It was interesting listening to Ed Balls on the radio this morning, trying to defend his government’s stance on sex and relationship education proposals for schools, and the opt-out he’s proposing for faith schools not to have to teach it in a fair and unbiased way.
Good quality education on sex and relationships is long overdue in our schools, and the original plans would have delivered a relatively fair and balanced approach to teaching it. The watering down of the proposals comes, by complete coincidence, after the Catholic Education Service undertook one of their most intense lobbying efforts on Ed Balls and the government.
It never fails to amaze me the lengths to which organisations such as the Catholic Education Service will go to promote their discriminatory brand of religion. But still, that’s their agenda and they seem as keen as ever to stick to it.
What old Mr Balls has failed to recognise is that the character, ‘ethos’, or whatever you call it, of any faith school is an ingrained part of that school’s culture, and will therefore naturally manifest itself to some extent in the way subjects are taught in the classroom. So why introduce a completely unnecessary amendment to the proposals if the ethos of a faith school is a natural part of the pupil experience anyway? The big problem is that this amendment goes further than that, by providing the ability for the school to completely contradict any of the messages, if they want to.
So why should the government stop at this particular juncture, if this is such an important issue? Why not extend such provision and opt-outs to the teaching of science, or for that matter, every other subject on the curriculum?
One thing we can be sure of is that this particular volte face from the government will stifle the slow progress of equality.
