SEX education in schools in in a state of crisis and is “robbing children of their childhoods”, a Conservative MP has claimed.
Miriam Cates, who is backing Suella Braverman for the Conservative Party leadership, said it is one of a number of tricky issues that the new leader needs to tackle.
She told Bev Turner in an interview on GB News: “I think we’re in a crisis.
I think we are forcing what are very adult concerns on to children from a very young age in a way that is irresponsible, is inappropriate, is sexualising children.
“It’s putting them at risk of grooming and I think we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask ourselves, ‘why are we doing this?’
“Why are we exposing children to sexual material to sexual ideas well, before they’re ready, and why are we hiding some of these things from parents? I think there’s some big questions to ask…
“I know my colleagues in parliament are also looking into it but we’ve got a long way to go.”
Ms Cates, a former biology teacher, said schools have adopted “extreme ideologies”.
She said: “I have delivered sex education but I think what some of us my age think about sex education, the fact, the birds and the bees, and explanation of puberty, the law, you know, consent, those kinds of things.
“It’s very important to teach those things in school and parents rightly expect that to be done well.
“But I think some of these other materials and some quite extreme ideologies certainly don’t have consensus in our population but have made them their way into sex and relationships, education, and now becoming mainstream in schools, even though they’re certainly not mainstream in the general public. ”
She added: “It’s important to teach children about the facts about the law to protect them, to make them ready for adult life in an appropriate way, and so the question is ‘how has that kind of factual and acceptable education become this extreme?’.”
Ms Cates said children have become “pawns in an adult political agenda” revolving around “gender ideology”.
“I think that’s what’s going on here. That’s why we need to bring it into the light and that’s why quite frankly, the government needs to review the whole curriculum to put in place a much stricter guidance about what is age appropriate, what is factual, what is acceptable, and put power back in the hands of parents.”
Explaining why she was backing Suella Braverman for the new leader of the Conservative Party, she told GB News: “I think she’d be a brilliant Prime Minister. We’ve got to remember we’re not electing a leader of the opposition, we’re not just electing a leader of the party, this person has to become Prime Minister straight away.
“They have to know what’s going on at the moment, how to deliver our manifesto commitments, and we’ve come up to some really sticky issues, haven’t we, on the Northern Ireland protocol, on illegal immigration, on sex education in school – it is going to take someone with a firm grasp of detail and someone who’s willing to stand up against media outrage against this kind of radical progressive agenda from the left and I think Suella is that woman.
