100 organisations ask Labour to abandon Tory revised guidelines on RSHE

[IwantToRetire]

The Conservative government launched a consultation in May on planned updates to guidance first issued in 2019, following a review of the reforms.

It proposed age limits on “sensitive” topics, ordered schools not to teach about “gender identity” and to share materials with parents.

Ministers were accused at the time of stirring up “culture war” issues in the run-up to the election.

The consultation closes today.

To coincide with its closure, more than 100 organisations including the ASCL and NAHT leaders’ unions, the PSHE Association, Sex Education Forum, Barnardo’s, Refuge and Everyone’s Invited have issued a joint statement calling for a “fresh start” to the review.

“We are calling on the next government to discard the draft guidance and begin this process in due course, focusing on the needs of children and young people and supporting teachers to deliver a high-quality, inclusive curriculum.”

Lucy Emmerson, CEO of the Sex Education Forum, said age restrictions would be a “backward step making children more vulnerable to abuse and harm”.

PSHE association chief executive Jonathan Baggaley, warned he had “deep concerns about the development process and shortcomings of the draft guidance, particularly on critical aspects of children’s safeguarding, wellbeing and inclusion”.

And Lynn Perry, chief executive of Barnardo’s, said introducing age limits to RSHE topics “risks children missing out on crucial teaching about abuse and exploitation”.

Continues at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/labour-faces-pressure-to-ditch-tory-rshe-reforms/

Was there evidence for each of the age limits? Some of them seemed quite arbitrary.

I don't agree that the ideology of "gender identity" shouldn't be taught about. If kids don't get the information from school they'll get it elsewhere. Instead it should be explained, very clearly, that it's a highly contested belief, and why.

On the basis that the ideology of ‘gender identity ’ begins and ends with the proposition that one sex can change to the other through willpower and a trip to Primark, children should be taught that it’s complete nonsense. Because it is.

Hopefully all the organisations that ignored calls for a public inquiry are taking a long hard look at themselves now. Well done, bravo.

Captured organisations.

Which is the problem.

Those organisations' income and support relies on emphatically not prioritising the safeguarding and best interests of children, but furthering their own. So it really wouldn't matter if there were 5000 of them.

Pretty please other government, remove the boundaries to us getting into schools, enforcing our politics and agenda, trotting children to mutilation, drugs and lifetime damage, (particularly the ones with Autism and who are gay), and actively discriminating against and silencing diversity of belief/enforcing compelled belief.

Wonder if the Labour govt are grown ups about this, or just going to be lobby puppets without conscience and guts the way the unions used to run Labour in the 70s?

Really we haven't even had the results and they want them cancelled?

It would be an insult to democracy. Who's playing culture war now.

I doubt the Labour govt needs any encouragement to scrap it.

Who needs age limits, eh?

I read through it last night. The age limits are sensible and there was provision for flexibility and responsiveness, so that if teachers had a particular issue come up they had the ability to discuss it.

The RHSE at DDs school was handled very badly. Parents given no information about what would be covered and when asked it was always 'it'll be age appropriate'. But no indication of what that would be.

When asked how they would handle probing questions, it was the same answer again. ASD DD hated it all. She hated all the laughing and joking. The stupid questions from other children (only asked to put the teacher on the spot.) We have a very open relationship at home and she wasn't learning anything new, so I pulled her out of the classes as she was just getting too stressed about it.

I do also wonder how much the open discussions about gender issues has pushed many a vulnerable teenager down a path they would have been unlikely to go down. I'd be happy to see a lot of it gone. I think it's caused more problems than it solved.

The 100 organisations, I assume, are charities and are biased. As we have seen over the years our charity sector has been politicised. If these calls are genuine and have safeguarding at their heart, all well and good. However, the Cass review, committed to by Labour, will have to be at the heart of reforms

Did Labour commit to the Cass review? My (hazy) recollection was that there was a sort of glancing recognition that it existed rather than any kind of promise to act on it?

I would love to be wrong, and have the references to support that if they slide later

Wes Streeting and Sir Keir most definitely have, so I assume the rest of the Cabinet will have to fall in line. I will watch with my hawkish swivel eyes'

Given that they are looking to put confidence back into politics, it would be a very daft move to renege on such support for a lengthy, well researched document by a consummate professional such as Cass.

My child is not yet school age so I’m not as close to this as others, but age limits seem sensible to me and I think it’s right that parents should have full transparent access to materials and that schools should be prohibited from entering contractual arrangements that prohibit that. As @ArabellaScott said, it seemed sensible to me that teachers would be able to flex the age limits if something occurred in their school (e.g the sharing of an inappropriate photograph) that would warrant speaking to children about the issue earlier than might normally be warranted. Surely it’s worth labour seeing what the results say and then considering what to do, not just scrapping the lot off the bat.

Gender ideology should have the same status is RSE as creation stories have in science.

The unions running Labour in the seventies had positive aspects - i.e. workers' rights. Not to be compared with gender woo.

But that's actually what the draft guidance does. It treats gender ideology as a belief. Just not fact, which is what's currently happening in some schools but not others. It doesn't not talk about it at all.

I feel like far from the Tories trying to stoke 'culture wars' with this, it's all these organisations who've seemingly not even bothered to read the document but are basing their idea of what is says on a 'Tories = bad' argument.

The report ALSO says that where there is evidence a class has been exposed to porn or something like that then the age limits can be changed - i.e. there is flexibility.

This idea that my child has to learn about porn at age 8 because other children have suffered child abuse (because that's what it is) boils my piss, quite frankly.

I DO NOT want my children learning about this at an inappropriate age because THIS IS the school committing child abuse. It's clearly laid out that exposing children to inappropriate sexual material when they are not developmentally ready is child abuse in KCSIE.

It seems like paedophiles must have infiltrated all these organisations for them to be so dim.

At my secondary school every so often we get a safeguarding letter about a serious incident - reported to police - where violent / sexually graphic material has been shared among some secondary school students in the county so that parents can be aware and check their children are not affected (because they'll need counselling if they've seen it). I know for a fact that my child has not seen these. I closely monitor her devices and given the mere description of what those videos have been about (without explicit detail) I think I personally would be traumatised for life if I saw them as a middle aged women, so the idea the school should talk to all the children about this because a tiny minority have been affected is ridiculous. And this seems to be what these idiotic organisations are saying.

They are also ignoring that most children have parents who love them and will talk to them too, and can tailor their messages to the appropriate developmental age of the child and their particular exposure to inappropriate content. This can be done in partnership with an individual tailored approach by the school if needed.

Yes, there are children who don't have that and they are best served by individual support at school and by social services. Not by all the other children being forced to be exposed to what they've been exposed to.

You've got to ask who benefits from this agenda to treat children as mini adults.

They clearly don't have safeguarding at their heart and haven't read the document.

I'm pissed off with these adults, a lot of whom are middle class Uni graduates without children themselves, throwing MY CHILDREN under the bus for THEIR anti-Tory political agenda.

I am VERY VERY VERY angry.

Become a school governor women of FWR, this is what you need to do to fight back against this shit.

Most teachers don't want to be teaching inappropriate sexual content to children either. I assume these charities have an end game of wanting to get paid to go into schools and get all the kids to draw dick pics like the School of Sexuality education does. At best it's a grift, at worst it's a deliberate erosion of child boundaries about adult sexuality. I.e. as anti-safeguarding as you can get.

You’re totally right @dougalfromthemagicroundabout , exposing more children to information about something awful because some children might have been exposed to it is totally backwards.

Yes, one of the biggest and most important changes in the document is that schools have to provide access to RSE materials to parents - no ifs or buts. No crappy 'but copyright' arguments.

Anyone who argues against this is CLEARLY not acting in the children's best interests. There is literally no argument that can be made that talking about sex in schools and KEEPING IT SECRET FROM PARENTS is in the children's best interests. It's as if all the lessons learned from safeguarding reviews in the past about sharing information for safeguarding never happened.

The reason we're in this position is that children have come home telling their parents they were made to draw dick pics in schools and parents have reacted with understandable horror at how there are apparently adults going into schools committing child abuse as defined in KCSIE.

Any charity who argues for secrecy does not care about children.

One of the points I made in the response to the guidance was that all outside organisations staff (who want to teach RSE / PHSE) should fall under the same safeguarding rules as school staff i.e. safer recruitment, enhanced DBS, yearly training on KCSIE / safeguarding. Which currently they don't have to do.

Even the bloody NSPCC come into PRIMARY schools and point children to a website which allows them to chat 1 to 1 online with a 'counsellor'. This is insanely dangerous behaviour to encourage - chatting to adults online without parents present. And it's the NSPCC doing it. Creating mirror / cloned websites that look almost identical to the official website is incredibly easy and cybercriminals routinely do this and there is no way a child could tell the difference.

Fortunately most school staff aren't idiots and don't actually advocate for this, because they do actually understand safeguarding.

Also it's such a failure for those mythical children who have been 'exposed to porn' (i.e. abused) from an early age. They need individual support not some group class discussion that invites trauma responses or (at best) incomprehension in the other children.

These organisations clearly don't understand children or child development at all.

It seems like paedophiles must have infiltrated all these organisations for them to be so dim.

Hear hear.

The full list of those who signed this, is fucking sobering. What the fuck is EVAW doing cosying up to Jigsaw FFS?

Minds so open, their brains fell out.

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The signatories
Safeguarding, child protection and rights
• Barnardo’s
• NSPCC
• Girlguiding UK
• Amnesty International UK
• Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse (CSA Centre)
• Lucy Faithfull Foundation
• Plan International UK
• Catch22
Education and Unions
• ASCL
• NAHT
• National Education Union
• PSHE Association
• HMC
• BSA Group (Boarding Schools’ Association)
• Coram
• University of Birmingham, School of Social Policy and Society
• Big Talk Education
• Human Values Foundation
• Jigsaw Education Group
• Training Works
• Chameleon PDE Ltd
• Wickersley Partnership Trust
• PSHE Service Cambs
Violence against women and girls
• The End Violence Against Women Coalition
• Refuge
• Women’s Aid Federation of England (Women’s Aid)
• Rape Crisis England & Wales
• Everyone’s Invited
• Action Breaks Silence
• Advance
• Birmingham and Solihull Women’s Aid
• Bold Voices
• Beyond Equality
• FORWARD
• Imkaan
• IKWRO – Women’s Rights Organisation
• IRISi
• Jewish Women’s Aid
• Juno Women’s Aid
• Kindling Transformative Interventions
• Latin American Women’s Aid
• Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS)
• LMK Let Me Know
• Middle Eastern Women and Society Organisation (MEWSO)
• Our Streets Now
• Rights of Women
• Solace Women’s Aid
• Surviving Economic Abuse
• Survivors Of Abuse
• Tender
• This Ends Now
• Violence Against Women and Girls Research Network
• Woman’s Trust
• Women’s Budget Group
• Roj Women’s Association
• White ribbon UK
• Agenda Alliance
• Standing Together
• Respect
• Savana
Mental health, physical health, and sexual & reproductive health
• Anna Freud
• AYPH
• Mencap
• Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
• Terrence Higgins Trust
• British Association for Sexual Health and HIV
• Brook
• Family Planning Association
• Teenage Pregnancy Knowledge Exchange, University of Bedfordshire
• The Centre for Emotional Health
• Doctors for Choice UK
• Dorset Healthcare Sexual Health
• Islington Council
• Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust
• Reproductive Justice Initiative
• The Eve Appeal
• The Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare
• Turning Point
• Worcestershire Integrated Sexual Health part of Herefordshire & Worcestershire Health & Care Trust
• Young Person’s Advisory Service
• Croydon Youth Information & Counselling Service Ltd
Internet Safety
• Childnet
• Internet Matters
• Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)
• Parent Zone
• SWGfL
RSE and Inclusion
• Sex Education Forum
• Stonewall
• DEAFAX
• Engendering Change Ltd
• Fumble
• It Happens Education Limited
• Life Lessons
• Life Support Productions
• Lifting Limits
• Loudmouth Education and Training
• Make it Mandatory
• Period Positive
• Race Equality Foundation
• School of Sexuality Education
• Sexpression:UK
• Split Banana
• The Schools Consent Project
• TransActual
• The Story Project
Faith and Belief
• Humanists UK
• Methodist Church in Britain
• thirtyone:eight

These organisations clearly don't understand children or child development at all.

Fannying about with feminism does not equate to an understanding of children, their needs or child development. That's a big big factor here too. We need to face it.

I filled in the consultation 2 days ago. The age limits are too high for todays world and mean that children aren't going to have the information they need when they need it. E.g. some huge number of children have seen porn by year 6, but the proposal is it's not taught about until y7.

In my opinion the children most at risk are the ones whose parents are uncomfortable with discussions of sex, relationships, homosexuality etc so I don't think parents should have the right to withdraw their children from lessons. It should be compulsory, like maths.

I think the Conservatives made a right meal out of this in their quest to stoke culture wars so am not surprised there is pressure to drop it. The whole approach needs rethinking. I'd go for a more centralised curriculum and stop outsourcing to charities.

Them being on the same list isn't "cosying up".

The irony of that from a poster adamant that far right associations with GC people isn't a sign of anything 😂

I had to point out to my primary school that the NSPCC website advocates children of primary age talking to strange adults online 1 to 1.

They were rightly horrified and amended the materials and changed from the NSPCC materials which say if children have an issue they should talk to an adult they trust in school, a family member or go to the NSPCC website to they should talk to an adult they trust in real life and ONLY IF there is no such adult available who they know and trust in real life, access online resources. It is highly unlikely there are going to be zero teachers, TAs, club leaders or trusted family members or friends a child can talk to in real life. It is good there are resources available if children really don't have anyone else, but we should not be normalising talking to strange adults online from an early age - that is clearly risky behaviour. I note there is no information about the qualifications, safeguarding checks or background of the 'counsellors' on the NSPCC website.

I have no doubt padeophiles will be mirroring the NSPCC website at some point. Why wouldn't they? Easy access.

It's a safeguarding failure.

I have no doubt padeophiles will be mirroring the NSPCC website at some point.

Probably already happening. If they need to. All the organisations listed have just confirmed to the world that they've been infiltrated.