Action alert: tell the Welsh Government to redraft its Relationships and Sexuality Education guidelines

The Welsh Government is currently consulting on its own draft guidelines on Relationships and Sex Education (RSE). We have put together a guide for how you can respond below. The closing date is Monday 1st of April 2019.

Some of the questions are clearly aimed exclusively at teachers and other school staff. Most questions can be answered by anybody. We recommend that those who aren’t teachers focus on answering questions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9. We also recommend responding to question 13 with overall questions on the topics and values involved.

 Respond to the consultation online.
 

Problems with the basic concepts of the guidance

There are many problems with the basic concepts in the draft guidance. We address each of them in our responses to the questions indicated in the brackets in the list below.

• ‘Relationships’ are defined too broadly to include friendships and professional relationships; marriage is downgraded (question 1)
• No mention of human fertility and chilbearing (questions 1, 6, and 9)
• No acknowledgment that the male and female life cycles are different because of fundamental sex differences
• Sex differences are implied to be negative and problematic traits (question 5)
• Concept of ‘learners as peer educators’ is suspect (question 5)
• Gender is conflated with sex, yet LGBTQ-affirming education is very evident (question 6)
• Engaging with parents seems to be an afterthought (question 7)
   

Positive suggestions you can make

The consultation does provide space for suggestions. We recommend that you do the following in response to Question 13:

• Insist in prioritisation of biological sex, according to the plain meaning of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, not the third edition of the UNICEF Implementation Handbook on the UNCRC. This is a matter of guarding objective truth in education, as well as a matter of wellbeing and safeguarding of children and young people.
• Ask the Welsh Government to redraft the guidelines to ensure that the biological link between human fertility and human sexuality is clearly taught in RSE lessons. There is no good reason for teaching on biology and fertility to be taught only in Biology lessons.
• Ask the Welsh Government to acknowledge the evidence that sexual attraction can be fluid and variable in many people, and that there is a distinction between a person’s chosen sexual identity and the sexual attractions they might experience over time.
• Ask the Welsh Government to redraft the guidelines to include abstinence from sexual behaviours. At the moment the guidelines only refer to consent. The tacit assumption is that sexual behaviour is always a positive matter.
• Ask the Welsh Government to redraft the guidelines to address the emotional, social and moral problems stemming from widespread promiscuity and casual sex in today’s society.
• Ask the Welsh Government to provide references and links to all the documents which are referred to and the claims made for its approach to RSE. Citizens, especially parents and teachers, have a need and a right to know what the true sources are for these policies.

Read our response to the consultation.

Read more on why we must defeat the concerted push for anything-goes Sex and Relationships Education