Around 600 children were removed by their parents from a school in Birmingham on Friday in protest of a lesson that helped children understand about LGBT+ life.
The Parkfield Community primary school in Birmingham has cancelled lessons aiming to teach primary school-aged children about same-sex relationships and gender after the parents of around 600 students at the school withdrew their children in protest.
The lesson was the brainchild of Andrew Moffat, who was awarded an MBE for his work in LGBT+ equality through the campaign, No Outsiders, where the ethos was to promote LGBT+ equality and to question transphobia and homophobia in primary schools.
Students were being taught five No Outsiders lessons each school year.
In a letter to parents, the school said, “Up to the end of this term, we will not be delivering any No Outsiders lessons in our long term year curriculum plan, as this half term has already been blocked for religious education (RE).
“Equality assemblies will continue as normal and our welcoming No Outsiders ethos will be there for all.
The school has now confirmed that they have put the lessons on hold and will, according to The Guardian, “resume only after a full consultation with every parent”.
The letter continued, “The discussions were a helpful first step and identified the key issues that are concerning parents, including the ethos, the books, the age appropriateness, the lessons and the assemblies. The agreed outcome of the meeting was the need to have a discussion with the school community about the No Outsiders curriculum and how it should be delivered.”
Some parents have argued that their children are “too young” to be learning about same-sex relationships.
One mother, Fatima Shah said, “We are not a bunch of homophobic mothers. We just feel that some of these lessons are inappropriate. Some of the themes being discussed are very adult and complex and the children are getting confused.
“They need to be allowed to be children rather than having to constantly think about equalities and rights.”
The UK’s Government has launched an LGBT action plan, in which it wants to deal with issues facing the LGBT+ community in the UK, including in the education system.
“This Government is committed to making the UK a country that works for everyone. We want to strip away the barriers that hold people back so that everyone can go as far as their hard work and talent can take them”.
Big words, so what exactly are they promising?
Penny Mordaunt, the Minister for Women and Equality has outlined 75 points she wants her office to push in order to achieve better rights, equality, safety and visibility for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people of the UK.
Education was a big part of the government’s action plan, here’s what Ms Mordaunt said she plans to do:
“We will take action so that our education system supports every LGBT child or young person”
We will continue to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools and the wider education system. The Government Equalities Office will complete its anti-homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying programme. This £3 million programme will reach more than 1,200 schools in England by March 2019. From March 2019 to March 2020, the Government Equalities Office will provide further funding for interventions in schools, and consider further projects to tackle bullying in further and higher education institutions. The Department for Education will work with the Government Equalities Office to understand how best to support schools to tackle homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying and how to continue this programme of work in a sustainable way through the school curriculum and policies in the medium and to long term. The Crown Prosecution Service will review and update their LGBT Hate Crime Schools Pack in partnership with young LGBT people and identity-based bullying professionals to tackle bullying in schools.
We will update Sex and Relationships Education guidance to support the Government’s reforms to this subject. As we have previously announced, the Department for Education will update the statutory guidance on Relationships Education in primary schools, and Relationships and Sex Education in secondary schools. These updates will ensure that the guidance supports teaching that is age appropriate and relevant to all pupils, whatever their developing sexual orientation or gender identity.
We will ensure that schools have access to the guidance they need to support LGBT pupils. The Department for Education will publish an update to its guidance for schools about how to apply the Equality Act 2010. In addition, the Government Equalities Office will work with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to publish comprehensive guidance for schools on how to support trans pupils.
We will support LGBT teachers to be themselves at work and improve the diversity of the teaching profession. The Department for Education is investing £2 million to establish regional hubs to support teachers from underrepresented groups, including those teachers who are LGBT, to progress into leadership. The Department for Education has also already supported the launch of ‘LGBTEd’ – a network for LGBT teachers and allies – and will continue to engage with stakeholders on making the teaching profession more LGBT inclusive.
We will ensure that support is available for LGBT students who are victims of hate crime and online harassment. The Government has asked the Office for Students to take steps to ensure that higher education providers are places of tolerance for all students. This includes working with higher education providers, for example, by supporting work to ensure that students who have been a victim of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic incidents have the support in place that they need, through access to appropriately trained staff and signposting to local specialist organisations. The Office for Students will investigate and tackle gaps in participation, experience, safeguarding and success for LGBT students in higher education.
Here’s what the government plans are in other key areas:
Having lived and grown up in Wales my whole life, sexual education during secondary school was a massive let down, not only for me and my LGBT peers past and present, but also the straight community…
When teaching pubescent teenagers about sexual intercourse in secondary school PSHE classes, the teacher was always greeted with snickering laughs, comments from the lads and jokes cracked by some lame guy.
As Wales prepares to give sex education in Wales school an LGBT inclusive over-haul, I was reminded of my own experience of sexual education.
Wales have announced plans to have a major overhaul of their sexual education in schools, planning to change their current curriculum. By doing this, Wales will be ‘leading the way’ in sexual education, something that is extremely important.
The changes would mean the subject would be renamed to ‘relationships and sexual education’, and were announced by Wales’ education secretary, Kirsty Williams. Williams has said that the days of traditional sex education were ‘long gone’.
30 years ago, section 28 was introduced, which banned the ‘promotion of homosexuality in schools’. Now, 30 years later, Wales is moving forward to include an LGBT inclusive subject in sexual education. The teaching will focus on issues such as consent, domestic abuse and diversity.
The new education curriculum will come into force in 2022, and will be taught to children from five to sixteen years of age. The subject will now be embedded in the curriculum, instead of being taught as a separate subject.
Bru-nO / Pixabay Is learning how to put a condom on a banana all that helpful?
Kirsty Williams said, ‘The world has moved on and our curriculum must move with it. Sex should never be taught in isolation for the simple reason that it is about so much more than just sex; it’s also about relationships, rights and respect and that must go hand in hand with a much broader understanding of sexuality. Anything less does a disservice to our learners and teachers.’
Stonewall Cymru, and LGBT charity were pleased with the announcement. Their director, Andrew White, has been campaigning for this change for a while. White said: ‘It’s great news, particularly as this week is the anniversary of the introduction of section 28 and our research shows that a majority of LGBT young people here in Wales have heard nothing about LGBT issues in the classroom.
‘The legacy of section 28 unfortunately still lives on and this change will go some way to readdressing the balance.’
He then went on to say that these discussions should be in the classroom, as talking about it online could spread false information. ‘If we don’t, those conversations will happen on the web with sometimes unreliable sources.’
As a Welsh gay male, it’s important to see this change happen. It’s even better to see that my country, who have sometimes been a bit behind on LGBT rights, particularly in places such as the valleys, are the leading country to be putting this forward.
When I was in education, my sexual education consisted mainly of STD’s and how to avoid them, and I was always taught about wearing a condom before having intercourse with a woman. We were taught how to put a condom on a banana, and we also saw how condoms are packaged. We learned briefly about the female reproductive system, and how the egg is fertilised, but one thing we never touched on was LGBT sexual relationships.
As I discovered my sexuality, online porn websites were my education. Whilst I didn’t take scenes literally, understanding that whomever you have sex with must consent, it has been noted that people who watch porn may get lines blurred between what is acceptable in a real-life sexual relationship. Having consent taught in education systems is extremely important, for both heterosexual and homosexual people. Personally, I think what also needs to be taught is that sexuality is now being seen as fluid, as well as being young and confused. I didn’t truly accept who I was until I was 18/19.
Sexual education must also discuss alcohol and sex. Many encounters are under the influence of alcohol, and some are above board and others are sadly not. This must be covered, as ignoring the problem doesn’t achieve anything.
When I was young and watching pornography, I discovered how men have sex. I was able to tell how a condom went on by watching a porn star put one on. Whilst my body image confidence went down, I still took something away from porn other than a fun time. I learned how sex happens, and how it can work, albeit if it was edited together and the stars had no chemistry.
But learning from porn, whilst useful to me personally, is not how we should be learning as LGBT people. Even now, the transmission and treatment of HIV is rather hazy to me, and as a teenager finding sexual partners, I worried myself sick about contracting what I thought at the time to be a deadly disease. Being taught in school that HIV, whilst being deadly without treatment, is now easily treatable with correct medication, and also being taught easily preventable with the right methods, would have saved me a lot of time growing up. It would also be nice to see HIV being discussed openly as a disease that affects everyone, regardless of their sexuality. I still feel like many people see it as ‘a gay man’s disease’.
So whilst my sexual education taught me that pizza men would result in a sexual experience, I’m happy to see that Wales will now teach a new generation that sex doesn’t work like that.
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