A County Council in the UK is on the brink of a legal challenge over a controversial policy for implementing Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) in primary schools under its care.
Lawyers acting on behalf of The Christian Institute have written to Warwickshire Council contending it has failed to “take into account and give proper weight” to its duties under the Equality Act 2010, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Education Act 1996.
The Council’s RSE Policy for primary schools incorporates and promotes the All About Me programme. Among its assertions are that gender identity “can be best understood as being a spectrum” and “transgender children have the right to use whichever toilet or changing room they feel most comfortable using”.
It encourages schools not to inform parents if their children are sharing rooms with transgender pupils and to conceal a child’s transgender status from their own parents – contrary to parental rights which are protected under the Human Rights Act 1998.
Whilst making no reference to marriage, it is claimed that lesson materials encourage masturbation and include “gratuitously graphic” sexual images, contrary to the Education Act 1996 and despite the lessons not being classed as sex education.
The letter warns the Council that it cannot lead schools to evade their duties under the Act “by teaching sexually explicit materials under the heading of another subject”, pointing out that “if the content is sexually explicit it must be sex education” however it is labelled.
