I thought the government was going to achieve something worthwhile with its commitment to establish Relationships and Sex Education as a curriculum entitlement. Having grown up as a gay man under Clause 28 and witnessed the long chilling effect through my school teaching career, I welcomed the idea that we would finally have something more progressive. Coming after the Equalities Act and all the reforms how could this not be an unmitigated ‘good news’ story?
Well, although there are some positive features of the new requirement, I knew it was not going to be entirely positive when the government started adding in other bits of unrelated content such as the need to show respect to people in authority. And by then they had already confirmed that parents could continue to withdraw their children, so not really an entitlement after all. Still, I thought, better to have it than not, and then the DfE issued its latest guidance on 24th September 2020 Plan your relationships, sex and health curriculum.
I want to focus on their advice relating to political impartiality, which means I have to leave to one side the problem with the timing (it was published near the end of September and urged schools to start teaching from September!), and the strange fixation on teaching and assessing knowledge and conceptual understanding (as opposed to facilitating ethical reflection), and the recurrent reminders about officially sanctioned pedagogy in the early career framework…
Political impartiality
Having revisited the 2019 statutory guidance it’s not entirely clear why this new document is so concerned with political impartiality and political extremism. The SRE guidance is not about political education, and so there seems to be a slightly strange mismatch between the content teachers are being required to teach, and the guidance which seems to address a separate set of issues.
The new guidance makes the following points about using external agencies:
It is important when using external agencies to take particular care that the agency and any materials used are appropriate and in line with your school’s legal duties regarding political impartiality. Your local authority, governing body and headteacher must:
· forbid the pursuit of partisan political activities by junior pupils
· forbid the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school
· take reasonably practicable steps to secure that where political issues are brought to the attention of pupils, they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views
The Independent School Standards, which apply to all independent schools (and most of which apply to academies) have similar provisions relating to the promotion of partisan political views and offering a balanced presentation of opposing views.
Schools are responsible for ensuring that speakers, tools and resources do not undermine the fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.
(pp.5-6)
It’s not clear which elements of the statutory guidance would fall into the ‘partisan’ category, nor what kinds of political issues they foresee. There are no suggestions or illustrations, but we might also note in the DfE’s document setting out Advice for Independent Schools the government asserts that it is entirely reasonable for schools to redact sections of textbooks or past exam papers which do not reflect the ethos of the school (p.15). Whilst they urge school leaders to do this in line with the FBVs, it’s far from clear how redacting exam questions or commonly available text book information could be compatible with an open, tolerant, and impartial approach to education.
The new guidance continues:
Schools should not under any circumstances work with external agencies that take or promote extreme positions or use materials produced by such agencies. Examples of extreme positions include, but are not limited to:
· promoting non-democratic political systems rather than those based on democracy, whether for political or religious reasons or otherwise
· teaching that requirements of English civil or criminal law may be disregarded whether for political or religious reasons or otherwise
· engaging in or encouraging active or persistent harassment or intimidation of individuals in support of their cause
· promoting divisive or victim narratives that are harmful to British society
· selecting and presenting information to make unsubstantiated accusations against state institutions
If such agencies are mentioned during lessons, for example as a result of questions from children, teachers should ensure they discuss them appropriately and impartially.
(p.6)
This list of extreme positions is augmented later by another list of extreme political stances. These include:
· A publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow capitalism (among other things).
· Opposition to freedom of speech, assembly etc.
· A failure to condemn illegal activities done in their name or in support of their cause, particularly violent actions against people or property.
(pp.7-8)
As already stated, it’s far from clear why a teacher looking to teach about the SRE requirements would be engaging with any of these issues. Remember that teachers should be engaging their students in lessons about relationships, staying safe, dealing with consent etc. However, as the DfE guidance raises this list, it’s worth reflecting on what it means.
Firstly, the identification of ‘extreme positions’ and ‘extreme political stances’ is a new departure as far as I’m aware. We have a well-known framework for dealing with extremism, but this document notably fails to use that term. This means it’s far from clear what legislative position the DfE adopts as its starting point here. On what grounds does the government pronounce which positions are now deemed ‘extreme’ and what schools should do about it? Before proceeding with this discussion it is worth noting that in another document, Prevent Duty in Further Education: Guidance, there is a very different position outlined:
Every institution clearly needs to balance its legal duties in terms of both ensuring freedom of speech and also protecting student and staff welfare. (parag. 6)
Here, rather than vague warnings that speakers may undermine the FBVs, the guidance is much clearer that school / college leaders should only be concerned about speakers who actively support terrorism or who risk drawing young people into terrorism. But even in such cases, the guidance notes that they may mitigate risks by organising an appropriate challenge to these opinions.
So, this new RSE guidance sits uncomfortably with existing guidance, both because it encourages teachers to avoid certain organisations / materials / ideas much more readily, but also because the list of factors to be avoided seems to have been plucked from thin air. Whatever the shortcomings of the Prevent Duty and the Counter Terrorism and Security Act (2015) at least they have a basis in law.
So, working through the list, what problems arise?
· Firstly, whilst it is difficult to see how this issue would arise from a lesson on sex and relationships, it is not illegal to promote non-democratic systems of government. In fact the DfE’s own national curriculum for citizenship requires students to be taught about ‘other systems and forms of government, both democratic and non-democratic’. The A level in Politics includes the option to learn about anarchism. In the Conservative Party’s own reform of qualifications, Ayn Rand was added to the Philosophy A level, thus ensuring that all Philosophy students would be introduced to a trenchant critic of modern democracies. Similarly, if taken at face value, teachers may have to treat the Guardian newspaper as an extreme publication for hosting George Monbiot’s regular columns arguing that the environmental destruction of the planet by capitalism means we should devise an alternative economic system for the future.
· Secondly, it’s not clear what situation the DfE is imagining here in relation to disregarding the law but we might remember that until 1967 male homosexuality was illegal and so gay men had no choice but to break the law. We might also remember that the DfE funded a celebration of the women’s Suffrage movement, including those who broke the law. There is a strong tradition in democracies of individuals adopting law-breaking as a deliberate strategy to draw attention to unjust laws and demand reforms. The decision about what is justified, why, and to whom is another one of those interesting areas that confounds simplistic codification of knowledge. That is why the DfE funded the Association for Citizenship Teaching to write a pack of education resources encouraging students to debate whether it is ever justifiable to break the law. The Department appears to have discouraged use of its own sponsored materials.
· This is linked to the question of the use of violence in the second list of issues. Here we might note that the conflation of violence against people and property is also problematic. And of course, the idea that one should be judged for failing to condemn someone else who used violence is a remarkably strange requirement. Does that mean that the Home Secretary has to apologise for the violent right wing thug who takes her anti-immigrant sentiments to extreme actions?
· Thirdly, it would be difficult to justify working with any organisation that actively harassed or intimidated people. But again, this does invite judgement and perspective-taking. Does the Catholic Church’s reassurance to gay young people that they are sinners and must pay the price for their sins in the next world count as intimidation? It’s a matter of perspective. It is worth noting that the Catholic Church in Scotland was criticised during the summer of 2020 for promoting gay conversion therapies (which this government has not banned, despite claiming it intended to).
· Fourth, again it’s not clear what victim narratives are being considered here, but the history of institutional abuse in Britain (through schools, care homes, the Church, local authorities etc) would indicate that we should give credence to some victim narratives. We are left with the qualifier that we should be concerned with those that are harmful to British society, but it’s entirely unclear what that means. It’s certainly not the role of a teacher or head teacher to decide the matter. Plenty of people thought (and still think) that the wave of socially liberal reforms that ushered in gay liberation, condoned abortion, and ended the death penalty have been harmful to British society.
· Fifth, we have the matter of those making unsubstantiated claims against state institutions. Again, how a teacher would decide what was unsubstantiated and what was not is entirely unclear. Presumably, in a democracy with the rule of law, any such claims should be tested in court, rather than in a classroom. But if a debate was raging in the media about such claims (for example about sex abuse cases) it is difficult to see why that would not be a useful hook for a class discussion about the RSE guidance.
· Finally we have the advice that if a child raises an issue / organisation considered to be extreme the teacher should deal with it impartially. But it’s not clear how one can be impartial about an organisation one has already decided to ignore / ban. And of course, in the second list, the government describes anyone who undermines free speech as extreme, having apparently forgotten that speech can be legally restricted for a number of reasons.
Conclusion – stoking fear
I think the saddest thing about this guidance is that it actually offers very little additional guidance to the teacher who is genuinely looking for some support to allay their concerns about the new SRE teaching requirements. There is no evidence of anyone with any expertise in sex and relationships education being involved with this document. There are no examples of good practice, no principles derived from experience, no specific advice addressing particularly contentious areas. In particular there is nothing in the whole document to address the thorny issue of how one teaches sexual equality and liberation (as enshrined in UK law) in a school with a conservative religious ethos (which teaches those very rights are wrong). In failing to address this issue the guidance fails to engage with the most controversial aspects of RSE.
In place of addressing the issues about which a teacher might reasonably look to the DfE for guidance, they offer a series of half-baked politicised lists of ideas and beliefs which someone in the DfE has decided are sufficiently unsavoury as to require banning. It might be easily dismissed if it did not suggest two processes at work:
(i) The government is using this RSE guidance as a Trojan horse to introduce some unjustified ideological content into the curriculum. This elaborates on the list of fundamental British values and makes the list of values to be promoted and rejected entirely arbitrary and certainly more narrowly political. By framing this policy as a defence against anti-capitalists, anti-democrats, and those attacking British institutions and society the government is clearly playing up a cynical kind of culture wars narrative that feeds into far right narratives. Ironically, given that it is framed as a defence of democracy, it fuels the very forces that seek to undermine it and in doing so makes it almost impossible to teach in the spirit of democratic engagement.
(ii) The fact that this is not obviously rooted in legislation, and is probably incapable of being properly defined does not mean it is harmless. It creates a sense of threat hanging over teachers, who are repeatedly told what they must stop, what they should sidestep, what, in short, might get them into serious trouble. This is of course exactly the mechanism that was used to crush debate about LGBT issues in schools when the previous Conservative government introduced Clause 28. Again somewhat ironically, this fear-stoking move has been embedded in a policy framework ostensibly established to achieve the opposite of Clause 28. This time, rather than use a piece of democratic legislation to stifle a discussion of LGBT minority rights, a policy which protects the rights of that minority is being used to stifle a properly democratic education.