Woman loses fight to see daughter’s sex education content

It really wouldn't be hard for somebody in the chain somewhere to just copy this stuff or parts of it, and leak it.

Even just someone who has seen it giving a detailed description of the contents.

Yes, it would.

Because all hell would break loose if they were allowed to.

Your final paragraph is spot on.

So the question remains: why can’t parents see these materials?

@howdoesatoastermaketoast Thanks for the explanation. There seem to be important differences between the teaching of sex education and the teaching of other subjects in this respect though.

My mum was a teacher and for her subject (languages) the school owned a set of text books which were loaned out to each student at the start of the year. The text books were usually a bit dated (I remember using the old Arc en Ciel French books in the late 1990s and early 2000s for example), but since French grammar and vocabulary hadn't changed particularly radically, schools could get away with using the same set of text books for a couple of decades before they really needed replacing. My mum used to teach from those books and then depart from them where necessary by supplementing with her own work sheets that she had developed herself or which had been developed and given to her by colleagues. I assume the text books themselves were designed to prepare students to take the GCSE and A-level exams set by whichever exam board the school used.

I appreciate that the approach to learning materials will have changed significantly since the internet became mainstream, but the point is that even back then, the schools didn't own the intellectual property in those resources but they did have physical and often electronic copies of them.

Yes, infringement of intellectual property rights happened. Teachers owned one copy of a text book which wasn't used by their current school and photocopied pages from it to use in school. It has always been a problem in the music world as well, with people photocopying sheet music instead of buying originals. That is a risk that the authors and publishers of these materials have always had to take. I'm not sure why people who produce sex and relationships education material expect to be able to protect themselves from these risks when no one else can. No school would buy a set of maths text books without reviewing and testing them first, and once they own them, that's it, any student can take them home, show them to anyone, leave them on the bus, and yes, any teacher can photocopy from them.

In the online age it should be much easier to manage these risks. There is a strong argument in favour of not having printed textbooks these days, so that resources can be periodically updated. But you can do this with online subscriptions very easily. I'm a lawyer and there are several subscription only services for legal resources. Sometimes people who work in house or in smaller law firms don't have access to all of them and yes, sometimes they will ask their friends working elsewhere if they have a copy of this template or that practice note and send it by email. Password sharing happens. The owners of these materials know it happens. But they make enough money from essentially all the big law firms and universities subscribing to them that it's not worth enforcing.

When it comes to educational resources, what could be done fairly easily is that the DfE could appoint a number of sex and relationships education providers to a panel, and all of those providers could offer a subscription only service to access resources, and there could be a centralised database keeping track of which schools have subscribed to what. Any school which is not listed as having subscribed to a service from the approved list would need to be able to show what resources it is using and demonstrate that they meet DfE criteria. That way, if you are Provider A and a teacher leaves their job and goes to a school which uses Provider B and brings a few scanned copies of your materials with them, it doesn't really matter because plenty of schools will have paid for your materials anyway, and if the new school really likes these resources it might switch to Provider A when renewal time comes round.

The only people who have any interest in stealing these resources are schools and teachers. By effectively obliging schools to pay for someone's resources, you make stealing them less attractive.

Students and parents are not remotely interested in stealing sex education resources, and so it is a total nonsense to deny access to them for intellectual property reasons.

I appreciate that teachers do not have time to develop lesson plans and content. However it is wrong that each school is spending time, I assume, reviewing external content.

Are all there providers vetted by the DfE? Are schools just choosing from a recommended list? If this is the case then someone needs to explain how these providers are getting on the lists and why.

I just don't understand why there can't be a couple of people employed by the DfE to develop and maintain these materials and provide them to schools and if required deliver them. Al this money spent on external providers makes a mockery of schools 'lack of money'.

I think it may not only be a matter of time. And perhaps not even primarily. I suspect avoiding responsibility is a key factor. The school says: "Oh, they're a reputable company. We have outsourced it to them, it's not us." It adds that vital layer of extra bureaucratic impenetrability. I worked in the NHS for a time and very briefly was involved in a procurement process for a new IT support provider. I pointed out very clearly that it was cheaper to do it in-house with existing staff and even could have more support staff for the same price. But it clicked about half-way through a meeting that they didn't want that because the responsibility would lie with them (the Primary Care Trust). They wanted a bit of paper that said it was someone else's responsibility if there was a cock-up. Didn't matter that it would increase the chance of it.

Honestly, sex education as it was when I was at school didn't seem that hard. Run through the biological facts which I would hope most teachers as adults should just know. Add in a little about consent and respect and safe practices. Then take questions. Perhaps I over-simplify a little for effect but it's not some wildly specialist subject.

This is such a good point. Children and older teenagers should be able to refuse consent for things they do not want to hear or disagree with.

@MargotBamborough sorry for the delay in answering

"Don't the schools already have these resources?"

The resources used in lessons are typically prepared by a teacher at the school and then perhaps shared free of charge with other staff in the department and kept for future years.

As teachers have become more stretched for time a trend to share (and get) lesson resources online has become more normal. Various sites where teachers sell resources they personally have created (generally for fairly small sums) have emerged and expanded.

So slowly but steadily buying resources has become more or a thing. Buying resources for something like sex education classes is more understandable where you think the teachers in the school would have no knowledge or training (beyond being a grown up) and would have a natural horror of getting something wrong and risking their career.

In this instance the business model seems to be the school don't get to 'own' the resources in the normal limited way. The head (maybe) is shown them, could ask to be shown them. The school isn't left with the resources afterwards.

That's my understanding anyway

Well, yes. We teach them the importance of consent, after all. In the case of Clare Page’s daughter, did she and her classmates consent to listening to opinions (rather than facts) about sex(uality) that many adults would choose not to listen to, for all sorts of reasons? It doesn’t sound as if that was the case. No wonder Clare Page is livid.

Totally agree.
The line “they should be free to not hear about any of this” so important to remember .

I think it sounds creepy/ inappropriate for school kids. What’s the agenda of the adults wanting to “educate” school children about “sexuality”?

Of course they need to know the facts about reproduction, pregnancy and how to avoid it, and consent, whether in gay or straight relationships.

They don’t need to hear adults telling them that “heteronormativity” is wrong, or about being “sex positive”. Let them work things out at their own pace - IF they want to, of course. They should be free NOT to hear about any of this.

Say the name to yourself out loud, slowly.

School of Sexuality Education

Why does anyone need to be educated, schooled, on their sexuality?

It's a notion that feels as though it belongs in an underground Victorian novel.

They do it because whilst money is tight, teacher time is even tighter. In the absence of materials from central government, their teachers struggle to do everything, so buying in pre-made materials is appealing.

Also, of course, anyone pushing an agenda just has to make their package quite cheap (a couple of hundred pounds) and the cost saving in teacher time is greater than the cost of materials. It's wide open to abuse by bad actors and is a very clear safeguarding loophole and red flag.

The same safeguarding rules for these companies as for school staff do not apply - I think for something as open to abuse as RSE, people producing this should be subject to Ofsted and all have to have enhanced DBS and use safer recruitment as for school staff, especially if those staff are going into schools. If the school of sexuality education had had to apply safer recruitment the staff would not have been hired and definitely would not have been allowed in classrooms due to the links to fetish / porn.

In this time of tightened school budgets, sex education would not be my first choice of area to spend money on expensive external provision.

FrancescaContini· Today 07:20
It’s interesting that the company is called School of Sexuality Education because the words “sex” and “sexuality” aren’t interchangeable.

What a good point. You are absolutely right.

It’s interesting that the company is called School of Sexuality Education because the words “sex” and “sexuality” aren’t interchangeable.

Comment piece in The Times by Jawad Iqbal:

Parents have right to know what’s taught about sex

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/64626dee-0a1f-11ee-997e-7710367054a0?shareToken=41476152fa3b6206bd4bfd9e8ff0dc71

Interesting. It’s often called Relationship and Sex Education.

This is also my understanding.

Shocking this has happened to Clare. I admire her greatly for taking this further, and I’m pleased that the Times is publishing this.

I think the case confuses what is taught with how it's taught. It's surely only the latter that can be protected on a commercial interest ground and there is a clear public interest in making the former public

Think about another good e.g. a phone -you would want to see what it looked like, whether it was safe, what battery power it had, what it is made from but you don't need to know how it is made

Oops posted too soon.....

Doesn't make sense that safeguarding wouldn't also trump commercial confidentiality

I will contribute to any appeal, I think the judge has had insufficient regard to child safeguarding legislation. Red flags for safeguarding all over this story.

It seems to me the judge doesn't understand safeguarding laws and has made a mistake here. It's pretty clear in Keeping Children Safe that safeguarding trumps GDPR so it doesn't make sense that this wouldn't also be the case, in law,

From the article “Page began her campaign after her daughter, then 15, came home from Hatcham College in New Cross, southeast London, saying that she had been taught to be “sex positive” and that heteronormativity was “a bad thing”.”

How did we get to a point that this is not only acceptable and done in schools, but hidden from parents? Schools are not there to indoctrinate children into the ideology of the day.

Part of it is the off the charts feeling of righteousness and the entitlement that comes with it to push one's views on others. They are so convinced of the veracity and goodness of their morality, that they feel entitled to impose it on others.

BigCheekBitch · Today 22:38
MrsOvertonsWindow · Today 22:37

Here you are - share token:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/63a3c456-0953-11ee-997e-7710367054a0?shareToken=dd8d398757eb91d78c30781c249b0b94

Thank you

Thank you from me too.

It’s really not ok to tell parents that being ‘allowed to see PSHE materials’ means that first the parent needs to make a fuss, then they may be given an appointment to sit in the headteacher’s office with the HT’s laptop looking at some slides.

This also does not tell anyone what may have been said in addition to the slides, or what is said in accompanying notes.