Wales’ Education Bill Will Cut Marriage Out Of Sex-Ed Lessons

News

Kirsty Williams’s Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Bill was debated this week.

This Bill ditches the current legal requirement for pupils to “learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and the bringing up of children”. The parental right of withdrawal is also thrown out.

In fact all the existing safeguards are scrapped. Pupils will no longer be protected from the kind of shocking materials being peddled by the sex-ed industry. We have seen how important these protections are in recent months with councils in Warwickshire and elsewhere forced to pull inappropriate resources.

Incredibly, the Bill abolishes the safeguards but has nothing to replace them. Kirsty Williams has promised to publish a ‘Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) code’ which will eventually set out more detailed requirements, but there’s no sign of it yet. And any such code could be amended at any time by any future minister.

The existing legal safeguards contained within the Education Act 1996 are all being repealed by this Education Bill. They must be replaced within the Bill itself:

• Teaching must have due regard to moral considerations and the value of family life [Section 403 (1) Education Act 1996].
• All pupils to be taught about the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and the bringing up of children [Section 403 (1A)(a)].
• Children must be protected from materials that are inappropriate for their age and their religious and cultural background [Section 403 (1A)(b)].
• School governors determine sex education policy (there will be a mandatory national RSE code for all state schools) [Section 404].
• Parents have the right to withdraw their children [Section 405].

Marriage needs to be protected.