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Recent government guidance has banned schools in England from teaching sex education to children under nine years old. According to the Education Hub, a blog on the government website, “puberty shouldn’t be talked about before year 4, whilst sex education shouldn’t be taught before year 5”. While it is essential that sex education is made age-appropriate to avoid overloading children, it can also be concerning to limit their exposure to such important aspects of life. This is especially crucial considering the rapid rate at which children are growing up these days, with each generation increasingly resembling small adults.
Some parents agree their children should be shielded from such materials and are actively trying to ‘protect the innocence of their children’ by choosing to engage in conversations when they feel the time is right. However, all children come from different living situations, and some parents may not discuss these topics, leaving their children in the dark and making them more likely to search for answers online. Schools have a duty to share RSHE materials with parents upon request, and parents hold the right to withdraw their child from receiving sex education. Nonetheless, sex education is not mandatory with the intention of taking away a child’s innocence; rather, it serves to protect them and raise awareness of sensitive issues in a safe space.
Talk Consent, a charity dedicated to consent education, emphasises the crucial role of education in informing and preventing issues like gender-based violence from becoming even more prevalent in society. Restricting access to sex education to children, even as early as primary school, can have lasting effects by shielding them from potential dangers and worsening gender-based violence disparities. The success of using education to inform young children and prevent the aforementioned issues has been demonstrated in other countries, such as Australia, which implemented its Consent and Respectful Relationships Education Policy in 2023. This mandatory initiative ensures that children as young as primary school age are being taught about consent and respect within relationships in an age-appropriate manner, helping to prevent violence from worsening.
While sex education involves more than just teaching consent, all aspects of RSHE in the national curriculum are beneficial for children of the correct ages. This education helps to prevent them from seeking dangerous and unreliable sources, like the internet. The RSHE charity, Sexpression, noted that some nine-year-olds may have already been exposed to pornography; therefore, banning sex education will negatively impact children by leading them to learn the ‘wrong’ and inappropriate information for their age. Furthermore, the Sex Education Forum charity found that nearly one-fifth of teenagers say the internet is their main source for information about sexual health and healthy relationships, which is certainly less reliable than in-school education. With so many teenagers using the internet to search for RSHE-related information, it is crucial to ensure that primary school children receive age-appropriate sex education to prevent the spread of misinformation on this important and sensitive topic.
Image: Vitalii Vodolazskyi, 2021// Adobe Stock
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