100 organisations ask Labour to abandon Tory revised guidelines on RSHE

Going back to this post as it’s very well said.

It’s bad enough adults use these tactics when relating to women and what they should accept, even more so for children. It needs to be recognised and called out.

Discussing age appropriate issues is a really important issue - for schools and parents. As parents we struggle with "what age should they.. walk to the shops alone, have a phone etc. In terms of sex and relationships it's even more critical and more difficult.
As someone who's taught SRE I know that one of the challenges is the different levels of knowledge, experience, understanding in any one class. Let alone issues relating to sex, religion etc. There's not a common level that you can test and aim for. It's why it's so important to tease out the issues because as we've seen, too many inappropriate adults are over keen on dismissing age appropriate and pushing their preferred kink, fetish etc as a norm that children must have access to.
I'm really pleased that these discussions are happening as a result of pressure from parents.

You are right. If children have been accessing this material, it forms a safeguarding matter, and from there the teacher would talk to the safeguarding lead. It might require intervention from other partners like the police, as exposure to CSAM can be a sign of abuse.

You're not confused, or wrong. Other posters pushing The adultification of children as a "solution" are in the wrong. They won't accept it. But you're not wrong here.

The thing is, most of the people against teaching explicit sexual content in school actually have kids. So we do know what's age appropriate, we know what the range is for children of a particular age. We know what works and what's dodgy as hell. We interact with schools / school staff on a daily basis. We are on the front lines.

We see the dodgy stuff coming through - often purely because teachers don't have the time to check things.

I know people with a huge range of parenting styles - there is not a single parent who would be ok with the approach taken by School of Sexuality "Education".

I’m sorry what primary school are being exposed to porn and how? I’m not saying it’s not happening as have no idea but I’m struggling to understand how it’s happening.

Most internet and phone services now have explicit content blocks as standard. You literally have to ring up or go in settings of your provider (ie. Be the bill payer), to unblock these sites.

Who is unblocking these on children’s phones?!

And if it’s through the home WiFi that they are accessing these then I’m sorry but the adults in that family need to be keeping that blocked and using hotspot from their mobile instead for their visits to pornhub or whatever.

My sons 2 so I do not know what it’s like on the ground atm. And I can well imagine that it’s been a shitshow the last decade or so as people got their heads around the tech. But we have most of what we need now (restriction wise settings) to stop this kind of thing happening. My sons cohort of parents are already signing national pledges to not provide phones to the kids (removing the peer pressure problem).

These are all issues we can solve without saying let’s teach year 3s about masturbation or year 6s about dick pics with ‘wanna cum on me’. It’s absurd that’s the conclusion everyone came to as a ‘solution’. Race to the bottom as always.

Great post and this kind of behaviour is why we have safeguarding in schools, at least in theory.

The proposed guidance was never advocating "blanket bans". Jeez.

I think a lot of this seems from the previous Government ideology of "the big society" - get rid of centralised LEAs who oversaw standards and let schools find their own sources from charities/third sector. Leading to dubious quality materials in some cases.

I'm hoping the different ideological approach of Labour will result in more centralised standards and control. For me that would be a more effective way to control what's being taught, than blanket banning certain topics at certain ages but continuing to insist schools source the teaching themselves.

The sourcing is the root of the problem, not the guidelines.

Yes this happens already

They already do this from a young age. But this is not "teaching about pornography", or being in any way limited by the new guidance.

That's not "teaching about porn" which is what was stated earlier? That's an appropriate warning which would take a minute or 2 to deliver. Just as we remind children of all sorts of hazards without necessarily devoting curriculum time to the subject.

Not sure who your subsequent post was aimed at. I have merely commented that posters who use the phrase "pearl clutching going on under the pretext of children" on a thread where women are talking about safeguarding is a shaming technique. Attempting to silence posters by making them feel foolish / old fashioned when talking about safeguarding children.

As Mumsnet remind us - nobody really knows who any of us are - we can only be judged by what we write on here.

None! The consultation is about proposed changes to RHSE. I don't want to see a ban on teaching under certain ages because it could stop the teaching that's currently happening.

If you are happy with how this is currently taught in schools, why are you supporting a campaign to change it?

I think having defined ages for particular topics won't affect the schools who are already teaching things at an age appropriate level, but will stop the minority of usually outside agencies who get it wrong, and will give parents more confidence.

In the last couple of weeks in our parents' WhatsApp group we've had some debating withdrawing their kids from RHSE sex education, I think guidance like this will give those parents who are uncertain the assurance they need, which will benefit a lot of children who might otherwise miss out altogether.

I don’t know why adults use those lines either. They are in no way helpful to children.

Teaching parents and dc internet safety is a good way to go, what is the content that posters want outside that?

That drawing below and the idea all children are ok with it is also the wrong way to go. It reminds me of male toxicity and expecting girls to laugh along with it.

It’s part of a culture we should be striving to move away from.

Also I am a mother and strongly object (as I'm sure anyone would) to posts implying I'm a man or a child abuser.

I'm not a teacher, but I imagine you would teach them they might see adult stuff on the Internet that they find disgusting, scary or upsetting. This is how you report it. This is who you can talk to about it. This is what to do if you see it in school.

Done.

Blanket bans of topics have unintended consequences.

Hard agree.
So far no poster keen on talking to 10 year olds about porn has answered my earlier question: How do you teach young children about porn /adult sexual fetish in an "age appropriate way"? In a way that doesn't abuse or traumatise the majority of children who won't have accessed porn and for who the idea of kink, fetish, anal sex etc?

Good to see plenty of pushback against the allegation that "Massive amount of pearl clutching going on, under the pretext of "the children". When really we are talking about young adults" Why would anyone make a comment like that when women, mothers, educators on this thread are teasing out difficult issues about SRE and children?

It is of course a tactic that enrages posters and can lead to some quite cross responses and subsequent deletions. The only people who benefit from that are those trying to stop challenging discussions about safeguarding children.

Yes this is what I want too

The consultation is about changes to the existing framework. Like you, I think it works OK at the moment.

I'm not saying no framework. I don't like some of the proposed changes and have explained why.

Preferably I'd like to see a proper national curriculum for sex education and a banning of 3rd party suppliers (no doubt the same people will be angry over that).

There are too many stories of 3rd parties deliberately giving explicit education (teaching primary school children about anal sex etc) or misleading theories (100+ genders, asking primary school children what 100+ sexual orientation they are, etc).

Too many are seeing schools are indoctrination facilities and teaching children either propaganda or just incorrect material.

My kids are primary age. I think at their school they have it about right and are teaching RHSE roughly in line with the age guides proposed.

The messages about safety online and in person are already drummed into them -all without having lessons explaining what pornography is.

The message that these age limits are some puritanical, pearl clutching or religiously motivated attempt to shield children from sex and relationships are quite cynical I think.

I'd have more time for dissent that welcomed the framework but suggested tweaks, but the fact that they seem to not want any kind of framework rings alarm bells for me.

We have parent events to teach online safety in primary

The pp below do they want extra outside that? Examples?

Just a reminder, often a knowledge of sexual issues way before their years is a red flag that abuse can be happening to a child. To educate all kids about knowledge of sexual issues will make that harder to identify and much harder to get kids who are being abused to safety.

People who keep pushing boundaries younger and younger are in my book, irresponsible at best, depraved at worst and anything in between.

If there's a 'huge' number of children who've seen porn by the time they're in Y7, then the parents need to be educated about allowing their children to freely access the internet.

I don't think parents should have the right to withdraw their children from lessons. It should be compulsory
Thankfully we don't live in a totalitarian state.

The law already exists for addressing internet harms, but they seem to completely ignore things like Pornhub and concentrate on hurty words.