The Northern Ireland Secretary of State has affirmed that he intends to roll out his own UN-approved sex education programme across NI – with a strong emphasis on teaching abortion – despite the fact that the Catholic church has just unveiled its own resource for teaching the subject in primary schools.

The new RSE resource, ‘Flourish’, was launched by Catholic Bishop Donal McKeown a week ago.

At present individual schools have great autonomy when deciding what to teach, whereas a standardised UN-approved curriculum was legislated for by Secretary of State Brandon Lewis as part of NI abortion legislation last year.

The Belfast News Letter reported that Mr Lewis holds that he is under “a clear legal duty” from his own abortion legislation to ensure that the recommendations from the 2018 Report of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women are implemented in full. These recommendations include: “Make age-appropriate, comprehensive and scientifically accurate education on sexual and reproductive health and rights a compulsory curriculum component for adolescents, covering early pregnancy prevention and access to abortion.”