Teaching respect towards others is important, and the Department for Education has requested that schools must teach same sex relationships to our children. Nevertheless, they have left the method of teaching for schools to decide.

Schools have been given a deadline to implement it by September 2020.

By rushing, Primary schools are choosing inappropriate content, not following guidelines, hiding content so that parents do not have the opportunity to raise concerns, implementing it into the entire curriculum as a method of normalising it when they wouldn't do it for any other group.

The Department for Education guidelines state:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/managing-issues-with-lgbt-teaching-advice-for-local-authorities/primary-school-disruption-over-lgbt-teachingrelationships-education#first-steps

• draft a letter for primary schools to adapt and send out to their parents, acknowledging concerns and inviting any who wish to discuss the matter further to arrange to go into the school to do so
• ensure schools have good practice examples of effective parental engagement, so that they can quickly put this in place if they have not already done so
• consider whether you can support the school in discussions with relevant faith leaders to ensure mutual understanding of the issues
• offer to review school relationships education policies

Still schools such as the Wexham Court Primary School have done the following:

Chose to teach it by implementing it in the entire curriculum, instead of just an HRE class. Creating a huge imbalance over the Equality Act 2010.

Published a small article on the second page of the newsletter. Was not even mentioned in the key dates on the first page. So that only parents who are registered on the newsletter, and that look at the document in detail notice it. Giving parents 10 days to respond, and only allowing 1 parent per class.

Claimed they want to hear parents concerns. But only invited one parent per class, a total number of 20 parents, in a school of over 700 students, with a possible 1400 parents.

Did not share any content of what will be taught and told parents that this has already been chosen and will be shared 3 weeks before going live.

Claimed they checked with local community faith leaders, when they had not.

In short, the manner in which the school has conducted themselves is grossly unfair, this school and many others are simply rushing to tick boxes to comply with new regulations, whilst ignoring guidelines. We therefore ask that this school corrects their errors by:

1. Sending a letter to all parents and asking to contact if there are any concerns

2. Share the content that will be used, and allow parents to choose if this will be appropriate for their children

3. Ensure school contact local community faith leaders to obtain support

4. Offer to review policies if genuine concerns are raised that may affect children

5. Teach it in a selected HRE class instead of implementing it into the entire curriculum

6. Teach same sex relationships in a respectful manner, so not to insult or demean other groups

And we ask that primary schools do not rush through the guidelines just to tick boxes, but engage with parents and faith leaders to help implement these respectfully and without demeaning other groups