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“We are calling on the next government to discard the draft guidance and begin this process in due course, focusing on the needs of children and young people and supporting teachers to deliver a high-quality, inclusive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chief executive Jonathan Baggaley, warned he had “deep concerns about the development process and shortcomings of the draft guidance, particularly on critical aspects of children’s safeguarding, wellbeing and inclusion”.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/

I work and volunteer with hundreds of children and I know only one who was exposed to inappropriate violent material in year 6. Anyone who says otherwise needs to provide evidence.

And even if there are some, that does not justify talking about these issues with all the children who ARE NOT exposed, thereby harming them.

In my area, most children do not have phones or their own computers until year 7. So there is no way they could see this content in year 6 unless it's their parents allowing it, in which case it should be an individual case of working with social services. Not a whole class discussion.

And also, if there are areas where most of the class have been abused by being exposed to inappropriate content inappropriately early, there is flexibility in these guidelines, clearly written in.

Allowing teacher judgement.

The answer should never be to remove safeguarding from all children because some have been abused. And this is what is being advocated.

Parents say no.

Also, a more rational response to children in YEAR 6 being exposed to inappropriate content would be to ban smartphones for children under 16 and make it criminal to buy one.

Not to normalise the abuse, throw up our hands and give up!

All these organisations could be getting behind a smartphone ban. But they're not. Tells you all you need to know.

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.

Good points.

@CassieMaddox - if a huge number of children have seen porn by year 6, do you not think the focus should be on preventing that or addressing that, rather than exposing all children to information about porn even though a large number won’t have been exposed to it?

Is this not just simply normalising the abuse of kids?

Every single one of those organisations needs to be closed down but they will probably all get awards and more funding.

It's really weird to boast about how you've tried to remove safeguarding measures from children.

You should reflect on that.

I'm beginning to think that the phrases 'right wing' and 'culture wars' really mean a desire to abandon child safeguarding. It's DARVO - THEY'RE the ones creating the culture wars, the Tories are the one who've put time into thinking about the detail and what's best for child wellbeing. Which anyone who's actually read the document would see. It contains nuance, flexibility for different situations.

Any organisation in good faith would be discussing the detail and not just denouncing the document outright.

I can only think of one group of people who removing all boundaries from teaching sexual content to children in school benefits.

If being labelled as right wing is the price I have to pay for protecting children, I'm ok with that.

If the aim was to whip everyone into line by providing a list of universally respected organisations who we should all defer to, it may have the unforeseen consequence of telling us who we should ask sharp questions of.

(Looking hard at the National Education Union, whose approach to safeguarding seems to be taken from Captain Oveur in Airplane)

Are you coming for… childline? As someone who has experience working for childline this is wild and that’s coming from someone who soundly disagreed with the way they were recording gendered issues and also felt that the whole model was out dated. But a front for grooming???

I read the guidance in details and with a lot of experience in schools I just didn’t think it was clear enough to be useful. It was oddly vague in crucial areas and arbitrarily specific in others. I am firmly on the fence over a lot of the content I just don’t think it was fit for purpose and I suspect the NEU will be representing concerns that it sets teachers up to fail, which was my impression. It’s not necessarily ‘pedos’ who want it changed it will also be organisations who found it to be as clear as mud.

cannot disagree more over the evidence of nuance JJ the document and it was written by civil servants not ‘the tories’.

It was oddly vague in crucial areas and arbitrarily specific in others

Where, can you point to these in the draft guidance?

Sure
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/protecting-children/implementing-the-online-safety-act-protecting-children/

Latest research[1] shows that the average age at which children first see online pornography is 13 – although nearly a quarter come across it by age 11 (27%), and one in ten as young as 9 (10%).

It would be more protective to explain it exists in primary school and options for what to do if they see it/are shown it, than ban teaching until y7 and leave kids who do see it unsupported.

Not right now cos I’m taking a break from work and would have to read it all again and quote bits I cba tbh cos I know no one is going to be interested in my take on this forum 🤷🏻‍♀️ teh domestic violence but I do remember as really standing out to me. You can’t teach about ‘specific injury detail’ or some such working until year 9 but can teach about the topic generally. What does that mean? It is both specific in prohibiting the mention of a specific feature of domestic violence and vague in describing what that actually is and also how you would avoid it or what the rationale is.

Above to @ResisterOfTwaddleRex. that would be one aspect that I would point to.

Actually a more rational response would be banning streaming porn, which is harmful to everyone. But men don't want to.

😂👍

I think not teaching children about porn and sex until an age where we know a large proportion of them have already been exposed to it is a safeguarding risk. Surprised to see you boasting about that 😂

the Tories are the one who've put time into thinking about the detail and what's best for child wellbeing
Yes. That's why the average height of children has decreased under the Tory government 😂
#sarcasm

I guess this is exactly why it’d be good for labour to see the results of the consultation - if we just scrap it all now, then any kind of reasoned response would be lost. There is likely to be a whole range of reasons behind different groups supporting/ opposing this and the whole purpose of consultation is surely to dig into that.

Feedback that says ‘some good ideas, but this implementation won’t work’ is a world away from ‘we shouldn’t restrict RSHE at all’ type responses.

My child is five. At least half of her class have unrestricted phone or tablet access

I certainly hope someone would be looking at the responses for sure. Didn’t read the full article so didn’t realise the idea might be to chuck away all the responses. Shouldn’t really have waded in when I’m supposed to be working as can’t give it full attention but I strongly remember my overall impression of reading the guidance being that I felt it opened up a lot of problem areas for teachers, especially in secondary.

To be fair I might be misunderstanding - they’re calling for the guidance to be scrapped and say this consultation was not done well given its timing during the election period. They are calling for a new review. I read that as this consultation effectively being scrapped but that isn’t what it necessarily means. If you decide to scrap the guidance wholesale and start again, then I guess you can still review these responses and let that feed in to your new plans (which would be sensible in my view).

If you want to kill three more years without having to do anything, just have another consultation.

And then lose the results. And not do anything for another year or two. And then when it gets to be a problem, guess what....? Have another consultation!

With a bit of care the Labour gvt can sit on their hands, not implement anything at all and say they're 'waiting for the consultation' and make sure they don't have to actually make a decision or do anything until after the next election.

I'm beginning to think that the phrases 'right wing' and 'culture wars' really mean a desire to abandon child safeguarding.

It is a hideous, hideous document, but worth being aware of the Pedophile Manifesto. Like the Denton Document it's a carefully planned laid out way of enabling men to enjoy abusing kids without any inconvenient boundaries, by selling a bloody stupid gullible public a lot of queer agenda crap and faux intellectual burble, rebranding it, and scolding and shaming everyone with a brain.

We're quite a long way down the path it set out, it's been thoroughly disheartening to see so many agencies who really want the best interests of a man's penis to be centred in matters regarding women and children.