New campaign for compulsory sex and relationships education in schools in England and Wales

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Some of you may have seen that long-term Mumsnet friends End Violence Against Women (EVAW) and Everyday Sexism have launched a new campaign to persuade the government and main party leaders to make comprehensive sex and relationships education compulsory in state-financed schools in England and Wales. (At the moment, some basic facts about reproduction, biology and STDs are on the National Curriculum, but almost everything else is left to the discretion of individual schools.)

When we asked MNers about this before, you told us very clearly that you wanted compulsory, comprehensive SRE from primary level upwards; you can see the results of the survey we ran a couple of years ago here.

So we've given our backing to this one. Justine's quote is: 'Mumsnet users are clear: they want comprehensive, compulsory sex and relationships education, and as children get older they want it to address topics like pornography, sexting, sexual violence, and meaningful consent. Both boys and girls can be vulnerable to peer pressure and abuse, and good SRE helps them to recognise the building blocks of healthy, happy relationships. Mumsnet has long called for SRE to be updated to reflect the internet age - and for teachers to be supported in delivering it - and we're delighted to be backing this important campaign.'

If you fancy getting involved, there's a petition you can sign here.

Thanks
MNHQ

13loki

I understand that some children may miss out but that is not the fault of other parents who could be bothered/find the time to educate their children.
I think it is the right of a parent to be able to opt out of PHSE, just the same as RE.
Luckily my dd doesn't attend school atm, but I would be taking her out if I felt my wishes were being overlooked in this way.

you could have a full time role in a school employing a pscyhologist or counsellor who delivered all phase (for example a whole year group per half term - so sept - half term seeing every year 7 student in small groups spread over the timetable so no one misses more than one lesson of any of any other subject) who also had time on their timetable for intervention work with individual students with psychological problems or delivering specific workshops to groups of specific students (re: anger management (hate that phrase and it's connotations but basically equipping children with EBD to better regulate themselves and address their issues).

that individual would ONLY be associated with pshe, small group or individual encounters, safe space and a caring/advisory role. they'd be known to be a different sort of person/role/qualification than the other adults in the school. the pshe could be delivered in the way we know these things need to be delivered eg. small groups, sat in semi circles, lots of ground rules and sharing in pairs etc in a room that was specifically set up for that purpose and had no connotations of any other lessons or teachers or situations.

for the sake of say (if you want a qualified pscyhologist and one with experience of the school system and resource development and training) 40k you would take pshe off of other teachers workloads, deliver quality pshe, have on site mental health support and services and probably that person could also be the child welfare office and person responsible for ensuring all staff are up to date on child protection issues. they'd also do the liason with social services, children in care etc.

that would also begin to make a dent in the challenges of inclusive education whereby children in need of specialist intervention and support do not access it in school and face crazy waiting lists to get it from camhs. demand upon camhs and the like would hopefully lessen the LA would be making savings there.

just one suggestion - not saying it's the right one but i'd personally love and feel well qualified for that job. no way on earth i'm going back to classroom teaching but that i'd do.

that person would also be (as i once did in an FE setting) the one who networks with faith communities, hard to reach groups, anti offender charities etc and builds up a network of volunteers willing to deliver materials or provide support for students.

HoneyBadger...... Sign me up!

It sounds like pretty much the perfect solution to a fair number of problems.

morethanpotatoprints I strongly feel the rights of the child to be given the knowledge and tools to make good decisions with respect to sex and relationships are vastly more important than the rights of parents to shield children from age appropriate education.

You 've asked mumsnetters before?! I had received in the past an e-mail with the RESULTS but was NEVER sent an a-mail actually asking to participate

In our school most parents who participated in the debate about 4 years ago hated the idea about what is already taught and were disgusted by the video content. We didn't like the teachers introducing ideas which open a can of worms as a parent said creating questions which I wouldn't like to answer to my infant age child

13loki, cant agree more

I couldn't disagree more. As a parent I am more than capable of education my children about sex and relationships. I do not need a teacher to do it for me.

I don't think its a good idea. I remember a couple years ago there were some sex ed films on tv. Stuff like... Naked men parading in front of schoolchildren as a demonstration of "human bodies are different and not all perfect". Yuck! At age 13-14 i would have freaked out from such a sight.

Also there are sensitive subjects that people of different faiths may be uncomfortable with, e.g. teen sex or same sex relationships.

Signed!!

I despair at some of the comments against this :(

I am MORE than capable of teaching my own DD & have done from a younger age than I felt comfortable with. Yet I support this, because not all parents care enough not to expose their own DCS to stuff that warps their own DCS perception of S& R & that reflects on my own DDs safety.

Sometimes those parents are just naive, they don't realise that sweet little Johnny already has a porn habit & harasses his female classmates daily at 9 years old. DM thinks he is chatting with friends or playing online games & are not Internet savvy enough to check up. He was chatting with friends & sharing hardcore porn

Or 6 year old Jimmy wrestling girls to the ground, pinning them there by the throat & forcing his tongue down their throats - or another day pretending to pleasure himself in front of same age & younger DCS whilst shouting & laughing out loud "I'm fucking myself" because he has been exposed to stuff he shouldn't know about so young.

I could go on & on, & these are real stories. Reality is, that no matter how well we teach our own DCS, their future interactions are going to be with others that may not have been taught so well, taught by the Internet, or not taught at all.

This puts our own DCS in danger, so I'm sorry but IMHO it's a very naive attitude in deed & this is long over due.

HoneyBadger

Would that be delivered by MH professionals in school? Certainly going by the amount of mentally unwell teachers I have treated over the last ten years, it'd be like the blind leading the blind leading the blind to have teaching staff involved in delivery? What kind of support would a single person involved in delivering this get?

I think it is an interesting idea but do you see funding being forthcoming for enough educational psychologists to provide this in all state schools? Also it tips over into clinical psychology too. And most psychologists these days want to maintain a distinction between the two.

I wouldn't have thought a teacher would have the training and skills to do what might turn out to be something more than basic psychological intervention and health promotion with children. It's all fair and well when it remains at low level but no treacher is skilled enough to tease out the hidden and more insidiously dangerous MH conditions. Miss one of those and you could have major problems on your hands.

That also goes for educational psychologists too. While they are brilliant at what they do, spotting the signs of occult mental illness and assessing suicidal ideation isn't their primary skill. I would feel very uneasy about their being given this responsibility.

mignonette -if you read my post above you'll see one suggestion i made of how this could be done and how many other benefits would be involved (including an onsite psychologist available for supporting staff if needs be).

there are a lot of people, myself included, who have left teaching and are also qualified in mental health areas, who would possibly return to school in the role i described above even though they would never go back to normal classroom teaching. many people leave teaching through sheer heartbreak over the state of the system and it's failure to really meet any kind of duty of care towards students or staff.

we have very many very well qualified counsellors (i'm talking proper accreditation levels after years of study and practice - not flakey short courses) in this country who can't find enough work or end up using their skills with charities if they can afford to or doing something else to make ends meet despite having wanted to work in mental health. i know playworkers and other child specialists who spend a part of every year trying to secure the funding to keep their own job in a charity for the next year. we've no shortage of people, we have a shortage of willingness to pay and use them.

But how would you finance it? There aren't enough staff in mental health care (which I am sure you must be aware of) because of funding and changes to its structure. I support and endorse bottom up care, care that is proactive rather than reactive but you are going to have to change the entire culture of mental health care. Systems are set up to deliver interventions with easy short term measurable outcomes, that is what trusts like because they are cheap in that old short term and easy to put out to tender- this kind of thing that you are suggesting is not commensurate with that sadly.

On site psychological support plus a psychologist and raft of MH workers....I cannot see the funding being agreed or achieved for this. However I do agree that in principle, with properly qualified MHP's it'd be a great idea. However I again would dispute that counsellors, no matter how well trained are the right people to spot mental illness. Decades of experience of counsellors across all areas of practice have shown my colleagues and myself that in reality, they are frequently missing some pretty serious cases of mental illness. They can be good at dealing with low to low/medium level crises (the kind that tend to drift along at a fairly stable rate and impact more on the person than on their milieu) and that's about it.

And the self esteem work, stress and anxiety management, that kind of thing does not require a counsellors accreditation to be effective. There are plenty of organisations across the country (both stat and non stat) that use non accredited employees, as part of evaluated programmes of mental health care and they function very well. It really isn't rocket science at delivery level.

There is still that gnarly issue of the distinctions between clinical and educational psychology. They are not one and the same and finding enough psychologists qualified to deliver both- well that's going to be pretty impossible for a programme rolled out nationally.

I wish you well with your PhD application and I am sure it will be fascinating and something well worth doing. But I would be amazed if we ever have a system of government in health care that approves something that sounds so sensible with the right people behind it :(

they're not there to replace doctors or ed psychs who diagnose mental illness or learning difficulties, conditions etc. i'm talking about one member of staff per school who is able to deliver effective pshe and to be able to offer talking therapy type support for students who would benefit from it. that's 40k some of that recouped by not having to pay a responsibility point or two for pshe coordinator to a teacher, some recouped via not having to pay a separate person responsibility points to be in charge of safeguarding and some recouped via onsite, in house CPD delivery rather than outsourcing it.

i'm not sure why the resistance or why this sounds so far fetched? nor does someone delivering small group workshops on self esteem, positive relationships, anxiety management, healthy boundaries etc require them to be a ed psych or to be able to dx pathology. anyone with greater needs would be referred to the specialists by someone who can build working relationships with those specialists and work in partnership with them in supporting a specific students needs.

it's one more member of staff part funded by no longer having to pay various others responsibility points to do things that will then be covered by that member of staff.

my experience in school tells me a lot of children suffer with depression and anxiety or are reeling from difficulties at home such as bereavement or a parent's ill health etc. having someone to talk to for a 40min slot per week in school would be a great help and would allow that person to help minimise the effect upon their education and to liase with other staff.

also children who are 'acting out' at school but only having the behaviour addressed rather than trying to find the why and deal with the root of the behaviour could benefit from time with a counsellor helping them work it through and come up with approaches for dealing with their emotions.

these young people (in the above examples) may well have no need for medical intervention or an ed psych (though they can be referred if they do) but could possibly benefit hugely from a little on site support and safe haven within school.

i think we may be coming at this from two different angles - you're seeing it as a healthcare profession issue and i'm seeing it as a school and local authority issue. the funding would be from schools and LA's and the primary purpose would be educational (re: educating about mental health, sex, relationships, etc rather than dx, medical intervention etc) and pastoral support.

It is not about resistance- it is about realism sadly. Maybe that says something about how beaten down my colleagues and the MH system has got. We used to have liaison workers (all MHnurses, OT's with MH specialism and ASW's) from our CMHT going into schools and attached to GP surgeries. They used to do this and funding was then withdrawn.

We have gone backwards.

I don't agree that the costings are as win win as you imagine though :(. The system of training, support, monitoring, supervision and evaluation alone will cost a lot and as I have already pointed out, the MH system is not built upon medium to long term gains. They do not favour the allocation of funds to measures that show anything other than easily demonstrated short to short/medium outcomes.

I actually like the idea of your suggestion in best practice. It is a good one BUT I have too much experience of similar proposals based upon an attitude change being shot down in flames. I am aware of the irony of my appearing to do that to you Honey :). As I said, I wish you well and hope that somebody listens to you.

Yes I am seeing it from a health care perspective primarily because the mental health knowledge base would have to be sought from there in the main. Where the funding comes from who knows? It'd probably be put out to tender.

I would also advocate any in school counselling as coming from a system of workers that eventually share commonality in training. Not from some random former college of Higher Ed 'BA in counselling' as so many of them churn out huge numbers of very average 'counsellors' that still manage to be accredited but are very unskilled in a real life setting.

The training would have to be specialised I think because the reality is that over time these professionals will end up with a lot of chronic and intractable student problems- the kind of behavioural issues that are never really resolved, only managed and are difficult enough to deal with by a MH and social care team with decades of experience let alone a school counsellor with ten to fifteen mins per pupil per week.

they wouldn't be replacing those - they'd be in addition and mostly dealing with a different level of issue than you are talking about (ie. you're talking about kids who've secured involvement from mental health services and social services - those could get extra support from an inschool support service but would not present hte bulk of cases dealt with which would be at a level that would never merit ss or camhs involvement given the massive overload).

i'm talking about mental health statutory provision here but mental health education (re: EVERYONE needs to learn about this and have basic CBT skills in order to manage their lives and try to prevent becoming ill via a sense of balance and healthy boundaries in their life) and in school pastoral care. it would absolutely be funded by education and in no way be a replacement of mh services or claim to do what mh services does.

sorry! meant to say i'm NOT talking about mental health statutory provision.

you're talking medical model and 'at risk' (sort of) category. i'm talking educational and pastoral model and all children being targeted.

this is things like every child having the opportunity to explore what human needs are (for example looking at human givens or hierarchy of needs models), all children understanding what stress is and how it works physiologically and psychologically upon the individual and what basic techniques help deal with it, what self esteem is and how one builds it, what healthy relationships and boundaries look like and basic assertion and communication skills. i'm not talking about 'treating' mental health conditions although those who do have those could gain some additional support with them on site from this person.

i guess really i'm talking about prevention and equipping young people to deal with modern life and enabling them to be proactive about their own mental health and wellbeing. you're talking about the emergency end. my argument is that you shouldn't have to hit the emergency category before you learn about how to manage your own health and happiness and deal with the stresses and strains of modern life.