The year is 2017. MPs are at loggerheads over Brexit. The government has lost its majority. Never has politics seemed so divisive.
But on the backbenches, a rare cross-party consensus was building that would pave the way for groundbreaking reforms in sex education.
Now, seven years later, as the new Labour government contemplates a raft of big curriculum decisions, we have nothing but the charred remains of that fleeting moment of consensus after it was torched in the culture wars.
Schools Week talks to the people at the heart of the sex education reforms…
Changing world, changing guidance
By 2017, it was 17 years since sex education guidance had been updated. Academies were also exempt from a requirement to teach it.
Appalled by recent child safeguarding failures and children’s increasing exposure to internet pornography, a group of MPs hatched a plan to bring the curriculum up to date.
Leading the charge from the Labour backbenches was Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, with the support of then-shadow education secretary and now deputy prime minister Angela Rayner.
Champion says she was prompted to take action by the Jay Report into child sexual exploitation in her constituency, explaining: “I wanted to do something to try and prevent it happening.”
I think it’s the most impactful thing I’ll ever do in politics
After identifying legislation in need of a refresh, a “major lobbying operation” began.
MPs identified a piece of draft legislation that could be amended to make sex education compulsory, and a “major lobbying operation” began.
“The only way we could get it to pass was by getting the whole house to support it,” says Champion.
“What we were clear about was that this was about child protection. This was about enabling all children to understand what respect is, to respect themselves, to respect others, understanding what a healthy relationship was.
“I think it’s the most impactful thing I’ll ever do in politics.”
Across the chamber and the political divide, women and equalities committee chair Dame Maria Miller lobbied her fellow Conservatives.
As culture secretary in David Cameron’s government, Miller had seen “how the internet was affecting children’s lives” and how pornography was becoming “a routine way of learning about sex”
Guidance on sex education, which hadn’t been updated since 2000, was “just not reflecting what was going on for real in children’s lives”.
The political pressure from a growing cross-party group of MPs meant the government, which had lost its majority at the 2017 election, had “no choice but to listen”.
Working collectively
So Justine Greening, the education secretary, announced plans to amend the government’s children and social work bill to make relationships education compulsory in all schools, and sex education compulsory at secondary level.
Reform “was always going to be hard, and that’s why nobody had done it since 2000”, recalls Greening.
One tactic was to “take the heat” out of the debate and focus “on what we’re actually collectively trying to achieve for children and for teachers”.
And “by that stage, it was clear that the bigger problem would have been to just leave things as they were”.
I don’t think that’s a problem with the policy, it’s a problem with the politicians
She says: “When you saw some of the mental-health issues, bullying, where social media fitted in, just the impact of social media on children’s personalities, them being confronted with explicit images, for example, it was clear that although in some quarters there were concerns about how we updated it, there were very few people who could reasonably say it should just be left as it was.”
With the law signed, the Department for Education set about drafting statutory guidance and a new curriculum.
Ofqual chief Sir Ian Bauckham, then an academy trust chief executive, was brought in to advise ministers.
Jonathan Baggaley, of the PSHE Association, says stakeholders worked to show those with concerns “that this was a subject that is about preparing children for the present and the future, but it’s something that actually the vast majority of schools were already doing in some shape or form”.
He adds: “With some of the fragmentation that’s taken place since it feels quite extraordinary to look back and consider the level of agreement that there was.”
Greening says she is “really proud” of the “painstaking” work to get the legislation passed. “I think it was probably one of the most politically challenging things that you could do as an education secretary.”
It fell to Damian Hinds to complete the reforms, and guidance finally became statutory in September 2019.
“I’m not sure we could have done [the reforms] now,” says Greening. “And I don’t think that’s a problem with the policy. I think that’s a problem with the politicians. An inability to actually work collectively on something that really mattered.”
The backlash begins
Despite huge efforts to bring religious groups on side, including maintaining the right to withdraw children from sex education and no full requirement to teach about LGBT relationships in primary schools, tensions in some areas grew as the 2019 implementation drew nearer.
Primary schools in Birmingham that had taught about LGBT relationships for years suddenly faced protests from parents, many of them Muslim.
Andrew Moffat, who designed the “No Outsiders” programme taught at Parkfield primary, says he was “blind-sided”.
“We had four years of it working brilliantly. Suddenly it just flips overnight, really, with the RSE guidance coming in.
“And although it was started by a couple of mums in the school, very quickly it was taken off their hands by people outside the school who were whipping up our parents with these ridiculous accusations.”
Anderton Park primary school eventually sought and won an injunction against the protests outside its gates. The High Court judge said protestors had “grossly misrepresented” what was being taught.
It was extreme cowardice from the department and ministers not to do more to back the schools
Sarah Hewitt-Clarkson, the school’s steadfast headteacher, said at the time that parents “started freaking out” about the words “compulsory” and “sex”, but “genuine fears and genuine confusion were fuelled unforgivably by people who are homophobic”.
Luke Tryl, a former head of education at LGBT charity Stonewall who worked for Nicky Morgan as a special adviser, adds it was “extreme cowardice on the part of the department and ministers not to do more to back the schools in Birmingham from the outset”.
Culture wars go mainstream
Sex and relationships education is a key battle ground in the US where the culture wars have long dominated politics – but that hadn’t been the case in England.
But as England’s political class looked across the Atlantic in search of new ideas, the tide began to turn.
By 2022, the social liberals within the Conservatives were on the back foot and a newly influential Tory faction seized on RSE as an opportunity to create a dividing line between itself and Labour.
Eventually, it was Conservative MPs who submitted what they claimed was evidence that schools were teaching inappropriate content.
They were successful in bringing forward a planned review of the guidance, even though then-education secretary Gillian Keegan admitted earlier this year she did not know how “widespread” the use of “inappropriate” resources used in schools was.
Tryl said he was “sure there are examples, but I think it’s more like a handful of examples where it’s been actively inappropriate materials that have been used.
“But in the majority of cases, it comes down to exactly the same problem that we were talking about when making it statutory. It’s because teachers don’t feel confident [and] outsource it.”
Where next?
A consultation earlier this year proposed more specific age limits on some “sensitive” content, and a clampdown on what schools could teach about gender. It is not clear whether the new government will proceed with the plans.
Champion and Miller, once comrades in getting the legislation over the line, now differ in their view about the proposed reforms.
“I don’t think it’s helpful when government puts very tight, prescriptive regulations around what a teacher does,” says Champion. “For me, having very rigid age [limits] is not that helpful.”
Miller, who lost her seat in July’s general election, is more charitable about the proposed reforms. She believes the previous government was “trying to find a way forward for those schools that were finding it difficult” – particularly around communicating with parents.
Greening wants Labour to “revisit these regulations to make sure they remain fit for purpose, but at the same time, make sure that they never become part of a culture wars battle”.
Lucy Emmerson of the Sex Education Forum says the new education secretary Bridget Phillipson had highlighted the importance of “consultation that involves the users” and placing trust in teachers – two things she feels were missing from the last government’s proposed reforms.
The subject has also previously been treated “differently” to others because it was not mandatory.
Emmerson says: “Now it is… how do we want to go on with that in the future? Can we streamline a way of updating it so that we are intelligent about it, working closely with experts, and not having a cycle of politics interrupting what needs to happen to meet children’s and young people’s needs?”
