PSHE update

As the DSCF no longer exists, the Department of Health asked NICE to run a consultation on sex and relationships education. It's pretty much a re-run of the earlier consultation. I wrote this for work.

There is a lot more to say on the subject of PSHE and Dr Petra Boynton has covered all the main issues in her blog.

Religion, sex and death - election style

It must be election time. The main parties are parading their religious beliefs in order to court what they imagine to be the faith vote.

Both Cameron and Brown's Easter messages are likely to alienate more people than they attract though - both non-believers and people of other faiths. Gordon Brown said that 'the Christian Church is the conscience of our country' and that the visit of the Pope in the autumn would 'make this a special year for the UK'. I'm not sure what meaning of 'special' he was using.

Cameron's Thought For The Day style homily included: 'No matter what faiths we follow, we can all draw strength from Christ's message of hope, of a new beginning and a promise of a new dawn'. It is to be assumed that he will be drawing strength from other religions, too. Or not.

The Tories have gone further than Labour (so far) in parading their religious credentials. In an interview with the Catholic Herald, Cameron pledged to lower the abortion limit, block assisted dying and allow schools to teach PSHE (sex education) any way they like.

On abortion, he said the limit should be reduced to 20 or 22 weeks, His reason for this is 'the way medical science and technology have developed in the past few decades'. He doesn't go into details and blatantly ignores scientific evidence.

Foetal viability was rigorously examined by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology in 2007. The Committee concluded that:

'While survival rates at 24 weeks and over have improved they have not done so below that gestational point. Put another way, we have seen no good evidence to suggest that foetal viability has improved significantly since the abortion time limit was last set, and seen some good evidence to suggest that it has not.'

This conclusion is shared by the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Foetal viability means survival of foetuses who are alive at variable times during the pregnancy or the capability of surviving the neonatal period and growing up into an adult.

To put this into context, in 2007, 89% of terminations happened before 13 weeks. In 2005, only 1.3% happened between 20 and 24 weeks.

Are Catholics in this country so different from those in America and Australia? 64% of US Catholics disapprove of the statement that abortion is morally wrong in every case and 72% of Catholics in Australia say decisions about abortion should be left to individual women and their doctors. Cameron may well be scuppering himself with all but the most hard-line Catholic voters, let alone with the rest of us.

His argument against assisted dying is that there is a 'line to be drawn between allowing nature to take its course under some incredibly painful circumstances and on the other hand allowing doctors or others (however well-intentioned) to accelerate death. I think it would be wrong to tread over this line, because there are very serious implications for our families, and for our society as a whole'. The biggest danger he sees is 'that terminally ill people may feel pressurized into ending their lives if they feel they've become a burden on loved ones'.

He presents no scientific research, no statistics, no information from countries where assisted dying has long been successfully carried out. He just goes for the scare tactic. He also commits the hoary old mistake of of assuming that nature is good and right. Perhaps he'll remember that when someone close to him needs an organ transplant or cancer treatment. And he seems to have forgotten (or ignored) a poll showing that over 80% of people in the UK are in favour of assisted dying. Never let the facts get in the way of rhetoric.

When it comes to sex education, he thinks that 'schools should be allowed to teach it in a way that's consistent with their beliefs, and parents should be free to decide whether or not their children should take part in these lessons... I'm a big supporter of faith schools'.

He may think this is a vote-catcher but he is putting the health and well-being of the next generation at risk by allowing religious schools to keep them in ignorance or mix facts with faith.

As I wrote about PSHE before, it's hard to see how a school with a strong religious ethos will be able to teach the facts and get its religious message across without these two aims coming into conflict. Children in faith schools are often the most in need of accurate, impartial information as devoutly religious parents are unlikely to be willing or able to give it to them.

Proposed Conservative amendments would strike the requirement from the current PSHE proposals that teaching should 'endeavour to promote equality', 'encourage the acceptance of diversity' and 'emphasise the importance of both rights and responsibilities'. They would mean that schools would not be required to teach PSHE and also allow parents to withdraw pupils of any age.

The danger is that young people have no way of judging the quality of any sex and relationship teaching they do get until it is too late and they fall pregnant or get an STI. And how will young gay people cope in a school whose religion actively disapproves of homosexuality? The irony is that good PSHE would help reduce abortion rates overall and help women face the decision on whether to have a termination in a more informed way, which could reduce the (already small) number who need late ones.

The Tory party's stance on equality wasn't helped when Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, said that Christian B&B owners should be allowed to turn away gay couples. Hotels should take anyone but Christians should be allowed to say who comes into their homes - even though these homes are businesses for tax and legal purposes like hygiene and health and safety - laws which Christian B&B owners would of course observe because they don't happen to clash with their bigoted beliefs. The law says that services must be provided to everyone without prejudice. Grayling's message appears to say that belief puts you above the law.

It's not just the Tories who are pushing the religious agenda. Religious groups are trying to give the impression that they can deliver masses of voters. In previous elections when parties running on the Christian ticket stood, they failed in no uncertain terms. In the last European election, the Christian Party averaged only 1.6% of the vote, despite having a candidate in every constituency.

A group called Westminster 2010 has made a declaration which includes pledges to

'protect the life of every human being from conception to its natural end and we refuse to comply with any directive that compels us to participate in or facilitate abortion, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, euthanasia or any other activity that involves intentionally taking innocent human life'.

and

'support marriage - the lifelong covenantal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife. We believe it is divinely ordained, the only context for sexual intercourse (...) and we refuse to submit to any edict forcing us to equate any other form of sexual partnership with marriage'.

So - no abortion, assisted suicide, embryo-based research, civil union, sex outside marriage or divorce. By refusing 'to submit to any edict' they are partly referring to equality law. That's law passed by Government and approved by the Queen (they're very keen on saying this is a Christian country based on Christian values because the Queen is Head of State and Head of the Church).

This manifesto is signed by five senior clerics, a peer, the chair of the Mission and Public Affairs Committee of the Church of England, the principals of three theological colleges and senior staff of around a dozen Christian associations and campaigning groups. That's a lot of heavy pressure put on MPs, threatening them with lost votes if they don't promote the same values. Blackmail is now apparently part of the democratic process. It should be noted that less than 3% of the population go to Church of England services at Easter, the festival on which the whole religion rests.

No wonder Brown and Cameron are bending over backwards to appease the religious voters. Except that the days of people receiving political guidance from the pulpit are long gone. Very few people now vote on single issues. Voting for a party purely on its stance on abortion, for example, is likely to land you with an MP or party you disagree with on many other issues, like tax, health care or foreign policy.

Not one of these religious messages puts women's and gay rights or health and well-being or personal choice before faith. Not one of them is evidence-based. Not one is even humane. Vote for the Dark Ages.

Balls to sex education

The government's plans for better sex education in all schools has been watered down by an amendment to the Children, Schools and Families Bill allowing faith schools to 'reflect [their] religious character' in the way PSHE (personal, social, health and economic education) is taught.

The amendment comes after what the Catholic Education Service described as a period of 'extensive lobbying'.

The Schools Secretary Ed Balls is insisting that the amendment is not a watering down but teaching unions and the National Secular Society have condemned the move, saying that it betrays children in faith schools. These children are often the most in need of accurate, impartial information as devoutly religious parents are unlikely to give it to them.

In a letter to The Guardian, Balls writes that the legislation 'will not allow the teaching of homophobia'. Schools will have to 'teach the full programme of study. This includes promoting equality and encouraging acceptance of diversity. (...) what they cannot do is suggest that their views are the only ones. (...) The bottom line is that all young people should receive accurate and balanced information and discrimination is prevented in all schools'.

I've written before about what some hard-core religious groups think about sex education and while not all schools will be this extreme, it's hard to see how a school with a strong religious ethos will be able to fulfill both the legal requirement to teach the full programme and get its religious message across without these two aims coming into conflict. They may not 'suggest that their views are the only ones' but there are ways of presenting alternative views without giving them equal weight, making it perfectly clear what you think about them.

Teenage pregnancy rates have started to fall. Stats from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2008 pregnancy in under 18s fell by 3.9% and in under 16s by 7.6%. While that's good news, this is not the time to start introducing amendments that could risk them going back up again. And they are still some of the worst in Western Europe. Hard-core religionists are particularly keen on denying women the power to understand and control their own bodies. When it comes to sex education, knowledge is power. Young women should know, for example, how to avoid needing an abortion and, if they do need one, how to get it - without any judgemental moral overtone.

The Government pledged to halve teen pregnancies by 2010. Ed Balls admitted that "It was a really ambitious target - it was a 50% fall. I think it was right to set an ambitious target and it is going to be really hard to make that amount of fall. But it is not enough. I'm still worried about it and there is a lot more to do."

The current amendment doesn't look like it's going to help achieve this target, whatever he says.

Teaching teenagers about sex is hard enough as it is, as an excellent article on Scarlateen points out. Allowing religious schools to mix facts with faith will make it even harder for young people to get the impartial information they need to protect themselves and to explore their sexuality.

It may be problematic for teachers who are not used to talking about contraception, pre-marital sex, homosexuality and relationships to present the information well - even if their intentions are good. How will children be taught to use condoms if the school's stance is that contraception is a sin? At best, there will be a mixed message leaving them confused. A school may teach that homosexuals are equal under the law in this country but that, according to their God, it's a sin, against natural law. Which message will be stronger?

Some religious leaders are campaigning hard for schools' right to discriminate against gay people in employment, for the right to opt out of equality law - what message does this send to pupils?

Giving equal or greater weight to abstinence won't work either.

Rabbi Dr. Jonathan Romain called on the Government to withdraw the amendment, saying, “Children at faith schools have just as much right to information that could help them avoid an unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted infection" but many religious leaders disagree with him.

PSHE is not just about contraception and STIs. Children and teenagers often have no idea how relationships work, when to have sex, whether to have sex, what kind of sex to have, how to talk about feelings, what to do about sexual abuse and so on. Many will just muddle along and be fine but many will not. Most teens worry at some point about being 'normal' and need reassurance.

The aim of PSHE is to teach more than just the mechanics of sex but there's a difference between teaching young people that they must be responsible, that acts have consequences, and loading them with moral judgements, fear, guilt, insecurities, doubt and prejudice.

We've already seen how the Catholic Church tried to prevent teenage girls having the HPV vaccine that could save their lives because, they said, it would encourage them to have sex. After protests they reluctantly allowed the vaccine as long as no sex ed accompanied it, thus leaving girls vulnerable to every other kind of infection, along with pregnancy. This does not bode well.

Are Catholic nuns going to be happy showing teenagers how to put on a condom?

Of course, it's not just Catholic schools that may be a problem and of course some faith schools will provide good quality PSHE but in some cases, while the head teacher and the school governors may be in favour of impartial teaching, individual teachers of strong belief may find ways to subvert that.

The Tories' position on the Bill is no better. Proposed Conservative amendments would strike the requirement that PSHE should 'endeavour to promote equality', 'encourage the acceptance of diversity' and 'emphasise the importance of both rights and responsibilities'. They would mean that schools would not be required to teach PSHE and also allow parents to withdraw pupils of any age from SRE (sex and relationship education).

Balls may think he has set up enough safeguards to protect young people and to ensure that they all receive an adequate preparation for adult life, but unless schools are closely and constantly monitored, how will he ensure that all children are being well served? If a teacher oversteps the mark, unless a pupil reports them, no one will know. Teenagers won't be able to judge the quality of the information they get, they may not know they are being sold short until they fall pregnant or get an STI - and may not recognise that they have one until they've passed it on.

And let's not forget that what are often described as 'Christian children' or 'Muslim children' (etc) are more realistically described as the children of Christian (etc) parents who have chosen what school to send them to. On the other hand, many (mostly middle class) parents send their children to faith schools thinking they will get a better education there. They may have liberal values and be keen on full sex education but the children won't be getting it. It's unlikely that many children will feel comfortable discussing sex ed with parents, who may therefore not find out what is being taught them. All privileges have losers and, in allowing religious schools this leeway, it can only be the children who lose out.

Finally, even in non-religious schools, the maximum age for parents to keep children out of sex ed classes has been dropped from 19 to 15. But by that age, many teens are already experimenting. The Bill is a step in the right direction but falls far short of making sure that all young people are fully equipped to understand and enjoy their sexuality.

Mark Steel has commented on the story here.

Too Much Too Soon - Fear and Loathing in Sex Education

Norman Wells of the Family Education Trust has written a guidance document for parents about the Government's proposed plans for sex education - now called PSHE - and has whipped up a predictable reaction in The Telegraph, The Mail and The Express.

The FET's website makes no overt mention of religion, it promotes 'family values'. But reading between the lines, it is clear where these values come from. Wells writes that sex is not intended to be just about the joining of two bodies together, but the joining of two lives. In the context of faithful, lifelong marriage, sexual intimacy expresses the total self-giving of a husband and wife to each other.

If sex is intended to be anything, who is doing the intending? Once the hand of God becomes clear, what follows is pretty inevitable.

Alongside the propaganda, there are a lot of factual inaccuracies, many of which appear to have been directly copied from the Christian Medical Forum's submission to BCAP that I wrote about recently (and also here). They both claim, for example, that there is no good evidence against abstinence, that condoms are not 100% effective and therefore should not be promoted at all, and that STIs and teen pregnancy are rising therefore sex education doesn't work. One of the FET trustees is Stammers - who wrote one of the papers the CMF cited in its submission.

It is true that STIs and teen pregnancy are a serious problem (although pregnancy is not as much of a problem as certain groups make out, as I mentioned in the previous link). It's also true that sex education is far from what it could be and that parents need to be much more involved and supported. This is hardly a new issue - anyone remember The Specials' Too Much Too Young? 

However. And it's a big however.

Wells' guidance is dangerously misleading. Its main target is not just the Government's plans for PSHE, it is sex itself. The usual mix of fear and loathing that has infected hard-line Christians since St Paul is in full flow here. Early on he says that behind plausible-sounding arguments and innocuous-sounding words there is a specific agenda at work to undermine the role of parents and to tear down traditional moral standards. Sex education is an ideological battlefield on which a war is being waged for the hearts and minds of our children.

This emotionally over-wrought opening sets the tone for the whole guidance. As if he doesn't have his own agenda. Frequent use of the word 'children' rather than 'teenagers' ups the emotional ante too.

Wells' three main points are:

1. Parents should teach children about sex
2. Sex should only ever happen within marriage
3. Anyone who suggests otherwise (including the Government) is destroying the moral fabric of society.

His concern is that making PSHE statutory in the curriculum would inevitably reduce the influence of parents over what is taught. His modus operandi is to scare parents that the Government (who let's face it, most Telegraph, Express and Mail readers did not vote for) is going to turn their children into rabbits - pregnant, infected rabbits merrily having abortions with the schools colluding to keep parents in ignorance until society comes crashing down around us. I am not exaggerating.

It is a parent's right, he maintains, to teach children about sex in accordance with their religious beliefs. That's the parent's beliefs, not the child's. They should have the right to take children out of PSHE classes.

Parents should speak about sexual matters with modesty and restraint.  If the child's entire education consists of the parent saying 'no sex before marriage' then that is all they will learn. Any misinformation the parent gives, knowingly or not, will be all the child has to go on. Presumably there will be some additional information on the wedding night about what goes where.

There is no need even to teach children the correct names for body parts because all parents talk to their children about their bodies when they wash and dress them from their earliest days and are well able to decide whether to use the proper biological terms or other names for their private parts. So it's fine for a child to grow up thinking it has a woo-woo? Or that 'down there' is something no nice child ever talks about, let alone looks at or - heaven forfend - touches?

Many parents do not feel confident or comfortable talking about sex and schools need to give them full support. However, the religious position is that this support comes from faith, not the classroom - unless schools are free to peddle the religious line too. Wells' main reason for wanting sex education to come from God (via the parent) is that this will instil morality, not facts. He rails against the Government outlines: there is no recognition of moral absolutes and... young people are not to be given any clear moral direction... there is no such thing as objective right and wrong. 

Well, that's because there isn't. Only the most religious believe that there are divinely handed-down moral absolutes. And what are these moral values? Homophobia is quite clearly one of them; it is casually strewn throughout the guidance as PSHE will, he claims, equate marriage with same-sex civil partnerships and ... assume that both types of relationships are of equal benefit and stability... it is almost certain that homosexuality will be presented as a normal and natural lifestyle choice.

So what should young people be taught?

Wells does not want them given any information they could use because it is not informed choices we should be aiming for, but wise, moral and lawful choices.  It's the old argument that if you tell them about it, they will rush out and do it. Even mentioning the word 'gay' will of course instantly turn a child from the straight and narrow.

Wells is so anti-choice it's not funny. Contrary to the prevalent view among sex educators, young people do not need to learn about a wide range of 'sexualities' and sexual behaviours; they do not need detailed information about the full range of contraceptive methods; and they do not need to be presented with a menu of sexual options from which they can make 'informed choices' when they feel they are 'ready' to become sexually active. Modern sex education is characterised by a lack of honesty, a lack of modesty, a lack of any moral framework worthy of the name, and a lack of respect for marriage as the proper context for sexual expression.

A lack of honesty? Is keeping young people in ignorance honest? Not only does it risk their health, it also means that they are likely to pick up what sex knowledge they do get in the playground or through experimentation.

He continues: Teenagers need to be taught that reproduction is one of the primary functions of sexual intercourse and sex should therefore be set in the context of a faithful, lifelong relationship (ie marriage), which provides the most stable environment in which to raise children. 

Wells believes that if parents teach about sex in a (Christian) moral, modest and respectful way, this will prompt young people to save themselves until marriage (that word 'saved' again). Abstinence is the only way. This stance is woefully ignorant of human nature and teenage nature in particular. A bit of a moral lecture, maybe some praying and some vague information about the mechanics of sex (if they're lucky) is hardly going to quench teenage hormones. And is terrifying them with the wrath of God really going to produce mature, healthy and responsible adults?

My particular favourite part of the guidance is there are some sexual practices that it may be better not to know anything about at all, at any age. Sadly, he does not go into any further details.

There is much more to say about this pernicious document. The excellent Dr Petra Boynton will be analysing it in her blog.