Back to school
AFTER A
SUMMER OF
PROTESTS
AGAINST
INCLUSIVE
EDUCATION,
DANIELLE
MUSTARDE
ASKS WHAT
WE CAN DO
TO HELP AS
A NEW (AND
HOPEFUL)
SCHOOL
TERM COMES
AROUND?Relationships and Sex Education (RSE)
in schools across England, worryingly,
echoes from the era of Section, or
Clause, 28 seem to circulate once more.“MY CHILD, MY CHOICE”
If you keep a regular eye on the news
(though, honestly, I don’t blame you
if you don’t), you’ll have no doubt
seen the reports earlier this year
about parents protesting at Parkfield
Community School – a primary school
in Saltley, Birmingham – (among
others) after the school taught its
pupils about LGBTQI relationships
(that’s relationships, not sex) in a bid
to challenge homophobia and pro-
mote inclusion.
Following the lessons, in which
the No Outsiders project, developed
by assistant head Andrew Moffat, was
delivered, parents gathered weekly
to protest and, on one occasion – as
reported by the Guardian in March –
“600 Muslim children, aged between
four and 11, were withdrawn from theschool for the day”.
Moffat, who has been awarded an
MBE for his equality work, was forced
to defend No Outsiders after, “400 pre-
dominantly Muslim parents signed a
petition calling for [it] to be dropped
from the curriculum”.
After weeks of disruption and
hurt, the school was cleared of
wrongdoing after an inspection by
Ofsted, which praised Parkfield for
promoting “tolerance, acceptance and
mutual respect” and confirmed it as
“outstanding”.
Despite backing from Ofsted,
after the creation of a modified No
Outsiders for the faith community
was announced in July, protests began
once more after parents again cried
their children were, “too young to be
learning about same-sex marriages
and LGBT issues”.SCHOOL’S OUT
“This past summer, campaigns at
some 70 schools in Ealing, Red-
bridge, Chester – and, most famously,
Birmingham – against their teaching
to encourage diversity awareness
and their use of Andrew Moffat’s No
Outsiders remind me of the late 80s,”
Sue Sanders, Chair of Schools Out UK
and founder of LGBT History Month,
explains. “It was then that the ToryWHAT WAS SECTION 28?
Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was a controversial
amendment to the UK’s Local Government Act 1986, enacted on
24 May 1988 and repealed on 21 June 2000 in Scotland, and on
18 November 2003 in the rest of the UK by section 122 of the Local
Government Act 2003.Like many of you reading this, I at-
tended school under the infamous
piece of legislation that was Section- Enacted under Margaret Thatcher’s
government in 1988, the amendment
stated that a local authority “shall not
intentionally promote homosexuality
or publish material with the inten-
tion of promoting homosexuality” or
“promote the teaching in any main-
tained school of the acceptability of
homosexuality as a pretended family
relationship”. “Pretended family rela-
tionship” gets me every time...
Though I wasn’t born until a year
later, in 1989, it would – as I wrote
in a piece prompted by the 30th an-
niversary of the legislation last year
- “set the stage for the educational
environment in which I, and many of
my friends and family, were educated
in”. “Though Section 28 is no longer in
place, we must remember that it was
only 15 years ago that it was repealed
in England and Wales,” continues the
piece. “Fifteen years, that’s all, and the
legacy of the amendment has had a
ripple effect on schools and educa-
tion across the country for much,
much longer.”
Fifteen years is, indeed, “nothing
more than the blink of an eye” and
despite the recent introduction of
mandatory – and oh-so-necessary –
70 SEPTEMBER 2019