Petition re Compulsory Sex Education in Schools

Dear Friends

I am writing to encourage you to sign a petition on the Number 10 website calling for a full public consultation on whether sex and relationship education should be made a statutory requirement for children from the beginning of primary school - http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Parentchoice/

The government has gone back on a clear commitment in the summer to conduct a full public consultation before making any substantive changes to the present arrangements concerning sex and relationship education. Instead, it has chosen to exclude parents from the entire review process. We need to send a strong message to the government that this is unacceptable and that it must honour its earlier commitment. It is likely that the petition will be referred to in a parliamentary debate tomorrow afternoon, so the more signatures we can obtain before then, the better.

For more background information, please see our press release from 23 October at http://www.famyouth.org.uk/pdfs/PressRelease231008.pdf

Do feel free to forward this message to your friends and contacts.

Kind regards

Norman Wells
Family Education Trust
Jubilee House
19-21 High Street
Whitton
Twickenham
TW2 7LB

Tel: 020 8894 2525
Fax: 020 8894 3535

email: norman@familyeducation.plus.com
website: www.famyouth.org.uk

Excerpts from the Press Release mentioned above:

‘There is no evidence to suggest that starting sex education in primary schools is going to reduce teenage pregnancy rates and improve sexual health. We have had 30 years of sex education in secondary schools and it has never been easier for teenagers to get hold of contraception without their parents knowing, yet we still have the highest rate of teenage conceptions in Western Europe, and both abortion rates and sexually transmitted infection rates have continued to rise.

‘Up until now, the government has been setting its sights too low with all its emphasis on contraceptive education. The fact is that contraception offers only limited protection against sexually transmitted infections and provides no protection at all against the damaging emotional consequences of casual sex. The so-called “safer sex” message is abandoning young people to the heartache and misery of a series of broken relationships, and exposing them to the risk of  disease and mental health problems. All this in turn makes it more difficult for them to establish a truly intimate, trusting and fulfilling marriage later on.

‘If we want to help young people build stable, lifelong marriages that will provide security for their own children in due course, a completely different approach is required. We need to recover the qualities of commitment, faithfulness, exclusiveness, and permanence which lie at the heart of any successful relationship.’

‘One of the dangers of introducing sex education at an early age is that it runs the risk of breaking down children’s natural sense of reserve. Far from being a hindrance, our natural inhibitions and sense of modesty in talking about sexual matters are healthy and provide a necessary safeguard against casual attitudes towards sexual intimacy. Rather than seeking to break down children's natural sense of reserve, parents and teachers would do far better to discuss the self-giving and self-sacrifice that are the hallmarks of true love and to model them in their own lives.’