New bill proposed to strengthen PSHE Education
Thursday 18th October 2012
Yesterday a new bill was proposed to require the Secretary of State to make provision to include relationship, drug and alcohol education in the national curriculum; and for connected purposes.
It will be interesting to follow the progresss of this bill over the next few months.
As the related discussion contains some useful observations about PSHE Education, the first few paragraphs have been reporoduced below and the full transcript can be found at the following link:
"Growing up today is full of wonderful opportunities and freedoms for our young people, but it is also probably the most challenging time ever to be a young person faced with questions such as, “My mates are drinking; should I drink and, if so, how much?”, “What are legal highs, and are they safe just because they are legal?” and “What does a healthy relationship look like?”
Like many hon. Members, I believe that the role of education involves much more than simply teaching a limited range of academic subjects. It has a powerful role in preparing and equipping young people for life by giving them the knowledge and skills to deal with the complexities of living in a modern, fast-changing world. We need to recognise that, along with support from parents and families, schools have a vital part to play in producing confident, well-informed young people.
I am pleased to bring forward this Bill, with its focus on relationship, drug and alcohol education, as I believe that these are key areas for all our young people growing up. We can show that well-planned, coherent and effective education programmes on drugs, alcohol and relationships can work. There is evidence that specific programmes can have a measurable impact on young people’s behaviour, in regard to the use of alcohol, tobacco and cannabis. Programmes such as “Relationships without fear”—a school-based intervention programme on developing healthy relationships and challenging domestic violence—can be shown to prevent domestic abuse by giving young people the knowledge, skills and advice to enable them to deal with abusive relationships.
We also know, however, that fear-based approaches that just give information without addressing the social context of drugs, for example, are not effective. Young people need the opportunity to consider, reflect on, evaluate, discuss and reach conclusions about drugs, alcohol and relationships in a safe, educational environment. We came close to making those subjects compulsory in the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 under the previous Labour Government, but the Conservatives blocked the introduction of those provisions in the wash-up before the 2010 general election. When the coalition came into government, it instigated a review of personal, social and health education, but the review concluded nearly a year ago and the Government have still produced no proposals. Indeed, in the Government’s recent guidance on drugs and alcohol, they have specifically removed advice to schools about drug and alcohol education.
Why do I want to make these subjects compulsory? The main reason is to ensure that training will be made available for teachers and that resources will be allocated. For too long, many PSHE teachers have been talked into teaching this subject as an add-on to their main subject area, without having any specialist training or knowledge. We know that there is a mixed picture across the country, with some good practice and some that is not so good, but all our pupils deserve access to good quality PSHE.
The Bill would ensure that all children had access to good quality, age-appropriate education in relationships, drugs and alcohol throughout their education. Such topics would no longer be treated as trivial or as an add-on. Experts say that good quality education in this area can be achieved by one hour a week of the curriculum being devoted to the subject, and I believe that it could be incorporated into the curriculum fairly easily".
