The debate over how and when children will be taught about same-sex relationships will continue regardless of what happens in parliament next week, writes Simon Rocker
April 15, 2019 13:26
MPs may agree on little these days but one thing recently drew near universal consensus. An overwhelming majority last month approved the government’s new guidelines on relationships and sex education (RSE).
So far Brexit has delayed discussion of the guidelines in the Lords but they are due to come up there next week. And when they do, in the middle of Pesach and shortly after Easter, a number of conservative religious groups including the Charedi community hope the peers may think twice before passing them.
The subject has generated an increasing amount of heat of late, not least because of protests outside a Birmingham primary school where children were already being taught about families with parents of the same-sex.
According to the Department for Education’s rubric, children should be taught LGBT content at a “timely point” within a child’s schooling. What that means in practice, however, is by no means clear.
It does seem the required reference to same-sex orientation will be pretty minimal. Faith schools will not have to teach that same-sex relationships are a valid alternative from their religious point of view. But children will be expected to know they must not discriminate in everyday life against people in relationships their religion does not approve of.
LGBT content will be optional in primary schools. But to complicate matters, while relationships education in secondary schools will be compulsory, children will still be able to be withdrawn from sex education. And as schools will have some latitude in deciding what goes into relationships, as opposed to sex, education, they may be able to confine LGBT content to sex, rather than relationships, education - except probably the anti-discrimination aspect.
One school of thought within the Charedi community is that although the guidelines are not ideal, they could be worse. And although it may be difficult for many Strictly Orthodox schools to comply in full with the new RSE policy, they may be able to get by - providing they do not marked down too harshly for it in inspections.
That is a big if - given the problems Charedi schools have been experiencing from Ofsted over the past three years. But while some Strictly Orthodox principals believe inspectors have been showing greater understanding of their schools’ religious outlook in recent months, other voices are less sanguine about the attitude of the inspectorate.
Michael Cohen, the former head of Jewish education at the United Synagogue and a longstanding adviser to Charedi schools, recently called on the Strictly Orthodox community to adopt a “bolder and more strident defence” of their education system against state intrusion.
Others share his opinion, believing that only an explicit exemption for religious schools from having to tackle subjects they consider contrary to their worldview will do. They argue it is the preserve of parents, not schools, to discuss matters of sexuality with their children and that the RSE guidelines, as they stand, trespass on religious freedom.
Protesters may also argue that even the government’s own ministers seem unsure exactly what their guidelines require. Education Secretary Damian Hinds confirmed last week primary schools could introduce LGBT topics if they considered it “age appropriate” - in other words, at that age, they are optional.
That appears to contradict the view of School Standards Minister Nick Gibb, who previously stated in Parliament that “one of the key elements of relationships education is ensuring that children are aware, including in primary schools, that loving families can be made up of two mothers, two fathers or one mother and one father.”
If talking about families with same-sex parents is “relationships” rather than “sex” education, it would be compulsory - which Mr Gibb indicated would be so for primary schools.
The peers may well subject the guidelines to more forensic scrutiny than MPs when they review them next week.
If they see that even ministers differ over what these actually mean in practice, they may think it better to send the regulations back to the DfE for another look before passing them into law. Which will be the fervent hope of those who believe that religious freedom should take precedence over secular notions of equality.
