim Johnson: Thanks, Jonathan. Curve ball question: can any of you identify the 72 genders identified in the Cates report? Email us.
Q93 Chair: Moving onto the RSHE review, Lucy, you mentioned a couple of recommendations or things that would be helpful. Can you tell me how you think the review should be conducted, please?
Lucy Emmerson: So far, we have not heard from young people. We have to find a robust, accountable process to hear from the beneficiaries of RSHE. I would like to hear from the Government what that looks like. That has not happened yet.
Then there are teachers as well; I understand the Department for Education has done some evaluation and research with teachers but that needs to come to the fore in the review process. Ofsted is in the process of doing a report on personal development, a subject report, the findings from which will draw on evidence from schools. They need to be drawn into the process.
Next, there are parents' support needs and parents' responses to RSHE. A broad selection of parents’ responses needs to be heard in this process but let us not forget that the 2019 guidance was supported by 538 MPs and had broad cross-party support, so we are building on something that has got established support. The research basis has not changed, but we need to look whether it is being implemented, and what next? What has changed? Where are the gaps?
Let us build on what we have. The foundations are there; make sure the right stakeholders are around the table, that we are using proper evidence, that there is scrutiny around the implementation, that we are not just following misleading reports, and the role of the voluntary sector is acknowledged and appreciated. The voluntary sector has often stepped in when there have been gaps in implementation, and that has often been to cover up on training gaps. If training is not part of the question asked by this RSHE review, we are really facing the wrong way. We need to face inwards and look at why teachers do not feel equipped and empowered at the moment.
Chair: Can I ask you the same question, Jonathan?
Jonathan Baggaley: Lucy has put it brilliantly. I would absolutely echo her point about the importance of involving children and young people's voices and the importance of parents, but fundamentally, this is about building on guidance which is only three years old. It was launched just before the pandemic so schools have had a lot to deal with in terms of implementation. It is critical that we look at what the challenges and barriers are to implementing guidance, which, whilst not perfect, sets out a very good framework for what we would want to see in terms of children being taught in education, which will help them thrive.
Just to add one point to Lucy’s, when we were making the case for statutory PSHE, I saw it as a baseline. Of course, we should have a subject in schools which is helping young people understand how to stay healthy, to be happy and to thrive, but what does that mean in terms of the rest of the system around children and young people and schools? How are we ensuring a linkup between, for example, signposting and schools? How are we ensuring a link between what is being signposted in our local school and local services? How are we ensuring a link between mental health support teams and what is being taught in RSHE? We hear from DSLs, and the evidence on it is very clear, that young people will often end up reporting concerns that have been raised in PSHE lessons. How are we ensuring the link between the PSHE lead and the DSL, which are two very different roles? It is critical that there is an overlap.
I do not believe there is a current link between the RSE guidance and the DfE’s own whole school guidance on promoting mental health. The guidance needs to be built on and teachers need to be given training. We do not want whole scale, “rip it up and start again.” We want to, at the most, augment it; look at where challenges for implementation are, but then consider, what does this look like in relation to all the other systems in children and young people's lives?
As the Chief Medical Officer said, “PSHE is the bridge between public health and the curriculum,” and it is what enables us to use the best of public health to make manifest messages that young people should receive in school, so I would like to see that for the future.
Dr King-Hill: Obviously, I completely agree with Lucy and Jonathan in how the review should be conducted. It has been something that has been playing on my mind. It is really important for the Committee to consider how this is carried out and to make sure, in addition to what Jonathan and Lucy said—and they have both alluded to it—that there is robust evidence. It can come from a range of different lenses to make sure that it negates any ideological and subjective position, so you might want social scientists, educationalists, those who work in social policy and health, criminologists, psychologists, sociologists, medics, clinical practitioners, mathematicians. Let us get all of these different lenses on it and, of course, young people to ensure that any ideological position is negated. This is what is going to be the best for children and young people.
Q94 Chair: What steps do you think the Government would need to take to convince people that this is impartial and for them to accept the outcomes?
Dr King-Hill: A range of stakeholders should be involved within the review: academics, professional services, people who work in CSA, sibling sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation with children and young people's voices at the forefront, plus parents and carers, to give all of these different lenses and to make it robust. It would also have to have a very firm robust methodology, which I have not seen in recent reports.
Q95 Chair: Young people's voices are often forgotten. Did you have anything to add, Jonathan or Lucy?
Lucy Emmerson: It would be helpful if the Government confidently signposted the conclusive evidence that we have about the impacts of RSE on behaviour change, which is not disputed and underpinned the 2019 guidance. There has to be confidence in that evidence base that has already been scrutinised by Parliament, otherwise we are questioning the wrong things.
Q96 Chair: Thank you. I asked the previous panel this, and I will ask you the same question. Is there a risk that, in reviewing the teaching of RSE, and gender issues in particular, we repeat the failings of section 28?
Dr King-Hill: For me, when I read the Cates dossier, there were some really firm echoes of section 28. Personally, as a 43-year-old reading through it, you could see the thread. Looking at it in an academic sense, I think we have got to be very careful of how the review is conducted.
If the Committee can take anything from this, it is how the review is conducted from all those different robust lenses with robust evidence. It has to be robust, valid, trustworthy and reliable.
Jonathan Baggaley: This is such a critical subject for children and young people's lives and for society in general and we risk undermining teacher’s confidence and sense of safety in delivering this subject. The more teachers are challenged by parents and the less they are supported by Government on areas where they are being left without the right levels of training resulting in a lack of confidence, it risks having that chilling effect on schools.
It is critical that the review is hugely supportive of the consensus around the subject, of the progress that has been made so far, looks at the evidence around how teachers are implementing and how that is going, and builds on the steps we have taken so far and does not take any steps backwards.
Chair: Yes. If we are not careful there is a risk that it could be too prescriptive moving forward and not give the freedom that teachers need in carrying out their jobs.
Q97 Carolyn Harris: One last question from me. There is a tightrope here, is there not? “This has been going for three years and it is going to be reviewed.” The campaigners would say that it is not working at all. We need to protect children. The Government have a responsibility and parents, too, have the right to have a say. What would you be doing now to change this environment, to get everybody on board, so that everybody is singing from the same hymn sheet?
Jonathan Baggaley: It is about the environment of the debate. How do we have a constructive debate if we are shouting at each other across the halls? To do that, again, as Dr King-Hill and Lucy said, we have rafts of evidence from many different disciplines of the impact that high quality RSHE can have on relationships and understanding, on safeguarding, on physical and mental health, and on academic attainment, starting from that point but also engaging parents in a conversation.
I am not sure what that looks like in terms of a national conversation, but we need to ensure we are hearing from a diversity of parents. 92% of parents supported statutory PSHE at the time we were making the case for it, so where are they, and how are their voices being heard?
It is totally understandable that parents will have concerns about a subject which is teaching real-life situations for children and young people. I want to know what my child’s school is teaching in PSHE. I imagine I am probably quite annoying about it, which is totally understandable. We have to start from the perspective that everyone has a right to have their voice heard and to have constructive dialogue, but that dialogue has to be constructive. It has to start from a perspective that looks at what is actually happening in schools and looks at that in the broadest of contexts as well.
If we are looking at teacher training, we need to look at that in the context of the initial teacher education as a whole. There are reasons why it is very hard to incorporate enough within ITE. There are reasons why schools are not able to access continuing professional development, but we need to do that in a way that is not undermining all the good practice and the experience and expertise that exists in the sector.
We have been teaching drugs and alcohol education in schools since the ’80s. There is a wealth of experience in one of the foundational aspects of the subject. We are not starting from nothing here, and I believe there is a significant consensus. We need to ensure that we can have those constructive conversations.
As you saw, there is a huge amount of commonality and aims and objectives between the three of us here and the previous panel. Many of us are talking about many of the same issues. There are a lot of shared goals here, we just need to be able to have a constructive discussion.
Chair: That is a nice positive note to end our evidence session. Can I thank you all for coming along today? It is extremely helpful.