MP to Push Government for School Sex Education Transparency Law

Miriam Cates MP speaks during the Northern Research Group conference at Doncaster Racecourse, England, on June 9, 2023. (Danny Lawson/PA Wire)

An MP wants to give parents the legal right to see materials used in relationships and sex education (RSE) lessons and prohibit schools from using any externally produced teaching resources that are not available for public scrutiny.

On Monday, Conservative MP Miriam Cates said that she will introduce a Private Members’ Bill to push the government to make sex education materials transparent to parents.

Schools and external sex education providers have been accused of hiding materials from parents.

“Today I’ll introduce a bill in Parliament to give parents the legal right to see materials used in [RSE] lessons, and prohibit schools from using any externally produced teaching resources that are not available for public scrutiny,” wrote Cates on Twitter.

“The bill would therefore ensure that any externally produced RSE resources are also available in the public domain and can be scrutinised. As with all Private Member’s Bills, this is highly unlikely to become law,” she said.

“But I hope to persuade the government to use its powers to make the transparency guidance statutory,” added Cates.

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On Friday, Equalities Minister Kemi Badenoch invoked the political impartiality duty under the Equality Act, which says that teaching contested beliefs on gender identity is political and schools are legally required to offer balance.

This was after footage of a teacher at a secondary school was recorded telling a pupil she was “despicable” for refusing to accept gender ideology. Badenoch also ordered a snap inspection at the school.

Furthermore, in June, the founder of No Secret Lesson Plans In UK Schools, Clare Page, lost a legal case where she wanted the sex education teaching material of her daughter’s sex education lessons released publicly after referring the matter to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Page claimed the material was indoctrinating children, that her daughter was taught that a heteronormative society was a bad thing and that she should be “sex positive” in her attitude to relationships and aware of intersectionality.

The School of Sexuality Education which hosted the class at Hatcham College, a state school in New Cross, southeast London, refused to release the information which prompted Page to take legal action.

However, the case was overruled by a judge who ruled that the commercial interests of the third-party sex education provider outweighed (pdf) the public interest of a parent requesting the materials.

Civitas

Cates quoted a recent study by the think tank Civitas which showed that 77 percent of parents think that they “should have unrestricted legal rights to view RSE materials.”

The report urged parents to be “vigilant” over what children are being taught in classrooms by some self-declared experts.

The report (pdf) also reveals how one in ten 16- to 18-year-olds say they want to change gender or have already made the switch.

Over half of those pupils know someone at their school who wants to transition or has completed the process.

The statistics, gathered by Deltapoll, also reveal that just under a third of 16- to 18-year-olds say they have been taught “a woman can have a penis.”

One in five has been told that “a man can get pregnant.”

Nearly half “don’t feel comfortable” contributing to class debate for fear of reprisals from fellow pupils.

Sexually Explicit

British MPs have in the past two years discussed how materials are being flooded into schools by external providers who are exposing children to “deeply inappropriate, wildly inaccurate, sexually explicit, and damaging materials” in the name of sex education.

Last year, in Westminster Hall, Cates named some of the providers, saying that school sex education provider, School of Sexuality Education defines sex is defined as, “anything that makes you horny or aroused.” It is the same company that consulted the makers of “The Family Sex Show,” which invited families to take children from age 5 to explore themes such as “boundaries, pleasure, consent, queerness, and sex” as well as featuring full-frontal nudity.

The show was eventually pulled due to growing outrage over its content.

She said that the charity Sex Education Forum tells children they fall into one of two groups: menstruators or non-menstruators. And that the book for teachers, “Great Relationships and Sex Education,” suggests an activity for 15-year-olds in which children are given prompt cards and have to say whether they think certain types of sexual acts are good or bad.

The LGBT organisation The Proud Trust has produced a dice game encouraging children to discuss explicit sexual acts, based on the roll of a die.

Another company called Bish Training had materials that involved the discussion of a wide range of sexual practices, some of them violent. Bish is aimed at young people 14 years old and over and provides training materials for teachers.

The Epoch Times contacted The School of Sexuality Education for comment.

Patricia Devlin contributed to this report.