Britain’s embattled Conservative government has a new target: Sex education

UK PM Rishi Sunak 

New guidance unveiled by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government on Thursday seeks to overhaul the way sex education and gender identity is taught in England’s schools, a significant intervention into a delicate topic that appeared suddenly on the front pages of Britain’s newspapers a day before the announcement.

The government says the revised guidance, which came amid pressure from a handful of its lawmakers, provides clarity on a complex topic, emphasizing facts over what it calls “contested views” about gender identity.

But critics of the plans – among them a swath of teachers and teaching union leaders – say the move is a politicized attempt to appeal to a narrow cohort of voters the government is in danger of losing, months before a general election.

And they arrived amid what most see as the death throes of Sunak’s flailing government, which has for months seized upon and discarded a number of divisive topics in the hopes of reversing a stubborn polling deficit.

Pepe Di’lasio, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders and a headteacher at a school in northern England, told CNN the plans were, in his view, driven by “a political agenda at the front of a campaign season.”

“When the first time you hear about those is in a headline on a tabloid newspaper, then that doesn’t reassure you that the right research is taking place, and that the right level of integrity is behind the decision-making,” Di’lasio said.

“What we’re seeing is young people, and their health and wellbeing, and their care and guidance, being used as a political football.”

‘Utterly disgraceful’

The new draft guidance from the government, published Thursday, takes aim at the way sex and relationships are taught to English children in both primary and secondary schools.

Those lessons have been compulsory at schools in England since 2020, but the government says it reviewed how they are taught after “reports of pupils being taught inappropriate content” in some schools.

Under the new approach, children can’t be taught sex education before the age of nine, while “explicit discussion of sexual activity” will be delayed until children are 13.

Gender identity, or the fact that people can change gender, is meanwhile “highly contested and should not be taught” at all, according to the Department of Education.

The government said that teaching what it calls the “theory” of gender identity “could prompt some children to start to question their gender when they may not have done so otherwise” – a suggestion that has been angrily contested by LGBTQ+ rights groups.

“It is hard to see how rigid limits on what can be discussed and when would be in the best interests of young people – and this may even risk them seeking information from less reliable sources,” Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said in a statement.