Authorities have denied a mother’s request to opt-out her child with learning disabilities from controversial gender ideology aspects of mandatory sex education in Wales, despite concerns of potential “damage.”
The Education Tribunal Of Wales has ruled on the authorities’ side that a 6-year-old child with serious learning disabilities must attend compulsory Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) in school.
The mother, who does not want to be named or identified, said that she feared the sexual and gender ideology elements of the curriculum would be “potentially damaging” for the child owing to his developmental stage, saying that his brain “will take things literally.”
Compulsory
Labour-led Wales has rolled out compulsory sex education plans that it says will “gradually empower learners” from a young age in subjects such as equity, sex, gender, and sexuality.Critics have said that children as young as 3 will be taught “sensitive and arguably inappropriate topics,” such as gender ideology, and that parents are being disenfranchised by being denied their “time-honoured right” to remove their child from sex education.
The Epoch Times has seen witness statement documents used in the tribunal that show that the mother’s decision to pull her son out was initially respected. However, this was subsequently overruled by an unnamed senior person in the Education Department in the Welsh Government.
The Welsh Government, local authorities involved in the case, and the school did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
The mother wanted to use Section 41 under the Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Act for exceptions to the curriculum requirements for learners with additional needs.
A document seen by The Epoch Times shows the Welsh Government said that “getting an exception via section 41 would be extremely rare and therefore we want to reflect on this.”
The boy has a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder and hypertonia, has been gastro-fed through a feeding tube since September 2020, and pretends to be a cat when he is dysregulated.
The mother said that initially her request to remove her son was accepted. But two weeks later, all parties involved, including specialists in the field and medical professionals, were overruled.
When challenged about the change of decision, the school’s deputy head teacher said that his “hands are tied.”
The school said that it was advised by local authorities that it could not withdraw the boy “from RSE lessons relating to sexual content and that we would need to ensure it is developmentally differentiated to his needs.”
However, there are concerns that school staff do not have the training to adapt RSE to his needs, and that the child would not be separated from other children during sex education and could listen in to it.
It is understood that the mother can review the materials, but any concerns she has can be overruled.
Inclusive
The Welsh Government says that curriculum content in RSE must “be inclusive and reflect diversity.”“It must include learning that develops learners’ awareness and understanding of different identities, views and values and a diversity of relationships, gender, and sexuality, including LGBTQ+ lives,” it adds in its Education Code.
The sex education legislation has also been criticised for almost entirely removing the word “sex” from its curriculum, along with the terms “male,” “female,” “boys,” “girls,” “straight,” or “heterosexual.”
‘Something Seriously Concerning’
Parents’ group Public Child Protection Wales (PCPW) has been supporting the mother and is considering appealing the decision.PCPW Chair Kim Isherwood told The Epoch Times, “If this case is not honoured and this child’s needs are not honoured, there is something seriously concerning going on.”
On the wider concerns of RSE, Ms. Isherwood said that they are being contacted by parents about children that have come home and said that “they don’t have to be a boy and they don’t have to be a girl.” She claimed that children have been put in detention after they refused to engage with explicit RSE material.
“All in the guise of health and well-being,” she said.
Professor of industrial economics at Nottingham University Business School David Paton, whose work on teenage pregnancy has been cited widely in academic literature, told The Epoch Times by email that it “sounds like a very distressing case.”
“One of the tragedies is that there is little if any evidence that mandatory sex education has benefits. For example, my research in health economics finds some evidence that laws mandating sex education in schools are associated with more (not fewer) teenage pregnancies,” he said.
“On the other hand, laws that allow parental opt-outs seem to minimise these adverse effects. This is consistent with a wide range of research showing that ensuring parents are involved in decisions relating to teenage sexuality (e.g. parental consent laws for abortion) are associated with better outcomes for young people,” he added.
A Welsh Government spokesperson has previously told The Epoch Times that learners “will only learn topics that are appropriate to their age and development. At a younger age, for example, children will be taught about treating each other with kindness and empathy. As they grow older, they will gain an understanding of topics such as online safety, consent and sexual health, all of which will be handled in a sensitive way.”
