Jonathan Bellamy spoke with Kathryn Wakeling

Kathryn Wakeling

Last week we heard the news that the Government had bowed to pressure and withdrawn it's highly controversial home education and sex education plans. The changes came as a result of the horse trading that goes on in the final throes of a Parliament. With such a significant change Jonathan Bellamy caught up with Kathryn Wakeling to find out more. Kathryn is a legal and policy analyst at Christian Concern for Our Nation.

Jonathan: First of all could you just outline for us what these plans were for home education and sex education?

Kathryn: Essentially the Government was planning to make sex education part of the national curriculum and to make it compulsory for all children from the age of fifteen in England. They were also trying to dictate the way that schools would teach sex education so that different kinds of relationships would be promoted and that all children would receive information on a range of responses to sex and relationships not just their own schools teaching. Also the home education provisions would have enforced a licensing scheme against parents so that they would have to register their children every year for home education, and their education would be monitored quite closely with home visits and a detailed plan having to be produced. Also the rights to educate at home could have been lost very easily through poor administrative error or the child not wishing to be educated at home and so on. So the provisions were really quite far reaching into education and family life.

Jonathan: Now I understand that there was opposition from other parties towards these Government proposals, plus of course from parents and teachers as well. Can you give us a little bit of an understanding of what the concern was over these plans?

Kathryn: Yes. The Conservative party were opposed to the sex education plan and both the Tories and the Lib Dems were opposed to the home education proposals. Basically we were concerned that the Government were seeking to impose its own agenda and its own viewpoint on sex education. One of the principles that would have governed sex education was that it would have to be taught in a way that reflects a reasonable range of religious cultural and other perspectives. Now schools like to set their own agenda when it comes to sex education and that's usually in the hands of parents and governors. But that power would have been taken away from them and imposed by central Government. Also the principals would have required schools to promote equality and encourage the acceptance of diversity; which means essentially that schools would have had to teach all kinds of sex and relationships are the same; whereas we would have preferred the current emphasis on marriage and the value of marriage for family life and the bringing up of children. With regard to home education the concerns were more related to the bureaucratic and draconian nature of the scheme; it is a parents right to choose to educate their children at home if they so wish and that shouldn't be subject to Government policing. Also parents could lose the rights to educate at home simply by, for example, moving to another area without re-registering their child or refusing to allow their child to be interviewed alone by an officer of the LEA, which flies in the face of human rights.

Jonathan: Has there been a lot of campaigning behind this over recent months?

Kathryn: Yes there has. We have produced an information action pack on the bill and other organisations like ourselves have also been encouraging their supporters to campaign, to pray, to write letters to MPs and so on. So there has been a lot of campaigning. Also there's a home education organisation that have been encouraging their supporters to write to MPs as well. So yes there's been a lot going on in the background trying to stop these provisions from going through.

Jonathan: I was reading in a newspaper that the Tories have claimed that Mr Ed Balls preferred petulance by scrapping the plans entirely; that he didn't necessarily have to entirely scrap these plans. Can you tell us exactly what has been dropped by the Government's proposals?

Kathryn: Yes certainly. The proposal has been dropped or essentially adding sex education to the national curriculum and stopping the bill from forcing all children to receive sex education after the age of fifteen which was going to be compulsory for all children in England. They've also stopped the compulsory registration scheme for home educating parents. They've dropped a number of other proposals that weren't of concern to us, but were perhaps of concern to the Conservative party. The proposals of one to one coaching of individuals, for those falling behind and a number of other matters that were perhaps of concern, forcing all teachers to gain a license before being allowed to remain in the profession; they'd have to renew that every five years.

Jonathan: I assume dropped doesn't necessarily mean for good; I mean things might come around in the future; but is this likely to be something that's going to be long lasting?

Kathryn: Well we'd really like Christians to make this an election issue because the Labour party have said that they intend to bring these provisions back in the summer if they are re-elected. So we're encouraging Christians to write to their MPs and to write to their respective parliamentary candidates to seek their views on these matters. Also to host hustings in their local churches, so that candidates get to hear what the views of Christians are.

Jonathan: Explain that a little bit more. What's a husting?

Kathryn: A husting is a public meeting in which prospective parliamentary candidates can be questioned on their views and on their policies in a public forum and in a public debate. We have set up a website called Christians and Candidates, and we're encouraging local churches to host hustings so that people can ascertain what their representatives or perspective representatives' views are.

Jonathan: Kathryn thank you very much for updating us on this recent development from the Government and thanks for your very helpful explanation.