by Harriet Line, Daily Mail
Labour will scrap plans to stop schools from teaching sex education to pupils under the age of nine.
New statutory guidance on relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) removes a Tory commitment to ban the subject until at least Year Five.
Instead, it will be ‘recommended’ that pupils are not taught sex education until the last two years of primary school – but teachers will not be prohibited from covering it earlier.
In an exclusive interview with the Mail, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson insisted children would still learn about reproduction and sexual health at secondary school.
Government sources said primary schools would only be able to deviate from the guidance and teach sex education before Year Five if it was in a child’s best interest.
But the Tories accused the Government of ‘scrapping protections that prevented under-nines being taught about sex’.
Last year, the then Conservative government published draft guidance which recommended that primary schools ‘teach sex education in years 5 or 6’.
It stated that ‘this should be taught no earlier than year 5’, and be ‘in line with what pupils learn about conception and birth as part of the national curriculum for science’.