– Could you clarify what fields exactly the Family Education Trust's work covers, and what are its main activities?
– We're primarily a research organization and we've conducted studies on the causes of family breakdown. We've been doing so for more than 50 years now.
Unfortunately, one of our current main focuses is inappropriate relationship and sex education at schools, because this completely disregards parents' wishes and their rights to educate their child as they see fit.
What we see is the state completely inserting itself into families and trying to separate children from families. So that's one of the reasons that it's such a big focus for the moment.
– And how's the situation in general in UK schools now? What's the root cause? Are NGOs given a free pass to expose children to gender ideology?
– The problem is that the current conservative government introduced mandatory relationship and sex education in schools in 2019. The white paper released by the government on this issue included not just mandatory attendance, but also that children had to be taught about LGBT, which had to be on the curriculum. So when this was brought in, teachers were under a lot of pressure to cram many things into the curriculum. So what happened when that requirement was brought in was a lot of schools offloaded to third-party organizations that have no regulation whatsoever. We can't allow this. So a whole new industry emerged, with various groups saying „well, you're too busy to do that, so we will do your relationship and sex education for you.”
So these third-party providers, there's so many of them. I couldn't even tell you how many there are. It has been described as the Wild West and it really is. Anybody can set themselves up as an expert in this without having to have any qualifications. And some of them actually go into schools and do lessons for the kids.
It is just a completely bonkers situation. You, as a parent, can still have the right to withdraw your child from sex education, but schools do make it quite hard. In fact, on the government's website, there is advice for teachers is to have to talk parents out of it because the government wants all children to take part in this curriculum. And the problem is that it isn't possible to withdraw your child from the relationship aspect of it. So while you might get them out of the specific lessons on the set, you're not getting them out of the lessons about relationships. So, what happens is that all this crazy stuff that we've seen gets inserted at any point in the Personal, Social and Health (PHSE) curriculum, covering personal health and sex education. So that means anything from talking about drugs and staying safe online right through to health and sex and relationship education. It's a very broad curriculum and you can't opt your child out of the whole thing.