Michael Gove, the Conservative leadership contender and a former Education Secretary, says that primary school children should be taught that there are families with two parents of the same-sex.

Weighing in on the debate over LGBT equality, he condemned protests outside primary schools by parents opposed to their children being taught about alternative family set-ups on religious grounds.

Mr Gove said as Education Secretary he had introduced the compulsory teaching of British values in schools to ensure young people learned the “importance of tolerance and respect for people who are different to them,” the educational magazine TES reported him as saying.

“I believe that teaching children that some people have two mums and two dads is an important part of preparing them for life in modern Britain,” he said.

"While it should be for primary schools to decide how to introduce this teaching as part of the curriculum, I will be clear that teaching the topic is a government expectation.”

While the government’s new relationships and sex education policy includes LGBT content, it gives schools discretion at what age they believe it is appropriate to introduce it.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds has made clear that this would not be compulsory for primary schools.

Pajes, the Jewish Leadership Council’s schools network, has advised that primary children should be told about “different family units”, but this need not specifically refer to families with same-sex parents.