The British Humanist Association (BHA) has today welcomed the Government’s announcement that Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE), which includes Sex and Relationships Education (SRE), is to be made compulsory in all schools.
However, the Government has once again given more weight to religious lobbying than to children’s rights to essential education, with “faith schools” allowed to apply their own religious flavour to SRE lessons and parents allowed to withdraw their children from those classes altogether.
Andrew Copson, BHA Director of Education, has written an article on The Guardian’s “Comment is Free” website, in which he makes the case for the need for good quality, comprehensive SRE for all children, without exception.
Mr Copson states that not only do ‘young people want this education’, they have a right to it under Article 13 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.
In his article, Mr Copson asks, ‘In the face of overwhelming evidence that sex and relationships education improves the lives of young people, what right do we have to deny them it? If we know that sex and relationships education of an objective sort improves young people’s health and wellbeing (and we do) and if we accept that it is the right of the child to receive information of all sorts (which it is) and if we go on to conclude that the responsibility of society is therefore to ensure that all our children receive this entitlement, then why allow state-funded religious schools to do something different? Why in particular, as has been announced today, should the religious character of a school (which may or may not be shared by the school’s pupils or their parents) be allowed to skew the sex and relationships education that children receive?’
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Read the full article.
For more information about the BHA’s campaign on SRE, see https://humanists.uk/campaigns/religion-and-schools/sex-and-relationships-education
For further comment or information, please contact Andrew Copson on 020 3675 0959
The British Humanist Association (BHA) is the national charity representing and supporting the non-religious and campaigning for an end to religious privilege and discrimination based on religion or belief. The BHA contributes to debate on a wide range of ethical issues from stem cell research to sex education, and acts as a unique watchdog and lobbying organisation. The BHA is a member of the National Children’s Bureau Sex Education Forum (SEF).