To be really, really pleased about the explicit ban on the proactive teaching of gender identity?

If you look at the consultation, it suggests that children are taught about periods at the year 5/6 mark (when they are 9-10 years old).

Girls who are start their periods before this (8 or younger), are far better supported individually, rather than as a whole class.

Currently, most English schools do not teach about contraception until year 9 (in PHSE) or year 10 (in Science)

In terms of the ages, there really isn't any change from when things are usually taught. But it does formalise what is expected.

We landed on the moon ? So they got to you too!

Ordering more tinfoil here....

I've voted YABU as it just feels like Section 28 all over again - it was illegal to teach anything LGBT when I was at school, we couldn't grow up knowing about gay people in case we turned out gay ourselves or something 🙄 Got bandied as a "social contagion" which is the exact terminology lots on here use about trans.
It feels we're going backwards and becoming more and more intolerant as a society.

I think talking about "sexually active" 11 and 12 year olds is adultification. They're vulnerable children, any sexual activity is a sign of things not being ok. Sexually abused (and abusive) children, not sexually active kid-ults.
I'm really glad it was a safeguarding team that was helping these kids out, and not an RSE teacher offering condoms and a list of STI symptoms.

@zaffa "If you don't teach her sex Ed how does she know she's being sexually abused? How does she find the words to tell a trusted adult at school?"
I'm finding it hard to reply to this without saying things I'll probably regret putting on a public board.
I think @WallaceinAnderland put it very clearly, "Child sex abuse is not sex with a child, it's abuse of the child."

What a child needs if she's being abused is not education. She needs a relationship with a trustworthy adult who cares for her, attends to her, listens carefully and believes what she tells them. Maybe the difficult thing is that you can't get that from a lesson plan - as much as we'd like a guaranteed way to stop the abuse it's a lot harder than "more sex ed."

It's actually really disturbing that so many people (Jess Taylor included), think that general sex education should be focused on sexual abuse of children (i.e. criminal acts), rather than what healthy relationships should look like. A negative focus for the minority not a positive one for the majority (and the minority probably also more than most need some information about what healthy relationships look like).

Sex education is separate from safeguarding. Abuse is a safeguarding concern and needs to be addressed through better safeguarding both in and outside of school (including in wider society and via contextual safeguarding).

I also don't believe 50% of 10 year olds 'regularly' watch porn. Most 10 year olds where I live do not have personal devices that access the internet. That is a statistic that also doesn't tally with other statistics I've seen in LA safeguarding training which suggest a much lower number of children have 'seen' porn by the age of 13 (NOT 'watch it regularly').

How does Pornhub know which users are children? And if they do have this knowledge why don't they block access? They can't have it both ways on this one, either they are committing criminal acts or they don't know - which is it?

I think these hyperbolic claims, often without receipts, are used to push an agenda. Parents do need to question, we are the ones with parental responsibility, we have primary responsibility for safeguarding our children.

I thought the gov rules said schools have to provide single sex toilers 🤔

Yes, this. Allowing random outside organisations into school to promote 'sex positivity' to CHILDREN has only made them MORE likely to be abused. It's grooming.

Young children do not need to see or discuss explicit sex acts. The facts of biology are enough. They ARE taught consent from reception. Consent is about more than sex FFS. It's about how to tell someone you don't like them touching you, about how you don't actually want to hold their hand and you don't have to. About how you don't want them to brush your hair and they can't just go ahead and do so. I.e. appropriate boundaries. The ability to say 'no' (which incidentally gender ideology is the opposite of because no-one's been allowed to say 'no' to anyone who wants to go into opposite-sex changing rooms).

It's enough to tell children, in words, that if they see sexual images that make them feel uncomfortable to tell an adult. And that most things they will see in porn will be a)abusive if not outright sexual assault and b) not in any way related to the reality of healthy sexual relationships. You don't actually need to show them even approximations of those images - this is in fact child abuse.

Lots of confusion of sex education and safeguarding among those saying this guidance is wrong. Abuse needs to be dealt with via the safeguarding system, abusing all the other children in a class by exposing them to pornographic material in an attempt to potentially help a theoretical child who is abused is harmful and wrong and will not help abused children.

Safeguarding needs to be child specific. Instead of paying dodgy outside organisations to provide developmentally inappropriate sexualised content which grooms children to lower their boundaries, that money would be better put into adequate staffing (which is much more likely to result in teachers /TAs picking up safeguarding red flags) proper safeguarding and the social care system which is stretched thin.

Blokes?
Fetishists?
Women that have bought into the lies?
Miss Taps?

I could be anything.

Never forget there's people that believe the earth is flat and no matter how much evidence they're shown, they still believe it.

It's grim.

@BiologicsBeforeIdeology completely agree. Some of the books were explicit too, like our kids were being groomed to normalise sexual activity at a very young age.

Much as I am broadly in agreement over the gender issue, it does seem like the banning of sex or contraception education before Year 9 is throwing the baby out with the bathwater somewhat. I am reminded of the time when it was seriously being suggested that schools should consult Social Services if they heard anything that suggested that under 16s were sexually active. Thankfully all of the unions pointed out that all that this would mean is that teens would not ever speak to teachers about anything sex related, and teen pregnancies would skyrocket. Thankfully that idea was shelved, but the new guidelines will have a similar effect. Some girls get their periods at 7!

She is a strange one and keen on creating controversy imo.

I’m wondering too how this is happening

Gender identity is not a real thing at all. And I have no idea how you are dragging this political hobbyhorse in to your lessons on Shakespeare unless you are woefully misunderstanding his plays - but you def need to stop it.

If you don't teach her sex Ed how does she know she's being sexually abused? How does she find the words to tell a trusted adult at school?

Abuse of a child is not sex that they need to be educated about. So many people get this wrong.

Sex education will cover relationships and reproduction between consenting adults and older teens.

It will be irrelevant to 7 year old experiencing sexual abuse.

This is why abuse is covered separately to sex education, in an age appropriate way, and always has been. No one has suggested that this will not be continued. Young children will still be taught the PANTS rule, who to tell and how to tell.

I would add adults need to stop doing this too - lead by example. The pathological treatment of menopause and pregnancy in our society has gone much too far and encourages this navel gazing for teens and puberty. Normal life events do not need to be treated like medical problems.

If you don't teach her sex Ed how does she know she's being sexually abused? How does she find the words to tell a trusted adult at school?

@WickerMam I would actually go speak with the teacher and ask them exactly why they said to the class. Because this is concerning, and I'd be demanding to know what was said.

Now let's put a stop to the money the Civil Service and other public bodies pay to outside organisations to hector staff with this unsubstantiated and highly contested idology.

I think it is good to put guidance in place about what is taught to children, without diluting any message about inclusion and acceptance.

But for young children, the message of "you get lots of different types of families" is as much as they need, IMO.

My 7yo actually came home from school last week with the brand new information - from his teacher, apparently - that "you get people with a woman's head and a man's body, who are called a he-she". God knows what the teacher actually said! But they are just too young to understand properly at that age.

This is great news.

I've been following the content of PSHE lessons for a while and some of what has been shown to primary aged children is outright pornagraphic. Im talking drawing of adventurous sex positions talk of oral sex and promoting masturbation. (Nothing wrong with teaching masturbation is normal and fine in private etc but I've read things encouraging primary aged kids to try it)

The pants rule is taught from reception and I feel this covers what kids need to know at such young ages. The way to tackle the sexual abuse of young children is not to teach them explicit sexual details it's tackle social attitudes and put better safeguarding in place such as this guidance

Thanks for this.
I'm having a sex ed/puberty chat with my eldest (11) at weekend and this is definitely something I want to bring up with her.

Completely agree.