WATCH out, the Government is coming for your children. Labour has recently published an updated version of the relationship, health and sex education (RHSE) guidelines, revising the Conservative government’s draft published last year in response to the campaign by former MP Miriam Cates to tackle inappropriate content in schools.
While there is a glimmer of good news in that parents will have full transparency on sex education materials, and the right of faith schools to teach according to their ethos have been protected, the rest of the guidance should cause serious concerns to families.
As soon as they start primary school, children will be at risk from an onslaught of inappropriate teaching about sex, LGBT content, misogyny, mental health and suicide.
The main headline in the media has been the removal of the Conservatives’ proposed age limit on sex education, meaning that it will be left to schools to decide if they want to teach children under nine about sexual relationships. This comes despite the amount of evidence that this age limit is much needed, due to activist teachers and third-party PHSE organisations exposing children to sexualised content. For example, widely reported incidents have included primary school materials showing explicit sexual activities or inappropriate cartoons aimed at very young children.
The Department for Education (DfE) says: ‘On balance, we think it is important not to restrict schools from being able to use their professional judgment over when topics should be taught for the benefit and safety of pupils.’
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has responded to criticism of the removal of age limits on RHSE by doubling down on this policy, saying sometimes it might be necessary ‘to broach a topic a little bit sooner’ in school. Indeed, Phillipson is well-known for her enthusiasm for compulsory sex education, telling journalists last year that she didn’t think parents should be allowed to remove their children from RHSE lessons in school. She said: ‘I think all children should have a good level of relationship, sex and health education that should apply to all children.’
This must be music to the ears of the Sex Ed lobby, since the big players such as Brook and the Family Planning Association (which receive millions of pounds of Government funding) want no limits on what children can be taught about ‘sexual pleasure’.
In their response to the Conservative government’s consultation on the introduction of mandatory RHSE in 2014, the groups said that ‘if young people want to access porn, out of arousal or curiosity, that’s perfectly healthy and typical’, basing their argument on what some teenagers said they wanted.
This attitude of child-led education and ‘child rights’ are at the root of so many societal problems. Adults are supposed to protect children from harm, not indulge their every wish.
This view ignores the fact that as the primary educators of their children, parents are best placed to know when and how they should introduce their child to the subject of sexual relationships, and it should not be left up to teachers to decide what is age-appropriate.
The guidance acknowledges that schools should not teach children that everyone has a gender identity.However, the guidance is so vague on this subject that it leaves room for activist teachers to tell children that some people are ‘born in the wrong body’.
Whereas the previous Conservative draft guidance said clearly that ‘schools should not teach about the broader concept of gender identity’ and ‘if asked about the topic of gender identity, schools should teach the facts about biological sex’, the new guidance states that ‘pupils should be taught the facts and the law about biological sex and gender reassignment’.
This ambiguity leaves room for confusion. Teachers may hesitate to affirm clearly that biological sex cannot be changed, fearing this could be received as endorsing a particular viewpoint. This attempt to be neutral and please ‘both sides of the debate’ fails children as it allows a loophole for activist teachers to tell children that some individuals are ‘truly transgender’ and that their identity must be affirmed.
The guidance states that schools must now include lessons on ‘incel’ (involuntary celibate) culture, ‘including how a piece of content online can impact a person’s understanding of sexual ethics and behaviour, as well as increasing awareness of AI, deepfakes and how pornography links to misogyny’.
There have been a lot of headlines about the Netflix drama Adolescence, which featured the fictional storyline of a 13-year-old boy murdering a female classmate because he was an ‘incel’. Keir Starmer referred to the drama as a ‘documentary’ in the House of Commons and recommended that the film be shown to all secondary school pupils. This kind of portrayal inadvertently implies to young viewers that being sexually active at a very young age is normal or expected, therefore undermines the age of consent and promotes casual sex and risky sexual behaviour.
The DfE says that the statutory guidance ‘has a new focus on helping boys identify positive role models, and challenge myths about women and relationships that are spread online in the “manosphere” – without stigmatising boys for being boys’.
As documented in the Family Education Trust’s 2024 report on masculinity teaching in schools, Boys and the Burden of Labels, https://familyeducationtrust.org.uk/research/boys-and-the-burden-of-labels-an-examination-of-masculinity-teaching-in-schools/ materials from certain external providers have implied normal masculine instincts, such as protectiveness or competitiveness, are inherently dangerous or toxic.
Some content used in schools even warns that boys displaying some of these normal traits are on a slippery slope towards being a rapist and murderer or even committing ‘genocide’. This includes the PHSE organisation Tender which was involved in the production of Adolescence and has been approved by the Government to roll out its teaching materials into schools alongside showing the drama to children.
There is no mention of ‘toxic femininity’ or suggestion that girls can behave inappropriately. This subject opens the door to organisations wanting to introduce dangerous gender ideology by the back door.
The guidance builds on the government’s commitment to give every school child access to a mental health professional despite the fact that there is no regulation on the therapeutic industry, meaning that anyone can call themselves as ‘therapist’ regardless of training credentials. This policy risks untrained counsellors convincing children that experiencing normal human emotions are a sign of a mental health issue.
Child psychologists have warned that introducing topics such as suicide and self-harm too early or inappropriately can inadvertently create anxiety or ‘contagion effects’ among young children.
The guidance ‘strongly encourages primary schools’ to teach about healthy, loving relationships and same-sex families, which normalises such family arrangements as fully equivalent to male-female marriage. This ignores extensive social science research which consistently indicates children generally achieve better emotional, educational and social outcomes when raised by their married, biological mother and father.
Teaching young children simply that ‘some peers have two mums or two dads’ without explaining the biological reality that every child originates from a mother and a father risks presenting a confusing or incomplete understanding of family structure.
The acceptance that ‘all families are equal’ also paves the way for teaching children about surrogacy as a normal way for two men to acquire a baby and become a ‘family’. This ignores serious ethical concerns about potential harm to surrogate mothers and the emotional impact on children, as outlined by the campaign group Surrogacy Concern.
If all this wasn’t enough of an onslaught on families, shortly before the RHSE guidance was released, the government also updated the Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE) guidance, which adds ‘disinformation, misinformation and conspiracy theories’ to the list of content risks under online safety.
Labour’s simultaneous announcement about lowering the voting age to 16 illustrates further concern about schools becoming arenas for political influence, especially when combined with directives around teaching ‘disinformation’. Given that surveys show that more teenagers are likely support Labour, ministers promising more ‘democratic education in schools’ to encourage children to vote is surely just an opportunistic move to secure more young voters before the next election.
Totalitarianism is an ideology in which the state has total control over everything and everyone – starting with the children. It’s time that parents exercise their rights as the primary educators of their children. Don’t let the Government take them from you.
