No sex please, we're teachers

Union says teachers should be able to opt out

Teachers should be allowed to opt out of taking sex education lessons if they are reluctant to tackle the subject, a union is proposing.

Proposed official guidance tends towards moralising, meddling and muddling

Association of Teachers and Lecturers

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers also says new government guidelines on sex education in England should emphasise the value of family life rather than marriage - so that children with unmarried parents do not feel stigmatised.

The union's formal response to the government's consultation on the new guidelines adds to the row over ministers' desire to repeal Clause 28, which bans local authorities from promoting homosexuality.

The guidelines were amended to stress marriage in an attempt to overcome opposition in the House of Lords to the clause being repealed.

That did not work because the guidelines put marriage alongside "stable relationships" - which traditionalists said could include gay couples.

Parents' job

The ATL also passes on its recent survey results, suggesting that the vast majority of teachers thought parents should be mainly responsible for telling their children about sex.

Children are very clued up about the issues around homosexuality or teenage pregnancy because of things like Eastenders or Coronation Street

Primary teacher Laura Dabbs

There is a precedent for opting out, in that parents can withdraw their children from sex education lessons.

Although the union does not mention it, there is something of a precedent for teachers too, in that they do not have to teach religious education.

All schools in England are required to teach RE, but individual teachers can refuse to do so. It is then up to their head teacher to make other arrangements.

The union argues that high standards of personal, social and health education (PSHE) cannot be achieved if teachers have to tackle it against their will.

The general secretary, Peter Smith, said: "Teachers are concerned about maintaining professionalism and want to ensure high standards of teaching.

'Essential option'

"A teacher who has to teach a subject they are ill at ease with will not give the subject the deserved attention.

"That is why it is essential that teachers be given the option not to teach sex education."

Mr Smith was critical of the proposed guidelines as "inaccurate, incoherent and inconsistent" and said they should be withdrawn and redrafted.

The union's response says the Department for Education's draft "tends towards moralising, meddling and muddling, rather than supporting teachers in what is already a particularly challenging aspect of their work".

It says teachers should be free to use their professional judgement and do not need to be "spoon fed by civil servants or politicians".

And it sums up by saying that the guidance "shows little understanding of the cultural context in which children and young people operate".

One teacher's view

Teacher Laura Dabbs, 26 - not an ATL member - said she would certainly not want to opt out although she could understand that some teachers might.

"It's a part of life which needs to be discussed openly and if teachers themselves have personal issues which they can't quite address in order to be able to deliver something like that to their pupils then it's questionable isn't it?" said Ms Dabbs, who teaches at Oaklands Primary School in Hanwell, west London.

"There are some things you can't talk about like you can't inform the children about homosexuality. Although at the school I teach in, anything that they ask you about - once the parents have agreed to their children attending these lessons - then you can respond to them.

"You know they are going to ask about these things and you hope that they do because you can't deliver the things that are most important really."

TV soap plots

She is all for trying to be straightforward about homosexuality where possible.

"Our Year 6 children (11-year-olds) are very clued up about the issues around homosexuality or teenage pregnancy because of things like Eastenders or Coronation Street which have very current storylines, so it gets talked about or put in front of them, and then the questions are born inside their heads."

Ms Dabbs has doubts about the proposed encouragement to promote families and marriage.

"When we were drawing up our PSHE programme a few weeks ago, as a school where there's predominantly single parents - parents who have been married before or who are single parents - it would have been alienating to them to discuss stable relationships only in terms of marriage.

"So we just term it 'a stable relationship' and try not to be dictatorial or limiting."