Legal Counsel to the Christian Legal Centre Roger Kiska analyses the Department for Education’s updated guidance on relationships, sex and health education
This month, the Department for Education has released its long awaited updated guidance on Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education. The guidance is to be introduced from September 2026 and applies only to England. The guidance has received a major overhaul, largely for the better, but as will be detailed below, also for the regrettable.
The background: statutory requirements
Section 80 of the Education Act 2002 requires that all maintained schools teach relationships education as part of primary education, without a right of removal, and that secondary schools teach RSE without a right of removal for relationships education and a right of removal for sex education which may be overridden by the Head Teacher where exceptional circumstances exist. Health Education must also be taught.
Section 80A of the Act requires that the Department for Education publish guidance about the teaching of RSHE. The Independent School Standards applies Section80A relating to relationships education (primary), RSE (secondary), and having due regard to the DfE’s guidance, to independent schools. The Standards do not, however, require independent schools to teach health education.
Section 80A(2) outlines what must be taught as part of statutory relationships and RSE:
(a) the pupils learn about—
(i) the nature of marriage and civil partnership and their importance for family life and the bringing up of children,
(ii) safety in forming and maintaining relationships,
(iii) the characteristics of healthy relationships, and
(iv) how relationships may affect physical and mental health and wellbeing, and
(b) the education is appropriate having regard to the age and the religious background of the pupils.
Since the inception of statutory RSE, the DfE has greatly expanded the meaning of Section80A(2)(a)(i) to go well beyond teaching that same-sex marriage is law and that there are different forms of family structures. The earliest guidance spoke broadly, stating that schools must teach LGBT content, rather than defining what that content must be. It then signposted to external organisations with pro-LGBT promoting ethos’s like Stonewall and the National Education Union.
RSE has been used, in large part, to promote LGBT education, the teaching of gender identity ideology and in the most nefarious cases, wholly inappropriate and graphic education relating to pornography. At the same time, schools and the DfE have largely ignored S. 80A(2)(b) and the requirement that education be age appropriate and have regard to the religious background of pupils. There is no legal definition of what is age appropriate and the DfE has left it to individual schools to define themselves. This has been particularly well evidenced by former MP Miriam Cates, in a dossier she presented to then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, providing examples of bad practices in RSE delivery.
The new guidance
Over the last two years, there has been a significant shift in how society has embraced RSE. Many parents had had enough of arrogant schools dictating to them what their child must learn despite their concerns about age appropriateness and protecting their religious beliefs. Parents were also fed up with schools refusing to allow them to view materials they would be teaching their children. The situation became so bad with sex education that the previous government initiated an independent review over concerns of inappropriate material being presented to children.
The result of this conflation of controversy was the publication of new guidance. Some of it good and some of it not so good.
The not so good
Part of the issue with the “not so good” elements of the RSHE guidance is the mindset of the government and the immoral sewage that permeates much of our culture. The topics being taught our children can make a grown man blush. The government feels, and we must believe that they do so in good faith, that when schools teach children about things like revenge porn, sexting, and inappropriate sexual relationships, that they have the genuine desire to protect children. They may believe that some children are at risk because they are not being introduced to these themes at home.
The problem is this. The DfE has granted almost absolute discretion to individual schools to introduce these themes to their pupils where they deem it helpful or necessary. There are over 24,000 schools in England that enjoy that discretion. The most recent data is that in England alone, there are 468,300 full time teachers (513,436 if you include part-time teachers). That is an extraordinary number of schools and leaves over half a million teachers able to teach relationships education, RSE and sex education almost any way they choose to do so. Among those schools and teachers will be ideologically progressive teachers who want to use their classroom as a campaigning platform. There will also be teachers who are unable to appreciate what is age appropriate and what is not. Among those teachers are also individuals who, because of illiteracy over these very complex themes, will teach them in a manner which will do far more harm than good to their pupils.
Despite calls for age limits to teaching sex education, the Department for Education, under the Labour government, has jettisoned the previous government’s plans to set strict age boundaries for when and how sex education should be taught. Instead, individual schools can decide when to discuss mature themes like sharing nude photographs online or pornography, when they feel the need arises among their students.
This approach, however, makes schools part of the problem, more than part of the solution. A better approach would be that where a school becomes aware of such a set of circumstances, they could deal with it pastorally with the individual children affected and their parents, rather than open that pandoras box to all children in their care, some of whom won’t be developmentally ready to receive it.
The entirety of the approach of introducing children to deeply immoral elements of culture punishes parents who are doing things the right way, and raising their children to maintain their innocence, morality and self-esteem. Ultimately, this is the role of parents and not educators, who have no familial, spiritual or emotional investment in the future well-being of the children in their care.
The bottom line is that there are too many schools and too many teachers whose views on issues like LGB, transgender education, and sex education make them a detriment to the spiritual, moral and psychological development of our children. We need parents to raise our children, not campaigners.
The good
That being said, there is much welcome material in the guidance. The approach of the guidance has decidedly shifted away from promoting LGBT education or gender identity ideology. It has also, in very certain terms, made it clear to schools that parental rights matter.
First, in the area of parental rights, the guidance is clear that parents must be allowed an active role in the review or development of a school’s RSHE policies. Parents must be allowed to view materials used for RSHE (the must is underlined in the guidance as it is here). Schools are told not to enter into copyright agreements with RSE providers who seek to keep parents in the dark about what is being taught.
Schools are also told that should new material be introduced as part of RSE after a policy is already in place, parents must be informed and allowed to view the materials.
This is a big and welcome step forward and parents should exercise their rights liberally and muscularly.
The second positive relates to LGBT education. Paragraphs 67-72 deal with LGBT education. The approach of the guidance to this topic represents a fairly seismic shift from the previous guidance in that it is far more specific in what should be taught. While it is far from perfect, the fact that the DfE has clarified the scope of LGBT education rather than letting external providers and schools do it is a positive.
Pupils are to be taught about loving families, with the guidance suggesting that same-sex couples be included among these examples as part of primary education. The guidance suggests that discussions about stable and healthy same-sex relationships be interwoven into secondary education, and not taught as a stand-alone lesson. However, these are largely the only comments on LGB education made in the guidance. Nothing about allyship. No signposting to LGBT organisations anywhere in the guidance.
The preceding paragraphs (64-66) on equality do not go much further. Schools are told that they must teach the law about the protected characteristics and the Equality Act. They must also adhere to the public sector equality duty. These obligations pre-date statutory RSE.
Among the positive elements about LGBT education is that pupils are to be taught to recognise that people have legal rights by virtue of their biological sex which are different from the rights of those of the opposite sex with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment. Pupils are to be taught factually, neutrally, and carefully about gender reassignment. Pupils are not to be taught contested matters as fact, and the guidance uses the example of not teaching that all children have gender identities. Cartoons and diagrams that oversimply gender reassignment are not to be used, especially with younger children, because of the potential of leading them towards gender confusion. Lastly, schools are to avoid using external providers which are ideological, misrepresent the law or have a vested interest in what is being taught (such as campaigning groups).
Why the LGBT guidance is problematic
While better, the LGBT guidance is far from perfect. The Education Act 2002, for example, while mandating that pupils be taught about marriage and different forms of family, nowhere suggests this should be done at the primary level. This element of the guidance should rightly upset parents with young children who do not want these mature themes introduced at such a tender age; especially where recent history suggests that schools can be overwhelmingly ideological in how they present this theme.
It is noteworthy that the United States Supreme Court recently ruled that schools must give parents a right of parental opt out from primary school LGBT education. A similar challenge is before the European Court of Human Rights in the Izzy Montague case, which has been supported by the Christian Legal Centre since 2018. A win for Izzy in Strasbourg may require a change to the guidance and even the Education Act itself on the issues of opt-outs from relationships education.
Conclusion
All in all, the guidance is a mixed bag of the good and the lamentable. There are definitely welcome elements and changes in the DfE policies on parental rights and LGBT education; but when one takes a deeper dive into the guidance, there is also much to be concerned about. The pendulum is swinging in the right direction, but the guidance does not do enough to protect our children from ideological or age inappropriate education.
