Schools block parents from seeing ‘harmful’ sex education materials

Schools are blocking parents from seeing sex education materials after the Government failed to fulfil a pledge to make the curriculum more transparent, campaigners have warned.

Some companies providing sex education materials in schools have obstructed parents from viewing materials, citing commercial confidentiality and copyright laws.

Conservative MPs and peers have urged the Department for Education to intervene, warning that relationship and sex education in schools is a “wild west”, with evidence that children are being exposed to “adult sexuality and adult ideology” that is “doing them harm”.

Baroness Barran, an education minister, told peers in the House of Lords last July that the Department for Education would write to schools in the autumn term “to set out a clear expectation that schools respond positively to any reasonable requests from parents to view curriculum materials.”

However, The Telegraph has learnt that no such letter has been sent.

Concern gender identity being taught ‘as a fact’

Bayswater, a support group for parents of trans-identified children and young people, said that schools are continuing to block parents from viewing sex education materials.

“Parents consistently report a link between PHSE [Personal, health social and economic] lessons and their children’s declaration of a trans identification,” a spokesperson said. “Schools tell us the lessons are impartial, but don’t show us the materials, leaving us concerned that gender identity is being taught as fact rather than a belief that some but not all people hold. If parents can see maths or science lessons, why is this area different?”

John Denning, the head of education at The Christian Institute, said: “Given the very concerning RSE materials that do exist, it seems inexplicable that the Department for Education has still not sent a letter to schools requiring this, six months after the minister committed to doing so.”

Miriam Cates, a Tory MP on the education select committee, warned last year that the relationships and safe education framework for schools “has opened the floodgates to a whole host of external providers who offer sex education materials to schools, and 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.”