The government has announced that it will not make sex and relationships education (SRE) compulsory in all schools, flying in the face of advice from experts and pleas from teachers , pupils and parents alike. The decision comes in spite of support for compulsory SRE from key House of Commons committees – the chairs of the education, health, home affairs and business committees all wrote to education secretary Nicky Morgan pressing for the subject to be made statutory in primary and secondary schools, saying it was a “crucial part of preparing young people for life”.
But perhaps what is most significant of all is that the decision to reject compulsory SRE came in the very same week that new figures were released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealing that, in the 12 months to March last year, 30% of female rape victims were aged under 16, a quarter were 14 or younger and nearly 10% were nine years old or younger.
Campaigners have long argued that compulsory SRE could be a vital preventative tool to help tackle the wider problem of the 85,000 women raped and 400,000 sexually assaulted in England and Wales every year. But, coupled with the news that such a large proportion of rape victims are children themselves, the case for good-quality sex education becomes even more urgent. To reject an opportunity to give all our children simple, age-appropriate information about their rights over their own bodies, the meaning of consent and their responsibilities towards others, in the very same week that we learn that rape victims of both sexes are most likely to be aged between 15 and 19, is devastating.
In addition to the data on rape, the figures also reveal that half of female victims of other sexual offences, such as assaults, grooming and sexual exploitation, were girls under 16. This completely shatters the argument that we shouldn’t teach young people SRE because we don’t want to “give them ideas” about adult issues to which they are not yet exposed.
In fact, last year it was revealed that more than 5,500 alleged sex crimes in UK schools had been reported to the police over the previous three years, including nearly 4,000 physical sexual assaults and more than 600 rapes.
Failing to educate young people about sexual consent and healthy relationships means that those who experience such crimes at a young age are often left bewildered, afraid, ashamed and unsure of where or how to report what has happened.
For example, analysis of the Crime Survey for England and Wales, which was published alongside the statistics, showed that respondents in younger age groups were much more likely to think it was acceptable, at least some of the time, to hit or slap their partner if they had an affair. And results from the most recent British Attitudes Survey reveal that young people are also significantly more likely than the general population to believe a rape victim is fully or partially responsible for their own assault if they have been drinking, or flirting with their attacker before the incident.
It is so rare, when dealing with issues as ingrained and insidious as sexual violence, to be able to point to concrete solutions that could make a real difference. And yet, in compulsory, good-quality SRE, we have a robust, tangible solution that experts, survivors, young people and educators alike agree could have a major impact.
To reject it is quite simply to fail young people.
It fails the one in 20 children in the UK who already experience sexual abuse, and the one in three children sexually abused by an adult, who do not tell anyone about it.
It fails the 43% of young people who say they are never taught about relationships at school at all, and the 40% who described their SRE provision as either “poor” or “very poor”.
It fails LGBTQIA young people who deserve to be informed and included, not alienated and excluded.
It fails the one in three girls who experience unwanted sexual touching (a form of sexual assault) in UK schools.
It fails the 30% of female rape victims aged under 16, who might never be told that what happened to them wasn’t acceptable, and that they have the right to report it.
But, most of all, it fails every child who has a human right to learn about sexual consent and their rights to their own body. What lesson could possibly be more important than that?