Surrey Homes | SH40 | February 2018 | Wedding supplement inside

Birds and bees
Schools – and the government – need to re-think sex education says Susan Elkin
Education
Credit: FreeImages.com/Picaland
Sex education in schools has matured a bit since the
hilarious condom-on-the-banana era. From this academic
year all schools in England will be required to teach
Relationship and Sex Education (RSE).
Primary schools are to concentrate on building healthy
relationships and staying safe. Teenagers will learn about
sex as well and the government has stated that all schools
will “ensure that young people whatever their developing
sexuality or gender feel that RSE is relevant to them and
sensitive to their needs”. In other words transgender issues
and other potentially tricky topics are firmly on the agenda.
Cyberbullying, sexting and online safety are there too.
Well, I’m all for openness, honesty and being direct with
young people irrespective of their age and the delicacy
of the subject. Two cheers for this initiative, then.
I’m holding back the third cheer because I have serious
reservations about the concept of turning learning about
sex and relationships into a timetabled lesson with learning
objectives, lesson plans and all the rest of it. Relationships and
sex are part of life – all of life. They can’t be pigeon-holed or
sidelined. Every teacher of every subject should be dealing
with such important matters as and when they arise.
The whole of English literature, for example, is
about relationships of every kind. Was Shakespeare,
for example, bi-sexual? Consider all those cross gender
roles and talk about them. It’s quite a springboard.
Students will meet characters such as Henry VIII and Oscar
Wilde in history lessons. Geography could lead to some of
the countries which still ruthlessly punish sexual minorities.
Alan Turing could come up in science, while art history and
music will throw up some colourfully complex personalities.
In short RSE should be a cross-curricular subject
tackled with confidence by every teacher as and when
it’s relevant. We want young people to take this – and
themselves - seriously and to learn from people they
respect. It’s an excellent basis for exploring something
so important in an atmosphere of mutual trust.
RSE will never, in my view, work properly as a
discrete lesson taught by some sort of ‘expert’ who’s
probably a nurse or former PSHE teacher, who’s just
done a two-day conversion course. To be really useful
sex education must be grafted in, not bolted on.
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