Outsourcing Sex Education Opens ‘Wild West’ of Indoctrination, Say MPs

This is the first government guidance of its kind on how schools should approach the teaching of sensitive issues. Alamy/PA

British MPs have discussed how materials are being flooded into schools by external providers who are exposing children to “deeply inappropriate, wildly inaccurate, sexually explicit, and damaging materials” in the name of sex education.

On Thursday, concerns were raised in Westminster Hall that children as young as six are being introduced to indoctrinating, graphic, and extreme sexual material from sex education providers. Westminster Hall debates give MPs an opportunity to raise local or national issues and receive a response from a government minister.

Conservative MP Miriam Cates, a former biology teacher, said it was it is important that children are taught clearly and truthfully about sex and that “sadly the case that the internet now presents children with a vast array of false and damaging information about sex.”

Not Suitable for Children

However, she opened her speech with “a health warning” saying it “is not suitable for children.”

“That is sadly ironic, given that all of the extreme and inappropriate material I am about to share has already been shared with children in our schools,” she said.

The government chose to make the teaching of relationships and sex education (RSE) compulsory in all secondary schools from September 2020, but she said that despite its good intentions, the new RSE framework has opened the “floodgates to a whole host of external providers who offer sex education materials to schools.”

Conservative MP Jackie Doyle-Price said that “anyone can be a provider.”

“The DFE needs to get a hold on that if it is going to protect our children from harm,”  added Doyle-Price.

“Now, children across the country are being exposed to a plethora of deeply inappropriate, wildly inaccurate, sexually explicit, and damaging materials in the name of sex education. That is extremely concerning for a number of reasons,” said Cates.

Cates named some of the providers, saying that school sex education provider, School of Sexuality Education defines sex is defined as, “anything that makes you horny or aroused.”  It is the same company that consulted makers of The Family Sex Show, which invited families to take children from age five to explore themes such as “boundaries, pleasure, consent, queerness, and sex” as well as featuring full-frontal nudity. The show was eventually pulled due to growing outrage over its content.

She said that the charity Sex Education Forum tells children they fall into one of two groups: menstruators or non-menstruators. And that the book for teachers, “Great Relationships and Sex Education,” suggests an activity for 15 year olds in which children are given prompt cards and have to say whether they think certain types of sexual acts are good or bad.

The LGBT organisation The Proud Trust has produced a dice game encouraging children to discuss explicit sexual acts, based on the roll of a dice.

Another company called Bish Training had materials that involved the discussion of a wide range of sexual practices—some of them violent. Bish is aimed at young people of 14 and over and provides training materials for teachers.

Indoctrination

She added that even primary schools are not immune from “using inappropriate materials.”

An “All About Me” programme developed by Warwickshire County Council’s Respect Yourself team introduces six and seven-year-olds to “rules about touching yourself,” she said. One poster put out in primary schools by Educate & Celebrate, said: “Age is only a number. Everyone can do what they feel they are able to do, no matter what age they are.”

Former Conservative Party leader MP Iain Duncan Smith on the subject of gender ideology said that “it is not just a sense of indoctrination; there are also physical consequences, because children will end up going through medical processes that lead them to almost irreversible problems later on, should it turn out to be something that is a problem for them.”

Cates replied that the problem is that these “ideas do not just stay as ideas; they have serious physical consequences.”

“There has been a more than 4,000 percent rise in the referrals of girls to gender services over the last decade, and a recent poll of teachers suggests that at least 79 percent of schools now have trans-identifying children. That is not a biological phenomenon. It is social contagion, driven by the internet and reinforced in schools,” she said, adding that is why it is “more important than ever that parents and schools tell children the truth about sex and relationships and gender.”

A spokesperson for Warwickshire County Council said in an email to The Epoch Times: “We no longer run the programme referred to. In 2019, the government introduced legislation (Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education England Regulations 2019) and guidance which placed statutory requirements on schools for the delivery of RSE programmes in primary and secondary schools, and removed that role from local authorities.

“As a consequence, the council made a decision in 2020 to replace the programme with an information and signposting offer to schools.

“Warwickshire County Council now signposts schools to the Department of Educations national materials and resources to support schools to meet their statutory requirements under the Relationships Education, Relationships, and Sex Education and Health Education England Regulations 2019.”

The Epoch Times requested comment from the School of Sexuality Education, Sex Education Forum, Educate & Celebrate, The Proud Trust, and Bish.

Teaching Risky Sex Acts

Labour and Co-operative Party MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle said that he disagreed with some of Cates’ examples.

“I did not plan to say this, but during the pandemic, my second cousin, a 15-year-old boy, died in a tragic accident of auto-asphyxiation. It devastated the family, as can be imagined, and happened in the pandemic when we were only allowed six people at the funeral,” he said.

“If he had been taught about risky sex acts, he was 15, not a pre-pubescent child, and how to make sure he did things safely, rather than just learning something from the internet that then led to the end of his life, he might still be around and his family might not be devastated,” he added.