Relationships, Sex and Health Education: Statutory Guidance

Statement

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows:

“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to make a Statement to the House setting out the Government’s proposals for updating the 2019 statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education, which my department has published today for consultation. I thank my department for its hard work in getting us to this point.

This Government have a plan to deliver a brighter future for Britain, one where families are supported and given the peace of mind that their children are safe and being equipped with the skills they need to succeed. Good relationships, sex and health education—RSHE—plays a key role in this. However, following disturbing reports from parents of pupils being taught inappropriate content in schools, and requests from schools which wanted more clarity on when to teach certain topics, the Prime Minister and I decided to bring forward the review of RSHE. We have listened to colleagues across government and the House, have gathered evidence from stakeholders and considered advice from an independent panel of experts who generously gave their time, experience and knowledge to support the review last year. I put on record my personal thanks to each individual panel member.

We need to make sure that the content of lessons is factual and appropriate and that children have the capacity to fully understand everything that they are being taught. We need to make sure that our children are prepared for the world in which they live, but not in a way that takes away the innocence of childhood. In short, we need to let our children be children. It is a fine line to tread and schools need clarity on how to approach it.

Overall, this guidance is underpinned by three core values: one, parents have a right to know what their children are being taught; two, teachers are there to teach children facts and not to push the agendas of campaign groups; three, schools should not teach about the contested issue of gender identity, including that gender is a spectrum.

There are five major policy changes that I would like to set out. The first is the introduction of age limits for teaching sensitive subjects. The purpose of the new age limits is to make sure that children are not taught things before they are ready to understand them. Informed by the advice of the independent panel and others, the guidance places specific age limits on the teaching of certain subjects.

In primary schools, children learn about the importance of boundaries and privacy and that they have rights over their own bodies, but no 10 year-old should be taught the details of intimate sexual acts, sexual harassment and sexual violence. In primary schools, sex education is not a requirement and should be introduced only from year 5 onwards. The content should align with the national curriculum’s science teachings on conception and birth, ensuring that it is rooted in fact. It should absolutely not be preparing primary-age children for sexual activity.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement made this morning by the Secretary of State for Education. There is much in it that is welcome. Teachers and school leaders have long pushed for clearer guidance on RSHE to be published, particularly in relation to gender identity. A child’s education should and must equip them for the world in which they live. It should stand them in good stead for their life in the adult world, including healthy relationships. It is particularly welcome that there will be additional content on suicide prevention and on tackling the malign influence of online misogyny and hate. As former deputy mayor for fire resilience in London, I was also pleased that wider harms including fire and knife crime will be included.

Labour agrees strongly with the principle that parents should have an explicit right to know what their children are being taught. It is also right that what children are taught is age appropriate. But, behind the phrasing and the stated aim of allowing children to be children—the Secretary of State used the phrase “we need to allow our children to be children”—lie some serious concerns that need to be addressed through the consultation process.

First, far from protecting the innocence of children, not talking about sex in schools in an age-appropriate way does not keep children as children but potentially exposes them to harm and emotional distress. It also risks reversing very hard-won progress in preventing teenage pregnancies. The NHS website states:

“Most girls start their periods when they're about 12, but they can start as early as 8, so it’s important to talk to girls from an early age to make sure they’re prepared.”

It goes on to say:

“Boys also need to learn about periods. Talk to them in the same way as girls about the practicalities, mood changes that can come with periods, and the biological reason behind periods. It will keep them informed, as well as help them to understand about periods.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement in your Lordships’ House. If it is not broken, do not fix it: we on these Benches do not welcome most of these changes, which are politicised solutions that are mainly looking for a problem. Indeed, we fear that the net result will be to put our children and young people at greater risk.

The Government are choosing to water down the safeguarding of our children on the altar of yet another pointless culture war in the run-up to the general election—legislation for leaflets, I call it. Sex education, particularly in the early years, is not about teaching young people to have sex; it is about safeguarding. It is about teaching them to know what is appropriate, what is invasive, and what is abusive; it is about informed consent. Age-appropriate education is vital for empowerment of our young children, so they can live healthy and happy lives.

Where children are questioning their gender identity, they should be supported with open and inclusive discussions centred on their health and well-being. The Government should be careful what they wish for; it is better that appropriate support be provided in schools, because the only alternative is that perhaps inappropriate information will be sought elsewhere.

Finally, what actions have the Government taken to ensure that these changes do not pose greater safeguarding risks to our children and young people?

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Earl for their remarks. I will start with the remarks of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who said, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The evidence we have heard from parents, schoolteachers and school leaders is that the lack of transparency with parents about what their children were being taught, and the teaching of contested material, in particular on gender identity, were very broken. Those are essential things that need fixing.

I turn to safeguarding, which both the noble Baroness and the noble Earl rightly raised. The noble Baroness said that school is a very important safeguarding agency and that talking about some issues gives children an opportunity to disclose and therefore to respond. The guidance is very clear on how to deal with safeguarding issues.

When we turn to the age-appropriate approach, which I think the noble Baroness agrees with, we see there is something about giving children this information in stages. They do not need all of it when they are very young. It must be phased and age-appropriate. In relation to menstruation specifically, the new guidance sets out that children should be taught about puberty, including menstruation, no earlier than year four, so that would be when children are eight or nine. That means that the majority of children will learn about puberty before it happens to them.

The noble Baroness talked about the importance of relationships education and different types of relationship. That is clearly set out in the curriculum we are consulting on, but the focus will be very much on the facts. For example, the protected characteristics will be clearly taught. Gender reassignment will be clearly taught as a factual thing that happens to adults. The noble Baroness raised the issue of school leaders. The guidance is out for consultation, so there is every opportunity for leaders and teachers to contribute to the consultation, and we would welcome that. She will also be aware that our expert panel included experts from the education system, as well as from health, in particular. I think that also addresses the question asked by the noble Earl about whether we have assessed whether we could increase the safeguarding risk. I hope the safeguarding risk does not stem from school, but I think the noble Earl means the ability to identify. Those issues were considered very carefully by the expert panel.

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s statutory guidance. How will this guidance be enforced, especially the requirement to stop teaching the contested subject of gender identity, as there are many teachers who have been captured by the very ideology that has been called out? Moreover, it has not been universally welcomed by the teaching unions. Can my noble friend also confirm when schools will need to begin to implement the new guidance?

The process in terms of timing is that the guidance is out for consultation. Then we will finalise it and, when it is finally published, schools will have a period in which to implement the new guidance. However, I think it is fair to say that the direction of travel is extremely clear and those key principles about communication and transparency with parents, teaching the facts and not contested ideologies and that content should be delivered in an age-appropriate way are very clear, and I am sure that the vast majority of schools welcome that clarity. Given that the guidance is statutory, schools must have regard to it and can deviate from it only with good reason. In terms of enforcement—on holding schools to account on this—Ofsted, as part of its personal development judgment, will consider whether schools are teaching RSHE in line with the statutory guidance.

My Lords, I welcome this Statement and the change it will bring. The provider of some teaching materials called Pop’n’Olly says he has spoken to 100,000 children and told them about gender identity. I looked at the material. It explains that Olly is able to choose whether he is male, female, non-binary or another sex. Can the Minister assure us that that sort of teaching material will no longer be in any school in any authority under this Government?

I am delighted to reassure the noble Baroness that she is right.

My Lords, in relation to the point that the noble Baroness raised about resources and materials, it is the usual policy of this Government that you outline content and then allow teachers to choose how they teach that and what resources they use—except of course for phonics, on which there is little discretion. Oak National Academy is going to be producing resources, and I note that here these are called “compliant resources”. Could my noble friend the Minister outline the timeline for it to produce those resources so that, when the regulations change, teachers know they are using resources that are appropriate for children?

I thank my noble friend for her question. She is right that Oak National Academy is collaborating with Life Lessons Education to develop new relationships and health education in primary and relationships and sexual health curriculum in secondary. That will be made available in full from autumn 2025.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a governor of Coram, and for 24 years I was the chair of the largest provider of health education to primary schools in the country. It is extremely pertinent that the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, is in his place because, when the Minister has heard the question I will pose, she may wish to spend some time with him.

The independent expert panel that assisted the department is notable for the absence of anybody who is an expert on online safety. It is as if the department is unaware that we spent a great deal of the last year on what became the Online Safety Act, looking in great detail at the protection of children. We say the purpose of the new age limits is to make sure that children are not taught things before they are ready to understand them, but does the Minister not accept that the problem is that children are seeing things that they do not understand and at the moment will not be able to discuss in school or ask their teacher about? They are also unlikely to ask their parents about it. Some 25% of children under the age of nine have smartphones, while a large proportion of under-11 year-olds are, illegally, using WhatsApp. This is the reality. This is the innocent childhood that the children of today are experiencing; it is not the childhood that we had. So I beseech the Minister to work closely with the team that has done huge work on the Online Safety Act, and with the people at Ofcom who are drawing the code together, to make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, preferably with a brain in between.

Luckily, since we are talking about officials, I can confidently say that the right and left hands know what they are doing and there is definitely more than one brain in between. In all seriousness, I would be very happy to meet with the noble Lord once he has had a chance to look at the content of the new curriculum. I hope he will be reassured by the extent to which it acknowledges the issues to which he refers around online risks to children.

There is of course nothing to stop any parent talking to their children about risks online; indeed, I think we all hope that parents would be doing that. This also does not prevent children asking questions in the classroom or more privately to a teacher. None of this prevents the asking of questions about a child’s curiosity or worries; it just ensures that it is age appropriate in the way that it is delivered at the front of the classroom—and I hope the noble Lord supports the Government’s move to ban mobile phones in schools.

On the point that the Minister has just raised about what happens if a child brings a problem to a teacher, rather than a teacher addressing the problem with the child, is she confident that it will be clear to teachers, once the guidance is up and running and embedded, that they are not prohibited from having conversations with children who have encountered, as the noble Lord, Lord Russell, has mentioned, things online that they certainly should not have encountered, but they have, and they need to talk to somebody about it? I am sorry to mention this but, going back over quarter of a century to the days of Section 28, whatever the letter of the law may have been, many people felt they were not able to have these discussions without running the risk of being on the wrong side of the law. I hope the Minister will agree that it is important that teachers are not unintentionally inhibited from having the very conversations that they need to have.

The noble Baroness makes, as ever, an important point in thinking about the reality in the classroom for teachers. I suppose I would say a few things about that. First, that is why we are so grateful to our expert panel for bringing their expertise and judgment into the shape of the new guidance. Secondly, there is absolutely discretion for teachers, so if they identify a particular problem, it is clear that they can talk to their class about it. But they need to let parents know and to share the materials that they plan to use, and it needs to be age-appropriate. In relation to whether this is a new Section 28—I think the noble Baroness was giving it as an example, rather than suggesting that is where we are going—again, it is absolutely clear that teachers must teach at the right age about protected characteristics, sexual orientation and gender reassignment but, simply, they must stick to the facts.

My Lords, while I warmly welcome this Statement, while of course I have not read everything I would like to follow up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool. During our consideration of the Victims and Prisoners Bill, we were able to hear from a young lady called Poppy Eyre. She gave her evidence, which was very moving. The problem was that she was being abused at home by her grandfather from the age of six. My worry is that, if everything is so black and white, we will have another problem. Let us turn it round: perhaps the abuse that she was receiving, which she talked about only once she was 11, could have been curtailed at an earlier stage, so I am just worried about babies and bath-water. So that I am clear, I think it is being suggested that above the age of nine there will be some sort of sex education. Will parents be consulted on that too? If a majority of parents in the primary school do not want that to happen, will it then not happen?