JOHN SMEATON, DIRECTOR OF SPUC: Explicit sex ed agenda challenged by SPUC's Safe at School campaign

Monday 22 July 2013

Explicit sex ed agenda challenged by SPUC's Safe at School campaign

In a letter published today in The Telegraph newspaper, SPUC's Safe at School campaign has challenged the agenda of groups who want explicit sex education to be imposed upon primary schools under the cover of science lessons (see third letter at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/10193965/Let-patients-monitor-NHS-trusts-but-dont-follow-Labours-example.html ).

The letter from Safe at School was written in response to a letter published in The Telegraph on 19 July from the Sex Education Forum, the Mothers' Union and the Royal College of Nursing, among others (see 11th letter at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/10189069/Where-are-the-experts-coming-from-in-order-to-save-failing-hospitals.html) The letter from Safe at School, written by its coordinator Antonia Tully, reads:

Sex-free schooling

SIR – Sex education is, and should remain, a non-compulsory subject in primary school (Letters, July 19). It should not be smuggled into science classes, depriving parents of the crucial legal right to withdraw their children.

Our campaign, Safe at School, is about supporting parents, as the primary educators of their children, in protecting their offspring from graphic sex education.

The new primary science curriculum recognises that introducing sexual issues into the lives of young children under the guise of science is inappropriate. It lists the body parts that children at Key Stage 1 should be able to identify and that list contains no sexual organs.

Teachers do not have to worry about giving the “correct names” for genitalia or otherwise. This supposed need for children aged five to seven to be able to name correctly their genitalia is not going to safeguard them. Quite the reverse, it will stimulate an unhealthy interest in their sexual organs and is a violation of their privacy. Most parents are not drawing their children’s attention to genital organs and schools shouldn’t either.

Antonia Tully
Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
London SE11

Antonia also told the media today:

"Safe at School first identified the abuse of the National Curriculum in primary schools whereby sex education was being taught in science lessons. Last summer, Nick Gibb, then schools' minister, confirmed for Safe at School that it was wrong for sex education to be inserted into primary schools under the guise of science.

Distressed parents contacted me saying that their children's schools were telling them that sex education was a compulsory part of the science curriculum and that they could not withdraw their children. Nothing adequately expresses the horror parents experience when they actually see the cartoon films of sexual activity which their young children are subjected to in the classroom."