My Lords, I have also put my name to this amendment. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, that the present position is untenable. In 2019 the Government updated the relationships and sex education guidance to make the teaching of certain content compulsory in all schools. The guidance was clear that content should be age-appropriate, developmentally appropriate and—I underline the next words—anchored in science and material facts. It seems that a significant number of independent so-called RSE providers have created materials that promote to schoolchildren, including quite young children, the idea that biological sex is a spectrum, that we all have an inner gender identity that should take priority over biological sex and that our assumed genders are assigned to us at birth.
One may agree or disagree with those propositions, and one may agree or disagree with them being put forward as scientifically based fact, but it is also clear that the 2019 guidance made paramount that parents should have visibility of what is being taught to their children. There are many references to that in the guidance, which says that parents must be consulted in developing and reviewing RSE policies; that
“All schools must have in place a written policy”;
that policies should reflect the communities they serve; and that policies should be “made available to parents” and published on the school website.
However, the intention for openness also covered RSE content because policies should:
“Set out the subject content, how it is taught and who is responsible for teaching it.”
and
“include sections covering … details of content/scheme of work”.
I support this amendment for three main reasons. First, there is clear evidence that the 2019 RSE guidance has resulted in some schools using ideologically driven
materials not grounded in science, in my view, with children, including some very young children. This has particularly been so in the field of gender ideology, where some materials appear to deny the reality of biological sex. These teachings have consequences, not least for women’s sex-based rights.
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Secondly, it is very clear that the 2019 guidance was intended to enable parents to engage with materials used in their children’s education. Thirdly, however, it has become apparent that some external resource providers, including some with a notoriously fixed and driven view of these matters, are actively seeking to prevent parents seeing the materials being used, including by using arguments based on commercial confidentiality.
In my view, this amendment provides a solution. Its purpose is to counter what I describe as this obfuscation by enshrining in law a parental right to review curriculum materials that is presently merely alluded to in guidance. For all the reasons set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, I strongly believe that this Government should do that.