Mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England—Educators’ Views on Children’s Rights
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Children’s Rights, RSE and the Law
2.1. What Is RSE?
2.2. RSE in the Context of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)
“[U]p-to-date, accurate information on sexual and reproductive health is publicly available and accessible to all individuals, in appropriate languages and formats, and to ensure that all educational institutions incorporate unbiased, scientifically accurate, evidence-based, age-appropriate and comprehensive sexuality education into their required curricula”[28]
2.3. RSE and the Policy Backdrop in English Schools
3. Methodology
4. Findings
4.1. Rights to Education: Access to Adequate RSE for All Children
“In our work, we’ve always said that it’s a child right, it’s every child’s right, they are entitled to good quality, comprehensive relationships and sex education…regardless of where they get it, they still have that right.”(Interview 5: director of RSE for England umbrella organisation)
“What’s happening about the children who are home educated? Are we meeting the needs of children educated outside mainstream school in pupil referral units, young offenders’ institutions, hospitals, all the rest of it? What about groups like gypsy Roma traveller children who we know quite often have been withdrawn from RSE but it isn’t impossible for them to be included, so you know let’s look out for particular groups that might be not having their rights fulfilled.”(Interview 5: director of RSE for England umbrella organisation)
“one of the main issues that people mostly have when they’re asked to teach, they haven’t been briefed on how to do that and they take their own values with them into the classroom. Yes. And it could be catastrophic!”(Interview 3: RSE consultant/educator—Southeast)
“If you kind of look at a standard state school day, of kids arriving at 8.45 and then they maybe have form time for a little bit and they have back to back lessons where they are shovelled from pillar to post with not really a whole load of breathing, thinking, resting time. Then they’re out the door at 3.15 or 3.24, the priorities are literacy, numeracy, science, whatever gets them the right amount of points for league tables for sort of performance related data. So even as an art teacher, and I’ve probably got a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it, but even historically as an art and textiles teacher, you just had them pulled out of your lessons the whole time because it wasn’t an important subject. You know you’d sit down to do an amazing lesson, I don’t know on environmental using different materials, and then half the class would be taken out for a maths intervention.”(Interview 4: RSE educator for independent schools)
4.2. Rights in Education: Children’s Rights and the RSE Curriculum
“I think I have actually never come across any classroom with different ages of children and young people who actually have ever heard about the UNCRC … I think most people don’t know about children’s rights. I mean they may have heard the word but … they are not able to apply the UNCRC to their everyday life or in school.”(Interview 3: RSE consultant/educator—Southeast)
“So they might come up with something like … it might be you know an on-line situation that somebody’s got a bit of a concern about, and we’ll say, well OK, well let’s just have a look at that, what might that … what do we need to learn about this? What might it look like? And then I’ll just put a session together based on … on that, because that way they want to learn it, and then I feed it back into the group and say, OK remember we talked about this, well we’re going to do a session on this and we’re going to look at it from lots of different perspectives.”(Interview 1: teacher/coach of children/young people with neurodevelopmental conditions—Northwest)
“I said, oh that’s nice, so where did you meet him? So we had a little chat about it. And then before we realised it, you know he … she’s never met him, she’s never seen a photograph of him… so we looked at that in the session. And you know … her idea of what was going on in that situation was very different than what might have been, but nobody’s looked at it from the other person’s perspective before.”(Interview 1: teacher/coach of children/young people with neurodevelopmental conditions—Northwest)
“In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions.”
4.3. Rights through Education: The Nature of RSE Guidance
“But at the same time, one of the reasons why young people in all the research say it’s too little too late, there’s not much on relationship, there’s not much inclusion around LGBTQ and … and that’s partly because schools haven’t been including those, they’ve done the minimum … ? done the minimum of what’s required under the National Curriculum. But young people are saying that they want it … they want better RSE.”(Interview 7: RSE practitioner in London)
“Yeah, so we often talk about sex and the law … I think it mostly comes up when we’re talking about sexual consent and sex and the law, and trying to help young people realise that it is there to protect them and it’s not about criminalising young people that have maybe have sex at fifteen you know, if they’re in a healthy relationship and if they’re both happy to and they do engage in sexual activity at the age of fifteen, the law isn’t going to prosecute them, it is there to protect them.”(Interview 2: education specialist with RSE charity)
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
Appendix A. List of Participants
Interviewee ID No | Role | Location | Gender |
---|---|---|---|
1 | Teacher/coach of children/young people with neurodevelopmental conditions | Northwest | female |
2 | Education specialist with RSE charity | Unspecified for anonymisation purposes | female |
3 | RSE consultant/director | Southeast | female |
4 | RSE educator for independent schools | Unspecified for anonymisation purposes | female |
5 | Director of RSE for England (umbrella organisation) | Central | female |
6 | Director of youth development organisation | Near London | female |
7 | RSE practitioner | London | male |
References
- UNESCO. International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education: An Evidence-Informed Approach (Revised Edition)? UNESCO: Paris, France, 2018. [Google Scholar]
- UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 22 (2016) on the Implementation of the Rights of the Child during Adolescence, U.N. Doc. CRC/C/GC/20 (6 December 2016). Available online: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589dad3d4.html (accessed on 28 August 2023).
- Vivancos, R.; Abubakar, I.; Phillips-Howard, P.; Hunter, P.R. School-based sex education is associated with reduced risky sexual behaviour and sexually transmitted infections in young adults. Public Health 2013, 127, 53–57. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Macdowall, W.; Jones, K.G.; Tanton, C.; Clifton, S.; Copas, A.J.; Mercer, C.H.; Palmer, M.J.; Lewis, R.; Datta, J.; Mitchell, K.R.; et al. Associations between source of information about sex and sexual health outcomes in Britain: Findings from the third National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3). BMJ Open 2015, 5, e007837. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Tanton, C.; Jones, K.G.; Macdowall, W.; Clifton, S.; Mitchell, K.R.; Datta, J.; Lewis, R.; Field, N.; Sonnenberg, P.; Stevens, A.; et al. Patterns and trends in sources of information about sex among young people in Britain: Evidence from three National Surveys of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles. BMJ Open 2015, 5, e007834. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Heah, R. Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in English Schools: A Children’s Rights Perspective. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, 2019. Available online: https://www.proquest.com/openview/f230575906304ca6e1d2f8b6736dc220/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=51922&diss=y (accessed on 2 February 2023).
- Children’s Commissioner. ‘Children and RSHE’ (4th March 2023). Available online: https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/2023/03/04/children-and-rshe/ (accessed on 2 February 2023).
- European Commission. Sexuality Education Across the European Union: An Overview; European Commission: Luxembourg, 2020.
- Federal Centre for Health Education. Sexuality Education in Europe and Central Asia: State of the Art and Recent Developments; Federal Centre for Health Education: Cologne, Germany, 2018. [Google Scholar]
- Cense, M.; Grauw, S.D.; Vermeulen, M. ‘Sex is not just about ovaries. ’Youth participatory research on sexuality education in The Netherlands. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 8587. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- World Health Organisation. INSPIRE: Seven Strategies for Ending Violence Against Children; World Health Organisation: Geneva, Switzerland, 2016.
- Campbell, M. The challenges of girls’ right to education: Let’s talk about human rights-based sex education. Int. J. Hum. Rights 2016, 20, 1219–1243. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Daly, A.; O’Sullivan, C. Sexuality education and international standards: Insisting upon children’s rights. Hum. Rts. Q. 2020, 42, 835. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Department for Education. Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) and Health Education: Statutory Guidance for Governing Bodies, Proprietors, Head Teachers, Principals, Senior Leadership Teams, Teachers; Department for Education: London, UK, 2021.
- Humanists UK. ‘UK Government Review Shouldn’t Row Back on LGBT-Inclusive RSE’ 9 March 2023. Available online: https://humanists.uk/2023/03/09/uk-government-review-shouldnt-row-back-on-lgbt-inclusive-rse/ (accessed on 1 March 2023).
- Pound, P.; Langford, R.; Campbell, R. What do young people think about their school-based sex and relationship education? A qualitative synthesis of young people’s views and experiences’. BMJ Open 2016, 6, e011329. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Daly, A.C.; Heah, R.; Liddiard, K. Vulnerable Subjects and Autonomous Actors: Children with Disabilities and the Right to Sex Education. Glob. Stud. Child. 2019, 9, 235–248. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Bourke, A.; Mallon, B.; Maunsell, C. Realisation of Children’s Rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to, in, and through Sexuality Education. Int. J. Child. Rights 2022, 30, 271–296. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Ponzetti, J.J., Jr. Sexuality education: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In Evidence-Based Approaches to Sexuality Education; Routledge: Abingdon, UK, 2015; pp. 25–38. [Google Scholar]
- Jones, T. A sexuality education discourses framework: Conservative, liberal, critical, and postmodern. Am. J. Sex. Educ. 2011, 6, 133–175. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Braeken, D.; Cardinal, M. Comprehensive sexuality education as a means of promoting sexual health. Int. J. Sex. Health 2008, 20, 50–62. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Crewe, M. Between worlds: Releasing sexuality education from bondage. In Evidence-Based Approaches to Sexuality Education; Routledge: Abingdon, UK, 2015; pp. 122–136. [Google Scholar]
- UNESCO. Strategy for Education on Health and Wellbeing: Contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals; UNESCO: Paris, France, 2016. [Google Scholar]
- Collins, C.; Alagiri, P.; Summers, T.; Morin, S.F. Abstinence only vs. comprehensive sex education: What are the arguments. What Is Evid. 2002, 1–16. [Google Scholar]
- UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Report to the UN General Assembly (Sex Education) (UN Doc. A/65/162, 2010). Available online: https://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/UNSR_Sexual_Education_2010.pdf (accessed on 1 March 2023).
- Curvino, M.; Fischer, M.G. Claiming comprehensive sex education is a right does not make it so: A close reading of international law. New Bioeth. 2014, 20, 72–98. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Campbell, M. Equality and the right to education: Let’s talk about sex education. In Human Rights and Equality in Education; Policy Press: Bristol, UK, 2018; pp. 111–128. [Google Scholar]
- UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. General Comment No. 22 (2016) on the Right to Sexual and Reproductive Health (Article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights), U.N. Doc. E/C.12/GC/22 (2 May 2016). Available online: http://docstore.ohchr.org/SelfServices/FilesHandler.ashx?enc=4slQ6QSmlBEDzFEovLCuW1a0Szab0oXTdImnsJZZVQfQejF41Tob4CvIjeTiAP6sGFQktiae1vlbbOAekmaOwDOWsUe7N8TLm%2BP3HJPzxjHySkUoHMavD%2Fpyfcp3Ylzg (accessed on 1 March 2023).
- UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Annex IX General Comment No. 1 (2001) Article 29 (1): The Aims of Education at Paragraph 9, U.N. Doc. CRC/GC/2001/1 (17 April 2001). Available online: http://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/CRC_General_Comment_1_en.pdf (accessed on 1 March 2023).
- Howe, R.B.; Covell, K. Empowering Children: Children’s Rights Education as a Pathway to Citizenship; University of Toronto Press: Toronto, ON, Canada, 2005. [Google Scholar]
- Lewis, R.; Tanton, C.; Mercer, C.H.; Mitchell, K.R.; Palmer, M.; Macdowall, W.; Wellings, K. Heterosexual practices among young people in Britain: Evidence from three national surveys of sexual attitudes and lifestyles. J. Adolesc. Health 2017, 61, 694–702. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Isherwood & Ors v Welsh Govt [2022] EWHC 3331.
- A Fertile Heart, Sample Lessons. Available online: https://fertileheart.org.uk/our-rse-and-rshe-curriculum/ (accessed on 1 April 2023).
- Adu, A.; Adams, R. Sex education review is ‘politically motivated’, say teaching unions Tory MPs’ claims of extreme graphic lessons at England’s schools written off as ‘inflammatory rhetoric’. Guard. Online. 2023. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/mar/08/sex-education-review-is-politically-motivated-say-teaching-unions (accessed on 1 March 2023).
- Cumper, P.; Adams, S.; Onyejekwe, K.; O’Reilly, M. Teachers’ perspectives on relationships and sex education lessons in England. Sex Educ. 2023, 1–17. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Glaser, B.; Strauss, A. Grounded theory: The discovery of grounded theory. Sociol. J. Br. Sociol. Assoc. 1967, 12, 27–49. [Google Scholar]
- Saunders, B.; Sim, J.; Kingstone, T.; Baker, S.; Waterfield, J.; Bartlam, B.; Burroughs, H.; Jinks, C. Saturation in qualitative research: Exploring its conceptualization and operationalization. Qual. Quant. 2018, 52, 1893–1907. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Grady, M.P. Qualitative and Action Research: A Practitioner Handbook; Phi Delta Kappa International: Bloomington, IN, USA, 1998. [Google Scholar]
- Saunders, B.; Sim, J.; Kingstone, T.; Baker, S.; Waterfield, J.; Bartlam, B.; Burroughs, H.; Jinks, C. Applied Thematic Analysis; Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA, USA, 2011. [Google Scholar]
- Braun, V.; Clarke, V. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual. Res. Psychol. 2006, 3, 77–101. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- The Guardian. ‘90% of Schools in England Will Run out of Money Next Year, Heads Warn’ 22 October 2022. Available online: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/22/exclusive-90-of-uk-schools-will-go-bust-next-year-heads-warn (accessed on 24 March 2023).
- Lundy, L. Family values in the classroom? Reconciling parental wishes and children’s rights in state schools. Int. J. Law Policy Fam. 2005, 19, 346–372. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Scottish Learning Directorate. Conduct of Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood Education in Schools; Scottish Government: Edinburgh, UK, 2014.
- Welsh Government. Curriculum for Wales: The Relationships and Sexuality Education Code; Welsh Goverment: Cardiff, UK, 2022.
- Kantor, L.; Levitz, N. Parents’ views on sex education in schools: How much do Democrats and Republicans agree? PLoS ONE 2017, 12, e0180250. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [PubMed]
- Department for Education. Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education, and Health Education in England: Government Consultation Response; Department for Education: London, UK, 2019.
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
Daly, A.C.; Heah, R. Mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England—Educators’ Views on Children’s Rights. Youth 2023, 3, 1013-1029. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth3030065
Daly AC, Heah R. Mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England—Educators’ Views on Children’s Rights. Youth. 2023; 3(3):1013-1029. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth3030065
Chicago/Turabian StyleDaly, Aoife Caitriona, and Rachel Heah. 2023. "Mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England—Educators’ Views on Children’s Rights" Youth 3, no. 3: 1013-1029. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth3030065
APA StyleDaly, A. C., & Heah, R. (2023). Mandatory Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) in England—Educators’ Views on Children’s Rights. Youth, 3(3), 1013-1029. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth3030065