The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has responded to the Department for Education’s consultation on its draft revisions to guidance for schools in England on relationships, sex and health education (collectively known as RSHE).
The advice from Britain’s equality and human rights regulator focuses on the UK government’s human rights obligations, including those under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).
Under the UNCRC the UK government is obliged to do all it can to protect children from all forms of physical and mental violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation. Providing adequate access to information is an important part of this, and the EHRC response argues this should be central to the revised RSHE guidance.
Baroness Kishwer Falkner, Chairwoman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said:
“We welcome the opportunity to input into this important piece of guidance. RSHE is hugely important in ensuring children have the knowledge to protect themselves, recognise and report inappropriate or threatening behaviour.
“The EHRC has made several recommendations in our response, which will ensure schools are able to equip children with all the information they need to have healthy relationships and protect themselves from harm.
“We recognise this is a sensitive area and there are a range of views on how and when teachers should teach these important lessons to children. At the heart of our recommendations is that the guidance promotes children’s right to receive information that will help them understand their rights and protect them from harm.”
Key comments and recommendations made in the EHRC’s response include:
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The Department for Education’s draft guidance advises topics such as inappropriate online content, suicide and sexual assault are not discussed until a relatively late stage of a child's education and development. This risks their exposure to these issues without the knowledge or skills to deal with them.
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The EHRC is particularly concerned about this approach where it risks children’s primary source of information on these matters being through unsupervised access to the internet.
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The Department for Education’s draft guidance recommends children are not taught about criminal offences such as circulating naked images until Year 9. This would mean children would be criminally responsible for acts they have not been taught about for up to three years.
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The EHRC agrees that children should be taught in age-appropriate ways. Our recommendation is to include a minimum level of information for age groups in the guidance in order to keep children safe.
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The EHRC welcomes the promotion of effective systems to spot sexual harassment in the guidance. However, teaching children about this issue at the relatively late stage advised in the guidance may fail to adequately protect children from risks. It has been shown that a lack of understanding of what sexual abuse is can be a barrier to accessing support.
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The EHRC recommends that schools take a rights-based approach to the teaching of RSHE.