Children in England’s schools need better sex education, experts tell MPs

Children need more and better sex and relationship education in England’s schools, to help them navigate the issues they are likely to face as they get older, experts have told MPs.

The Commons women and equalities committee heard that too few teachers in England have received training in how to deliver lessons in relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) since it became a compulsory topic in 2019.

Lucy Emmerson, chief executive of the Sex Education Forum, told MPs that young people reported that important issues such as power imbalances in relationships between boys and girls were often not being tackled in RSHE lessons.

“This isn’t something that you can just reel off some facts about. It relies on the confidence of a teacher to open up discussion to a diverse group and to manage some of those complexities,” Emmerson said.

“And not to just put a video on and think that’s going to do the job. Because, unfortunately, that’s what young people are complaining about, that sometimes that’s all the lessons are.”

Because RSHE was relatively new, “there haven’t been specialist teachers in the numbers that we need, there hasn’t always been space in the timetable or planning time, or the leadership support” in schools, Emmerson said.

Jonathan Baggaley, chief executive of the PSHE Association – representing teachers of personal, social health and economics wellbeing topics – said that untrained teachers would struggle to deliver lessons on highly sensitive subjects such as self-harm.

“There are ways to do that which could be damaging, in which you might instruct or even inspire practices of self-harm or in the context of eating disorders. Yet there are ways to do this incredibly safely and effectively.

“If teachers are not trained in best practices to have these conversations safely, they are not going to be able to choose materials which meet those principles as well,” Baggaley said.

Concern over the way primary and secondary schools can teach RSHE has caused the government to speed up its planned review into the guidance around the subject, with a public consultation expected later this year.

Much of the controversy has centred around allegations of inappropriate teaching materials involving LBGTQ+ and transgender issues used by external providers. But Baggaley said his association, with members in more than 8,000 schools, was not aware of widespread poor practice.

“If we want to tackle problematic materials the way to do it is through teachers having training,” Baggaley said.

The MPs also heard from campaigners representing parent groups, who warned of the “sheer volume” of pornography that was affecting young people, with parents powerless to stop it.

Tanya Carter, of the Safe Schools Alliance UK, called for a ban on smartphones among children and in schools.

“Once you’ve got smartphones in schools, every child in that school is only as protected as the least protected child in that school.

“It doesn’t matter what controls you’ve got on your own child’s smartphone, if another child in that school has no controls on their phone your child can be exposed to hardcore porn at lunchtime,” Carter said.