Statutory Sex and Relationships Education

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Sir Edward, for calling me to speak.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing this important debate and on her excellent speech calling for statutory sex and relationships education, for which she has campaigned in Parliament with dogged determination for many years.

Across Greater Manchester, there are many excellent projects organised by children and young people to raise awareness in schools and workplaces. They are particularly valuable, as young people listen to each other. There are some great examples of children creating videos and other materials, including a YouTube video about being groomed via text, which was made by Stockport Young Partnership. There has also been a good response to materials such as “Real Love Rocks” by Barnardo’s and GW Theatre Company’s “Somebody’s Sister, Somebody’s Daughter”.

My hon. Friend is also right about the need to inform children starting at primary school. This week, we learned that almost 100,000 eight-year-olds have a mobile phone, and that more than 20,000 were given a handset from the age of six. We need to be concerned about the potential access that allows predators to our children. As Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs Council’s lead for child protection, has said, once the police become aware that a child has been abused, “it is too late”. They have already been harmed. Prevention is the key to protecting children.

Talking to children for my 2014 report, “Real Voices: Child Sexual Exploitation in Greater Manchester”, and again this year for some new research, I was struck by how just many children said they thought sex and relationship education must start in primary schools. They felt it was too late to leave it until secondary school to talk about healthy relationships. They also talked about the difficult transition from primary to secondary school and how vulnerable children in particular needed more support. One girl said that teaching about relationships in primary school

“would help people who are younger and naive not to get into dangerous situations”.

She also said:

“In primary schools, they do not teach much about relationships. When you move to secondary school you do not know the rules or how the other years will act above you and so your actions can be altered because you just want to fit in with what the other kids who are older than you are doing.”

That shows the importance of information being given to primary schoolchildren, because it is important that they start secondary school armed with that knowledge.

We are getting much better at recognising children who are vulnerable to exploitation because of difficult relationships at home. However, what we are not so good at doing is recognising children who do not come from those backgrounds but who for whatever reason are isolated or outside their peer groups at the very time in their development when they are looking for the approval of their peers. Those problems can be exacerbated as a child moves from primary to secondary school.

Some children carry huge burdens of life’s worries. That struck me again when I attended a consultation day on a possible children’s advocacy house in Greater Manchester recently. In one group, children estimated that about 15 out of 40 children in their school class had problems at home or other problems. An indication of the sadness in some of their lives came in the comments they wrote on post-it notes and put on a tree, including: “Hope my sister gets better soon and my mum stops being in pain”; “I wish my Nana would get better”; and “I worry about my mum because she can’t go anywhere but she can go on crutches but she struggles”.

We also need to understand that children who exhibit antisocial and aggressive behaviour often do so because of problems at home. Those children are often supported in primary school, but at the transition to secondary school they find themselves excluded, either for short periods or permanently. That increases their vulnerability, not only to child sexual exploitation but to other forms of exploitation by criminal gangs, such as drug running.

In Stockport last year, the number of children excluded from schools for a fixed period trebled in number from year 6, the last year in primary school, to year 7, the first year in high school. There has also been a rise in peer-on-peer exploitation, fed by websites that promote sex as a violent activity and blur the lines between someone consenting and not consenting.

Although much needed, compulsory sex and relationships education is not enough on its own. We need an environment that encourages children to take responsibility for other children and a culture of respect for each other that informs every day at school. That has been done effectively in some schools to deal with bullying. In Stockport schools, a restorative approach is being developed, through which children help other children to resolve their conflicts and reach resolution. They reach out to children who are not part of a peer group.

Another thing that young people told me again and again was how much they valued talking to their peers. We have many successful peer mentoring programmes in Greater Manchester. One school I visited had a big team of peer mentors, and children had to apply to become a mentor as if they were applying for a job; for example, they needed to have references.

We need to understand that children are a resource in themselves. They understand social media in a way that we cannot. They understand exactly the pressures that they are subject to, and they need to be part of designing projects to inform other young people.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Could the hon. Lady conclude her remarks?

[Ann Coffey]

We need to give more young people the chance to do that. Thank you, Sir Edward.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Thank you.